RAILforum: ATL-CLE round trip complete

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Posted by Dave Burden (Member # 88) on :

Just came back from a round trip on the Crescent and Capitol Ltd, from Atlanta up to Cleveland and back. I left Saturday night and killed a few hours in DC Sunday then caught the westbound Capitol Ltd. Arrived in Pittsburgh Sunday night around 11pm (just a few minutes late).

Had business to attend too near the airport on Monday.
Continued from PGH on the Capitol Ltd up to Cleveland Monday night/early Tuesday morning. Taxi to airport for rental car and onto a hotel by 3:30am...

Manged to conduct some business on Tuesday, then drop the car off, take the RTA (light rail) from the airport to the Amtrak station. I then met up with Alan Curtis and his family. Had a great dinner at their house and talked about train travel and such. Back to the train station around 10:30pm Tuesday and waited for the Eastbound Capitol Ltd. (So far, it was coach travel all the way.)
I checked on sleeper availability at the station - there were some open, for $106 to DC. Figured I'd complete the experiment and wait until I was onboard to try and buy one. Train was a little late and I boarded around 3am in coach.

I did ask about a sleeper, but because of some odd circumstances didn't get one until after Pittsburgh. Even though, it was nice having one since the Superliner coaches were the older version.

Arrived in DC about half an hour down. Stashed my luggage in the Metro/Acela Lounge and walked up the Mall to the White House and back to get some exersize and kill time. I had booked a sleeper back to Atlanta originally, so getting the sleeper on the Capitol wasn't necessary, but it was nice anyway.

The Southbound Crescent left only about 5 minutes late, but was delayed around 5:30am when they had to have a drunk removed and arrested. Even after all that we were only about 20 minutes late when I got off this morning.

I met and saw some interesting people on and off the train (Alan - you should see some of the characters that came through the Cleveland station :-)) and had no problems with connections.

I do plan to finish the report from my September trip and our Summer of 2000 tour soon!

Dave

Posted by HopefulAlan (Member # 1933) on :

It was a real pleasure for my family and me to have you join us for the evening, and I'll be sure to pass along your nice comments about dinner to my wife. We thoroughly enjoyed your visit and the sharing of stories. As always when in conversation with you, I learned a great deal about trains and train travel.

I'm curious, were you able to haggle at all about the price of the sleeper, or was it a case of "take it or leave it"? Also, did the fact that you couldn't get into the sleeper have anything to do with a crew change at Pittsburgh? If that was the case I wonder whether the room would have been immediately available in Cleveland, had you reserved it in advance.

As to the characters that got on in Cleveland, I am sure they were something to behold - probably Pittsburghers returning home ;-)

I'm glad to hear that you got home in good condition, and we look forward to having you pass through our area again. Thanks for posting the report, and I will be looking forward to seeing your "grand tour" report before too long.

Alan