The Empire Builder is actually kind of a weird one. It is both an important interurban between Chicago and Minneapolis (and possible as far as Fargo) as well as

The Empire Builder is actually kind of a weird one. It is both an important interurban between Chicago and Minneapolis (and possible as far as Fargo) as well as between Seattle and Spokane (and Portland and Spokane), but also a very popular tourist route. The fact that it is serving both these purposes is kind of a determent to both. It runs to infrequently (and at weird hours) to serve as a nice interurban, and it gets too overbooked to serve a tourist route. To fix this the state of Washington (and Minnesota) need to operate more frequent interurbans that only services the end portions of the route (like 4 trains a day at least), and then Amtrak could operate the whole Empire builder in a more sane manner.