OAKRIDGE, Ore. — It was a serious problem: A train hit some trees that had fallen onto the tracks near the small town of Oakridge, Oregon, and it was stuck for 36 hours.
Nearly 200 passengers were stuck on the train the whole time, and turned to social media to communicate with the outside world.
The train was stopped at around 6 p.m. Sunday and it didn't move again until just after 6 a.m. on Tuesday. About halfway through the ordeal, passenger Rebekah Dodson went live on Facebook to describe what was happening.
"I cannot believe that I'm stuck in a snowstorm," she said. She described her usual ride on that same route as uneventful, and said it usually takes four hours. At that point, she was still optimistic: "On the plus side, I've written about 15,000 words, so I should have a new short story to bring you."
A few hours later, she was reaching out to Amtrak via Twitter for answers: "Hey Amtrak does it really take this long to rescue stranded,passengers? Its been over 24 hours!!!"
Dodson also noted that the staff on the train had been polite and professional throughout the ordeal.
Another passenger, @Tracy27 shouted out "James the Cafe Dude" specifically, saying the incident showed what a "rock star" he is. Apparently when the passengers ran out of diapers, he made some out of napkins and safety pins.
Her outlook grew much more grim as Monday evening set in. "The food hoarding has begun. I'm considering saving half my dinner steak and making jerky on the room heater," she said. "We have accepted our new life on the train. Tribes are forming. We are all walking thin."
Another user, Kim Studdard, questioned why her husband and the other passengers couldn't leave the train.
"Also, why is the crew being replaced but the passengers can't be escorted out?" Kim Studdard asked. "Make it make sense for me please."
By early Tuesday morning, Dodson and the other passengers seemed to have made the best out of the situation. She told KGW News there had at least been some drinking and bonding among the chaos.
And they knew an engine was en route to pull them out of the snow.
A Union Pacific locomotive reached the train Tuesday morning after crews cleared the tracks, and towed the train and its passengers back to Eugene.
Dodson again shared a Facebook Live video, this time showing how lovely it was to be moving again.
As horrible as it likely was to be stuck on a train for a day and a half, there were no reports of injuries when everybody finally escaped.
But as Twitter user Paul Leary asked when all was said and done, "Did it take Twitter to save Americans stuck on Amtrak?"