SEATTLE — An Amtrak train traveling from Portland, Oregon, to Vancouver, B.C., came to a halt and lost power for hours north of Seattle due to a mechanical issue on March 29.
Passengers aboard the Amtrak Cascades Train 518 were left in the dark Friday night and into early Saturday morning.
"We're all stuck there for four hours and the power wasn't working. The bathrooms weren't working," said Polly Vel, a passenger.
Vel and her friends got on board in Portland to see the Timbers play in Vancouver, but it soon turned into a travel nightmare.
"Ended up 17 hours on a train ride, it should have been just under eight hours," Vel said.
Vel said the train had a delay not long after leaving Portland, but once it passed Seattle and got to Edmonds, passengers said it came to a complete stop.
Crew members told the passengers that the the hydraulic system was broken in the engine, they said. Then, the power went out and left them in the dark.
Hannah Quinton and her grandmother Diana Carver were also stuck on the train.
"People need to get home to their families and they have no way of contacting them and that's scary. My phone was dead, my mothers phone was dead, her phone was at like 20 percent. I was stressed out like, how was anyone going to know we're here?" said Hannah Quinton, a passenger.
Quinton said the train made it to Mukilteo where she and her grandmother were able to get off the train and take an Uber home.
"It was really stressful for a lot of people," Quinton said. "There were no buses there."
Amtrak said there was a lack of available buses and that customers were transferred to another train at Edmonds to continue the route.
Vel was one of the people waiting for the new train. She said people, including young children, had to wait outside in the cold for an hour for a new train.
"Amtrak, as an organization, failed," said Carver.
Passengers said no one from Amtrak has reached out to them and are calling for better communication and plans in case something like this happens again.
"The crew was magnificent, but the train had no power and they had no power. If you plan for emergencies, breakdowns, and you have a protocol that works an you have people above the ones in the trenches, who listen," Carver said.
Amtrak said it apologizes for the inconvenience to customers.
"I would like to see some attention brought to the state of disrepair that is our travel system that so many of us in the Pacific Northwest are trying to embrace," Vel said.