The Amtrak Cascades is a passenger train route in the Pacific Northwest, operated by Amtrak in partnership with the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon. It is named after the Cascade mountain range that the route parallels. The corridor runs from Vancouver, British Columbia, through Seattle, Washington, and Portland, Oregon, to Eugene, Oregon.
, seven round trips operate along the corridor each day: one Vancouver–Seattle, one Vancouver–Seattle–Portland, three Seattle–Portland, and two Seattle–Portland–Eugene. No train travels the entire length of the corridor. For trains that do not travel directly to Vancouver or Eugene, connections are available on Amtrak Thruway bus services. Additionally, Amtrak Thruway services offer connections to other destinations in British Columbia, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington not on the rail corridor.
In the fiscal year 2017, Cascades was Amtrak's eighth-busiest route with a total annual ridership of over 810,000. In fiscal year 2018, farebox recovery ratio for the train was 63%. On-time performance in FY2021 was 58.7%.
History
Prior service Passenger train service between Seattle and Portland—the core of what became the Cascades corridor—was operated as a joint partnership by the Northern Pacific, Great Northern, and Union Pacific from 1925 to 1970, with the three railroads cross-honoring tickets on their Seattle-Portland routes. When Great Northern and Northern Pacific were folded into the Burlington Northern in 1970, the reconfigured partnership continued to operate the Seattle-Portland service until the creation of Amtrak in 1971.The official guide of the Railways and Steam Navigation Lines of the U.S., Rand McNally & Company, May 1966. The guide shows that the service was operated jointly, some trains using Seattle's King Street Station and the rest Seattle's Union Station. Service between Vancouver, British Columbia, and Seattle was provided via the Great Northern / Burlington Northern International, and between Portland and Eugene by Southern Pacific.
Amtrak era
Amtrak took over intercity passenger rail operations from the private railroads on May 1, 1971. Initial service on the Seattle–Portland portion of the corridor consisted of three daily round trips–one long-distance train running all the way to San Diego, along with two corridor trains inherited from Burlington Northern. There was no corridor service south to Eugene, and no service to the Canadian border at all. The trains were unnamed until November 1971, when the two corridor trains were named the Mount Rainier and Puget Sound and the long-distance train became the Coast Starlight.
Passenger rail service to Vancouver, British Columbia, was restarted on July 17, 1972, with the inauguration of the Seattle–Vancouver Pacific International, which operated with a dome car (unusual for short runs).Zimmermann, Karl. Amtrak at Milepost 10. Park Forest IL: PTJ Publishing, 1981. The train was Amtrak's first international service.
The next major change to service in the corridor came on June 7, 1977, when Amtrak introduced the long-distance Pioneer between Seattle, Portland and Salt Lake City, Utah. To maintain the same level of service between Seattle and Portland, the Puget Sound was eliminated, and the schedule of the Mount Rainier was shifted.
The corridor expanded south of Portland to Eugene on August 3, 1980, with the addition of the Willamette Valley, which operated with two daily round trips, financially subsidized by the State of Oregon. The Pacific International and Willamette Valley struggled to attract riders and were discontinued in September 1981 and December 1981, respectively.
This left three trains on the Seattle–Portland corridor: the regional Mount Rainier and the long-distance Pioneer and Coast Starlight. This level of service would remain unchanged for 13 years.
Expansion in the 1990s
In 1994, Amtrak began a six-month trial run of modern Talgo equipment over the Seattle–Portland corridor. Amtrak named this service Northwest Talgo, and announced that it would institute a second, conventional train on the corridor (supplementing the Mount Rainier) once the trial concluded. Regular service began on April 1, 1994.
Looking toward the future, Amtrak did an exhibition trip from Vancouver through to Eugene. Amtrak replaced the Northwest Talgo with the Mount Adams on October 30. At the same time, the state of Oregon and Amtrak agreed to extend the Mount Rainier to Eugene through June 1995, with Oregon paying two-thirds of the $1.5 million subsidy.
Service to Canada returned on May 26, 1995, when the Mount Baker International began running between Vancouver and Seattle. The state of Washington leased Talgo equipment similar to the demonstrator from 1994. The Mount Rainier was renamed the Cascadia in October 1995; the new name reflected the joint Oregon–Washington operations of the train. A temporary commuter rail service using Amtrak trains was deployed in September 1997 between Union Station in Portland and Vancouver station during a full closure of the Interstate Bridge for repairs. The free trains had ten round trips and drew an average of 1,335 passengers per day; the low ridership was attributed to the isolated location of Vancouver's station.
A third Seattle–Portland corridor train began in the spring of 1998 with leased Talgo equipment, replacing the discontinued long-distance Pioneer. The other Seattle–Portland/Eugene trains began using Talgo trainsets as well, while the Seattle-Vancouver train used conventional equipment. In preparation for the Vancouver route receiving Talgo equipment as well, Amtrak introduced the temporary Pacific Northwest brand for all four trains, dropping individual names, effective with the spring 1998 timetable.
Amtrak Cascades
Amtrak announced the new Amtrak Cascades brand in the fall 1998 timetable; the new equipment began operation in December. The full Cascades brand was rolled out on January 12, 1999, following a six-week delay due to an issue with the seat designs on the Talgo trainsets. Amtrak extended a second train to Eugene in late 2000.
From the mid-1990s to the May 12, 2008, Amtrak system timetable, full service dining was available on trains going north out of Seattle's King Street Station to Vancouver. The southern trains to Portland briefly had full dining services until the May 16, 1999, system timetable.
In 2004, the Rail Plus program began, allowing cross-ticketing between Sound Transit's Sounder commuter rail and Amtrak between Seattle and Everett on some Cascades trains.
The corridor continued to grow, with another Portland–Seattle train arriving in 2006, and the long-awaited through service between Vancouver, British Columbia, and Portland, eliminating the need to transfer in Seattle, beginning on August 19, 2009 as a pilot project to determine whether a train permanently operating on the route would be feasible. With the Canadian federal government requesting Amtrak to pay for border control costs for the second daily train, the train was scheduled to be discontinued on October 31, 2010. However, Washington State and Canadian officials held discussions in an attempt to continue the service, which resulted in the Canadian government permanently waiving the fee.
Two additional round trips between Seattle and Portland were added on December 18, 2017; an early morning departure from each city and a late evening return, enabling same-day business travel between the two cities. On the first day of service of the new timetable, a train derailed outside of DuPont, Washington, south of Tacoma. Service resumed using the old timetable without the additional round trips.
Pandemic cuts and restoration
In March 2020, Amtrak Cascades service north of Seattle was suspended indefinitely after all non-essential travel across the Canada–United States border was restricted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Amtrak crews ran practice trips between Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia, in February 2022, and service between those two cities resumed on September 26, 2022. The round trip between Portland and Vancouver resumed on March 7, 2023, restoring the second Seattle–Vancouver trip that existed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Seattle–Portland service expanded to six round trips on December 11, 2023, adding the two additional round trips between Seattle and Portland originally intended to start in 2017.
A new customs inspection area at Vancouver's Pacific Central Station with a border preclearance facility was completed in June 2026. It allows Cascades trains to eliminate a secondary inspection stop in Blaine that was performed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers. It is North America's first passenger rail preclearance facility and is expected to save 15 minutes on southbound trips. A new maintenance facility at the Seattle Yard is scheduled to open in late 2026.
Route
Stations and connections +Amtrak Cascades stationsState/ProvinceCityStationConnectionsBritish ColumbiaVancouverPacific Central StationWashingtonBellinghamFairhaven StationMount VernonSkagit StationStanwoodStanwood Local Bus: Community Transit, Island TransitEverettEverettEdmondsEdmondsSeattleKing Street StationTukwilaTukwilaTacomaTacoma Dome StationOlympia/LaceyCentennial StationCentraliaCentraliaKelso/LongviewKelso/LongviewVancouver, WAVancouver, WA Amtrak: Coast Starlight, Empire BuilderOregonPortlandPortland Union StationOregon CityOregon CitySalemSalemAlbanyAlbanyEugeneEugene–Springfield
Operations
The Cascades primarily uses freight tracks that are owned by BNSF Railway in Washington and British Columbia, and the Union Pacific Railroad in Oregon. In British Columbia, Canadian National Railway operates the tracks between the Vancouver terminus and the New Westminster Bridge for BNSF, and it operates the bridge itself for the Canadian federal government. Sound Transit owns a short section of tracks in Washington on the Point Defiance Bypass. In fiscal year 2023, the trains had an on-time percentage of 64percent, among the worst rates for state-supported Amtrak routes.
Ridership
Total ridership for 2008 was 774,421, the highest annual ridership since inception of the service in 1993. Ridership declined in 2009 to 740,154 but rose 13% in fiscal year 2010 to 836,499 riders, and to 847,709 riders in 2011.
Ridership declined steadily between 2011 and 2015, attributed in part to competition from low-cost bus carrier BoltBus, which opened a non-stop Seattle–Portland route in May 2012. Low gasoline prices and schedule changes due to track construction also contributed to the decline. Ridership rose again in 2016, and was expected to continue rising in 2017 and beyond, after the completion of the Point Defiance Bypass construction project. However, ridership declined again following the 2017 Washington train derailment, and the COVID-19 pandemic drastically reduced ridership numbers throughout the entire Amtrak network in 2020.
Ridership on the Cascades corridor reached a record high of over 941,000 passengers in 2024, a 41 percent increase from 2023. The record was broken in 2025 with 951,397 passengers, a 1.4% year-over-year increase.