Freight Derailment & Glasgow

On the way into Havre, I had the train scanner on and noticed that the engineer said to the conductor that some "cars were on fire" just east of Glasgow, MT. We continued our way to Glasgow, MT, where we stopped at about 5 PM on Tuesday. The conductor let us know that we were going to be here for quite some time, and estimated that the delay would be 12 hours at a minimum.

The bustling downtown of Glasgow, MT

Apparently 16-17 freight cars derailed, and there were some hazardous materials on board that caused a fire go large that even the road was shut down. So we went and had our previously scheduled dinner in the diner, polished off a bottle of wine that we won at the wine and cheese tasting earlier that afternoon, and headed back to our room to sleep the night away. Folks, I can't tell you how nice it was to be able to just go back to our compartment and lie down.

Bottle of Wine from Wine Tasting

I woke up at 6 am to find us still stopped in Glasgow. Fun times! I took a shower, got dressed, and headed down to the dining car. Luckily they were serving away, so I got the last order of the railroad french toast and some regular sausage. Two cups of coffee, too!

After Tim showered, we headed off to walk around the bustling metropolis of Glasgow. Let's just say that I am pretty sure we can all be very thankful that we don't live in a town this small. Tim missed breakfast because he was sleeping, so we stopped at McDonalds for an iced coffee. It took 30 minutes to get his iced coffee and sausage mcmuffin because they were totally overwhelmed. We also saw a Mennonite family there.

Now we are back on the train, and have been stopped in Glasgow for approximately 18 hours. They have buses coming to take us around the derailment and to the train that was headed to Seattle that is on the other side of the derailment. We will then switch trains - the one on the East side will take us back to Chicago, and our train will turn around and take the folks from the other side of the derailment back to Seattle.

So we definitely will not be having dinner this evening at the Girl and the Goat in Chicago, and I am now keeping my fingers crossed that we will be no more than 27ish hours delayed so that we can catch our train on Thursday evening back to the East Coast. Stay tuned for an update on the bus bridge!