Passengers on Amtrak Borealis stranded in Hastings for more than 3 hours [Video]

Shanna Novak boarded a train in Chicago en route to St. Paul on Saturday morning, looking forward to showing her family around the city in which 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., stranding hundreds of passengers, including infants, older people and college students on break, for more than three hours just shy of St. Paul.

The incident 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 less 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 and Milwaukee, Wis. But not Hastings.

“When we heard about the Borealis, we thought, ‘Great, here’s another option for us,” Novak said. …