Day 4: On the Empire Builder across Montana and North Dakota

Surprise, surprise - when I woke up in the morning, we were 3 hours behind schedule. Apparently, the connecting train from Portland was delayed and we obviously had to wait for that. So we sat for more than two hours in Spokand in the middle of the night. On the other hand, due to this delay, we got to see more of western Montana than we normally would have - and let’s face it, eastern Montana/North Dakota is kind of less interesting anyway …

Just about around lunchtime, we ran along the south edge of Glacier National Park and there was still quite a bit of snow on the ground up on Marias Pass. Then, after that, the landscape was mainly flat and mostly empty - sure, there was the occasional town every now and then, but Montana is really not very densely populated.

Later, in the early evening, the train suddenly starts slowing down - I heard on the radio that they were having a problem with the air line and needed to check things out. So we stopped out in the middle of nowhere and the crew walked along the train. They found the problem pretty quickly - something had knocked off the air hose between the two engines and they had to replace that. After about 25 minutes, we were able to continue our journey.

After our service stop in Minot, it was really quite late already, I went to sleep - but after a while, I woke up again because the train was jerking around. It was a very bumpy stretch of track out there.

Schedule and actual times:
…
Whitefish - ar 10:42a (7:26a - 3:16L)
Whitefish - lv 10:59a (7:46a - 3:13L)
West Glacier - 11:28a (8:16a - 3:12L)
Essex - 12:05p (8:55a - 3:10L)
Browning - 1:15p (10:10a - 3:05L)
Cut Bank - 1:47p (10:45a - 3:02L)
Shelby - 2:23p (11:43a - 2:40L)
Havre - ar 4:08p (1:12p - 2:56L)
Havre - lv 4:24p (1:32p - 2:52L)
Malta - 5:36p (2:52p - 2:44L)
Glasgow - 6:59p (3:47p - 3:12L)
Wolf Point - 7:42p (4:33p - 3:09L)
Williston - 10:18p (7:09p - 3:09L)
Stanley - ???
Minot - ar 12:14a (9:22p - 2:52L)
Minot - lv 12:34a (9:42p - 2:52L)
…