Amtrak was back to normal on Friday with all trains that had been suspended in the past week back to their normal schedules.
For the first time in more than a week the Empire Builder departed Chicago en route to its West Coast terminals of Seattle and Portland. No service suspensions were posted on the Amtrak website.
The suspensions began four days before Christmas as a massive winter storm that brought subzero temperatures and heavy snow raced across the country, hitting the upper Midwest and western New York State particularly hard.
The same storm disrupted airline travel during the Christmas weekend but Southwest Airlines had particular difficulty coping with the storm and its aftermath.
The carrier cancelled approximately 5,800 flights between Dec. 22 and 29. On Friday Southwest operated most of its flights with the website Flightaware.com reporting that just 43 Southwest flights had been cancelled by 6 p.m. EST.
On a typical day Southwest operates 3,900 flights. Flightaware said that nationwide, airlines cancelled just 153 flights on Friday, which was the lowest number since before the winter storm arrived just before the Christmas weekend.
Most Southwest flights scheduled to operate this past week from Cleveland Hopkins Airport were cancelled.
Every Southwest flight out of Hopkins on Monday was scrapped and only a handful of flights operated Tuesday through Thursday.
Most Southwest flight from Cleveland operate to Chicago, St. Louis, Denver, Nashville, Atlanta and Baltimore.
Some Southwest passengers from Cleveland were told the soonest they could be accommodated would be Saturday.