Amtrak Cascades Service discussion 2025

[trimetbusfan]

Hi all, was planning on leading a group trip from Seattle to Portland on March 30th but am seeing most of the trains sold out for that day. Does anyone have any intel on what's going on that might be causing that?

Fridays and Sundays are the busiest travel days. Also, March 30 is the end of spring break for most colleges in the NW so many students are going back to school, leading to higher than normal demand on this day.

 

[Harmon Shay]

I do, though nothing official. As I understand it, as many as eight of what was once a total of 28 Seattle Horizon coaches are at least temporarily out of service now and because of that, one of our seven Horizon sets has had to be dismantled until at least the end of this month so that all remaining Cascades Horizon sets have some hope of each having three coaches (they're all supposed to have four, and only one does now). This leave us with virtually no backup equipment. Also, for some reason, there's now no longer any word on when the damaged Talgo Mt. Bachelor will be back. I think it's possible that the mess caused by the recent missing Sounder commuter coach maintenance records and the frantic catch-up that Amtrak is having to do on that (Amtrak Seattle Maintenance maintains Sounder commuter trains under contract for Sound Transit), plus continuing personnel shortages may be contributing to this mess.

 

[trimetbusfan]

I do, though nothing official. As I understand it, as many as eight of what was once a total of 28 Seattle Horizon coaches are at least temporarily out of service now and because of that, one of our seven Horizon sets has had to be dismantled until at least the end of this month so that all remaining Cascades Horizon sets have some hope of each having three coaches (they're all supposed to have four, and only one does now). This leave us with virtually no backup equipment. Also, for some reason, there's now no longer any word on when the damaged Talgo Mt. Bachelor will be back. I think it's possible that the mess caused by the recent missing Sounder commuter coach maintenance records and the frantic catch-up that Amtrak is having to do on that (Amtrak Seattle Maintenance maintains Sounder commuter trains under contract for Sound Transit), plus continuing personnel shortages may be contributing to this mess.

Yeah, the equipment shortages on cascades have sort of become the status quo unfortuantely. High demand will equal sellouts, and low supply of seats deifntiely causes that to happen faster, as seen here.

 

[Willbridge]

Hi all, was planning on leading a group trip from Seattle to Portland on March 30th but am seeing most of the trains sold out for that day. Does anyone have any intel on what's going on that might be causing that?

Flix bus fares for that trip are already about 50% higher than their base rates. As with Amtrak and airlines, they use dynamic pricing based on demand.

 

[Amtrak25]

Are 20 Sounder cars still mothballed from the pandemic ?

I'd say add one such car to each Horizon set, put the "shorts" in it, but with the maintenance meltdown in Seattle, not practical. If Northstar and Dalles TRE operations quit, there are those cars and locos.

Commuter seats would not be popular, but what for those narrow, hard seats in upcoming Venture cars on Airo's. No one will be happy then.

I don't know if the Airo trainsets coming in 2026 are anything to look forward to given the horrible Charger loco situation in Chicago, not very impressive ALC-42's on LD, and VIA Rail's version.

 

[Steve4031]

Are they still assigning seats before boarding in Vancouver?

 

[zephyr17]

Are they still assigning seats before boarding in Vancouver?

No, haven't done that in a couple years. They stopped seat assignment at Seattle and Portland, too. I don't know why, it seemed to work well.

 

[Harmon Shay]

Are 20 Sounder cars still mothballed from the pandemic ?

I'd say add one such car to each Horizon set, put the "shorts" in it, but with the maintenance meltdown in Seattle, not practical. If Northstar and Dalles TRE operations quit, there are those cars and locos.

Commuter seats would not be popular, but what for those narrow, hard seats in upcoming Venture cars on Airo's. No one will be happy then.

I don't know if the Airo trainsets coming in 2026 are anything to look forward to given the horrible Charger loco situation in Chicago, not very impressive ALC-42's on LD, and VIA Rail's version.

Probably about that many Sounder cars are mothballed from Amtrak recently being unable to find required maintenance records on them. Amtrak, which has the maintenance contract for Sounder, is trying to catch that up now. Sound Transit is leading us to believe that all the needed cars will be back within "weeks." As for using Sounder cars on Cascades trains, that's been discussed for years in the railfan media, but there's no sign it being discussed outside of that.