Passengers on Amtrak Borealis train stranded in Hastings for more than 3 hours

Shanna Novak boarded a train in Chicago en route to St. Paul on Saturday morning, looking forward to showing her family around the city where she once lived.

But the journey became a holiday nightmare after Amtrak’s Borealis train came to an unexpected halt in Hastings around 7 p.m. Saturday, stranding hundreds of passengers, including infants, older people and college students on break, just shy of St. Paul for more than three hours.

The stop comes about seven months after Amtrak debuted its Borealis line, which has been a popular service route with customers in large part because of the perception that it has fewer serious delays. The roughly 7.5-hour journey between Chicago and St. Paul includes stops in Red Wing and Winona, Minn., along with La Crosse, Wis., and Milwaukee. But not Hastings.

“When we heard about the Borealis, we thought, ‘Great, here’s another option for us,” Novak said. “I hadn’t heard much negativity around the service of it.”

But she said her expectations soured after the train got stuck in Hastings. Christina Leeds, Amtrak’s senior director for public relations, said in an email that a switch problem delayed the train.

Leeds said the train had to “reverse back” to cross to a different track, then wait for that track to clear.

Novak, who planned to spend the evening with her family in St. Paul before driving to St. Cloud to visit relatives, called the episode disappointing. She posted about the ordeal on X..

The Borealis line reached 100,000 riders five months after opening, a figure that Brian Nelson, president of advocacy group All Aboard Minnesota, previously told the Minnesota Star Tribune surpassed projections.

But the train may have lost Novak’s support. Others on board were similarly frustrated, she said, with some unsuccessfully asking the conductor on Saturday night if they could disembark in Hastings and call an Uber.

But the most frustrating part of the delay?

“We were 24 miles from St. Paul,” Novak said.