[3] Additionally, Amtrak Thruway services offer connections to other destinations in British Columbia, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington not on the rail corridor.

[8] 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).

[10] 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.

[11]: 59 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.

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.

[22] 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.

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.

[25][26] 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.

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.

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.

[37][38] 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.

[46] The Cascades primarily uses freight tracks that are owned by BNSF Railway in Washington and British Columbia, and the Union Pacific Railroad in Oregon.

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.

[47][57] Service on the Cascades route is currently provided using equipment from Amtrak's national fleet, along with two articulated trainsets manufactured by Talgo.

[71] The Series 8 trainsets do not have the tail fins, but instead have a cab built into the power car allowing push-pull operation without a separate control unit.

In 1998, Amtrak also purchased an additional Series VI trainset as a demonstrator for potential service between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

The Series VI trainset built to operate between Las Vegas and Los Angeles (painted in Surfliner colors) was renamed the Mount Adams when it was purchased by the state of Washington.

One SC-44 locomotive was destroyed in the December 18, 2017, derailment on the Point Defiance Cutoff, but was soon replaced by a newly built Charger by Siemens (1408) in August 2020.

In the wake of the accident, Amtrak proposed to lease or buy two Talgo trainsets which were originally bought for use in Wisconsin but never operated.

[88] Funding for the route is provided separately by the states of Oregon and Washington, with Union Station in Portland serving as the dividing point between the two.

[citation needed] As a result of Cascades service being jointly funded by the Washington and Oregon departments of transportation, public transit agencies and local municipalities can offer a variety of discounts, including companion ticket coupons.

The Cascades corridor is also served by Amtrak Thruway buses that are partially funded by the Washington state government and contracted out to MTRWestern.

[94] Amtrak Cascades travels along the entirety of the proposed Pacific Northwest High Speed Rail Corridor; the incremental improvements are designed to result in eventual higher-speed service.

[95] The eventual high-speed rail service according to the long-range plan should result in the following travel times: In order to increase train speeds and frequency to meet these goals, a number of incremental track improvement projects must be completed.

[94]: 5–22 to 5–23 In order to extend the second daily Seattle to Bellingham round trip to Vancouver, BNSF was required to make track improvements in Canada, to which the government of British Columbia was asked to contribute financially.

[96] The project involved building an 11,000-foot (3.4 km) siding in Delta, British Columbia, at a cost of US$7 million; construction started in 2007 and has been completed.

[110] There have also been studies about relocating the northern terminus from Vancouver's Pacific Central Station southeast to SkyTrain's existing Scott Road station in Surrey, British Columbia; in this scenario, northbound passengers would then ride the SkyTrain rapid transit system for about a half-hour to complete a trip to downtown Vancouver.

As the bridge was raised and open, a device known as a "de-rail" was engaged, used to prevent a train from proceeding and falling in to the water by derailing it beforehand.

[113] On December 18, 2017, while making the inaugural run on the Point Defiance Bypass, southbound train 501 derailed near DuPont, Washington.