Travel can be so nice when everything is on-time and there are no traffic jams/accidents/back-ups ---- but unfortunately none of the U.S. travel systems (rail, air, bus) can currently be relied on to provide such an experience. Unfortunately one needs to look at recent patterns/experience (i.e. davie355's 2-week on-time record for your train), and not rely on a historical memory of when everything fell perfectly into place. It's a shame, but I think that we all need to be very conservative regarding planning if we really need/want to be somewhere at a specific time/date.