I took the Empire Builder from Seattle to Chicago in about 2008. Our departure out of Seattle was delayed 12 hours, I was not able to get into the sleeper cabin that I paid for until Spokane, where we were also delayed for 8 hours. Once we departed Spokane, the staff were universally rude, unhelpful and generally shitty. Our train was so delayed that they had combined the EB coming out of Portland with ours so they started rationing meals (which I had also paid for as a part of my fare) to half servings. Having spent a lot of time in Japan I compare this to the one delay I ever encountered in roughly 25 Shinkansen trips: I took the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Niigata, a roughly 3 hour trip. The train was delayed by less than 5 minutes. When we got off the train in Niigata the conductors and staff were waiting by the door to bow and apologize profusely. I'll never set foot on another AmTrak.