Amtrak Cascades services north of Seattle affected by area mudslide

Due to an additional mudslide north of Seattle, Amtrak Cascades service between Seattle and Vancouver, B.C., will be canceled on December 14 and 15. Amtrak will continue to monitor the weather conditions and will provide additional updates as necessary. Also, Sounder commuter train riders to Edmonds, Mukilteo and Everett, Wash., will need to take special bus service from Seattle after mudslides closed northline tracks. Southline Sounder service is not affected and will operate on normal schedule. Local media report that weekend mudslides unleashed by torrential rains in western Washington state prompted railroad officials to shut down passenger train service on several major Pacific Northwest routes. Amtrak trains were halted on Sunday as a safety precaution while crews cleared debris from tracks and inspected rain-soaked rail beds and adjacent slopes for stability, said Gus Melonas, spokesman for BNSF, which owns and operates the region's rail lines. Except for a few brief interruptions over the weekend, BNSF managed to keep its freight traffic moving through the region by diverting those trains onto rail lines that remained unaffected by slides, he said. Three large mudslides triggered by heavy showers struck western Washington on Saturday, one of them sweeping car-sized boulders onto a rail line in the Columbia River Gorge-area of Wishram, Wash., Melonas said. A series of smaller slides blocked rail traffic on Saturday north of Seattle and near the Skykomish River on Sunday, he said. As a result, passenger service was suspended for 48 hours on three major Amtrak routes -- the Amtrak Cascades line from Portland, Ore., to Vancouver, B.C.; the Coast Starlight train between Seattle and Los Angeles and the Empire Builder connecting Portland and Seattle with Chicago, Amtrak said.