That's embarrassing and CSX's fault. CSX should write apology letters to Amtrak and to the Amtrak passengers. I assume the holiday week and coronavirus leave them tight for staff and perhaps people filling in. Sometimes stuff just happens and it is a good learning experience, but CSX owns the track, both freights and scheduling so they should step up and "own it".
I am going to speculate on the scenario: Freight train #1 delayed due to washout, timed-out & canned next to the signal. Crew set appropriate number of hand brakes & left. Freight train #2 came along and also timed-out in the same area, blocking the line. That's bad; at this point the dispatcher should have had train #2 park on the same track as train #1. To do that the crew from train #2 would have to get out, restart #1, move it to create space, park it again, then move train #2 onto the same track. Probably didn't have enough time left to do all that work. I guess my question is whether dispatchers are aware of train crew scheduling and availability, or are the schedulers aware of dispatch problems? Ideally, train #1 should have anticipated the need for another train to can and could have guessed how much space they needed to leave. Then they would have had to walk the extra train length to the access point. Dispatcher should have anticipated how long before the new crews would come on duty and sounded the alarm before the LSL arrived.
