Rich sent a message to Joseph H. Boardman – CEO, Amtrak – Email Address that said:
On our return trip from Portland, OR, we were delayed due to a derailment near Stanley ND. We had to sit on a siding for almost 8 hours until the tracks were cleared so we could proceed. I can't say enough about the on train crew's effort to make the best of a bad situation. They were constantly apologizing for the delay even though we knew it wasn't their fault. Our train was supposed to arrive in Chicago around 3:00PM so no dinner would be served on that day. However, the on train crew managed to come up with a meal for us using extra items they had on board. First they fed the sleeping car passengers and then offered a free dinner to all the coach passengers. I know the crew was tired but they continued to make the best of it.
During the day I received an email from Amtrak letting me know they had rescheduled us on a train Wednesday morning because they knew we would miss our connection. I called USA-Rail to find out what hotel arrangements might be made for us and I was told the Chicago staff would have all the information upon our arrival.
We arrived around 11:00PM and all the passengers who missed connections were directed to an unused lounge where we were greeted by an Amtrak agent. The agent was very pleasant and collected all the tickets and names of the people who had e-tickets. We found out she had been called into work just to handle our situation. She told us to have a seat in the lounge and she would come around to each of us and explain what arrangements had been made. At the same time they told us to grab some food off a counter in the lounge. What they had done was ordered box lunches for all of us.
What we found out was they were going to put us up in 2 sleeping cars they had pushed into Union Station. It really worked out great because we didn't have to leave the station and try to get to a hotel and then return early. We just set our alarms for 6:00AM, then went into the station and caught our 7:00AM train.
Again, I can't say enough about all the Amtrak employees on the train and at Union Station. You should be very proud of them as they really excelled at “customer service”.
Rich and Peg
