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I caught the Amtrak Thruway bus at Sky Harbor Airport at 4:30 PM, May 3, 2008 for a 3 hour ride to Flagstaff where I would board the Southwest Chief for Los Angeles about 9:00 PM. Because I was taking the Coast Starlight from LA to Seattle on May 4, two days before it would go all the way to Seattle without interruption, I had been advised by Amtrak that I would have to exchange my Starlight ticket before boarding at LA. I had over an hour to wait for the Chief so I requested the agent at Flagstaff to make the exchange. Instead of just exchanging the one Starlight ticket for 3 (train, bus, train), he said that all 8 of my original remaining tickets would have to be cancelled and reissued, so I got 10 new ones. I left him to do the paper work and went out for dinner because I knew the diner on the Chief would be closed before I boarded in Flag.
The Chief was about 30 minutes late in leaving Flag so I went to bed immediately. The diner was to open for breakfast at 5:30 AM the next morning so I got up at 5:00 AM to shower before breakfast. I knew I was in trouble when I came down the stairs and saw someone exiting the shower leaving wet footprints behind him. He had obviously not secured the shower curtain and the dressing room floor was covered in water. There was no way I was going to try to undress and dress while standing in a puddle of water. By the way, why doesn’t Amtrak have some way of storing bath towels in the dressing room other than stacking then on the seat in the dressing room? With towels stacked on the seat and a bag of soiled towels hanging next to the door, there is no room to sit down and barely room enough to stand. While trying to get your pants off while standing on one leg you have to pray that the train doesn’t hit a stretch of rough track which will throw you head first into the shower.
There is obviously a lot of padding in the LA end of the Chief’s schedule. We were 20 minutes late arriving at San Bernardino but 30 minutes early getting into LA – gaining 50 minutes in less than 100 miles.
I had not been in LA Union station since 1944 and was sure disappointed in its condition. I remembered it as a bright and beautiful station but now it is dark and anything but beautiful. It is sure in need of renovation.
I had been looking forward to the trip north on the Starlight. Since I had lived in the East Bay Area for nearly 50 years, I had driven highway 101 several times but had not taken the train from LA to Oakland since 1944. My wife, Jean, and I had taken what was then the Coast Daylight from LA to Oakland in 1944 when we took a 3-day honeymoon in LA after our wedding. We enjoyed the ride along the coast then and the scenery was equally as picturesque on this trip. But the 1944 trip was a little somber because we both knew that in 2 days I would be boarding another train to go back to camp and then deployment overseas. Since I was a BAR man in an infantry squad I didn’t have a lot of insurance salesmen trying to sell me life insurance, and we both knew that it was very possible that our week together as man and wife could be all that we would ever have, a point her parents made when trying to dissuade two 18 year olds from marrying. But God was good and we had over 63 wonderful years together.
I would have liked to have arrived in Oakland in daylight so that I could have seen some of the East Bay Area but the only area that I saw was Jack London Square. It wasn’t the Jack London Square that I remembered, but what hasn’t changed in 18 years. The portion of my trip from Oakland to Seattle and then on to Chicago and Washington was a rerun of a trip Jean and I had taken years ago and had planned to do again because we enjoyed it so much but like so many things in life “again” never came.
We arrived in Klamath Falls on time and transferred to buses which would take us to Eugene, Oregon. Everything went OK but things would have been smoother if there had been Amtrak personnel directing traffic or better still directions given on the train before we got to Klamath Falls. Everyone headed for the buses that were visible at the ends of the station – no one said that there were more buses behind the station until the visible ones were full. The ride to Eugene was less than 3 hours with one pit stop so it was not tiring or stressful. Again the transfer from the buses to the train in Eugene would been smoother if there had been Amtrak personnel explaining what was planned. There was one car for those going to Seattle, one for Portland, and one for all other passengers. No one explained that so people just headed for the nearest car. When they showed their tickets many had to then be redirected to the proper car. The train to Seattle was all coach cars with no sleeper cars, which was not a hardship because the trip was entirely in daylight and we arrived in Seattle on time. There was no diner either so we had to “suffer” through with sandwiches in the lounge car, which sleeping car passengers had to pay for contrary to what would have been the case if we had had sleepers as originally ticketed.
The Starlight, from LA to Klamath Falls which had a diner, was the only train on my entire trip that I thought the food was not good. I had the Flat Iron Steak and it was the toughest steak I have ever eaten – I could hardly cut it. I had the steak on other trains twice and both were very good and cooked as ordered. I am not a gourmet so many would probably not agree with me but with the exception of the steak on the Starlight I would rate the meals I had on Amtrak as good as those in most of the best “family” restaurants. I have seen many remarks on this forum lately about the meatloaf on Amtrak but I don’t remember meatloaf being offered on any of the 5 long distance trains I traveled on this trip. The service in the diner on the Starlight also left something to be desired. It was very slow. Passengers who had late dinner assignments were called as much as an hour later than scheduled.
I had to stay in Seattle overnight because the Starlight gets in too late to make connections with the Empire Builder. Based on several reports in this forum, I had reservations at the Best Western Pioneer Square hotel and found it lived up to the reports. I found a taxi at the station and asked to be taken to the hotel. To my surprise, the taxi driver said I didn’t need a taxi to get to the hotel and gave me directions on how to walk there. Since the Empire Builder doesn’t depart Seattle until 4:45 PM, I slept in the next morning. I had to be out of the hotel by 11:00 AM so I took my bags to the station and gave them to a Red Cap with instruction to put them in my room when the Empire Builder was ready for boarding. Then I walked around the area but it was cold and a little “drippy” so I spent a good deal of time browsing the stacks in the Elliot Bay Book store. If I had had any room in my luggage I could have purchased enough books to make for good reading for weeks. But alas I didn’t have room for even one paper back. This was a reminder of how much I missed my wife’s purse for carrying tickets, pens, aspirin and the myriad of other small items that I now had to carry in my pockets.
I was looking forward to the trip to Chicago on the Empire Builder because I remembered it as very enjoyable and scenic, and I was not disappointed. But traveling it alone was no where near as enjoyable as with my wife years before.
When we left Everett, Washington the conductor announced that we were behind two slow freight trains climbing up to the 7 ¾ mile long Cascade tunnel which meant we were going to lose a considerable amount of time. Not only that but we would have to wait for at least 20 to 30 minutes after the last freight had gone through the tunnel so that all fumes could be cleared out before we could go through. Later he came on the PA system and announced that the dispatcher had agreed to put both freight trains on a siding so that we could pass and not be delayed. That was unexpected good news. We woke up the next morning in Whitefish, Montana and had daylight all the way across Montana to the North Dakota border. The scenery going around Glacier Park was beautiful, even the plains of Eastern Montana were not boring – I was reminded of growing up in Eastern South Dakota. The day was broken up by the wine and cheese tasting session in the diner. I recalled sitting up at night and looking out the train window to the moon lit plains of North Dakota and the small towns we passed through but there was no moon this time as we crossed North Dakota. The portion of the trip from St. Paul-Minneapolis to La Crosse, Wisconsin followed the Mississippi River and is one of my favorite areas of the country. I recalled with some sadness 7 years earlier when my wife and I last traveled this same route as we went by motorhome the entire length of the Mississippi from its source in Minnesota to its mouth in Louisiana.
We arrived in Chicago on time where we had about a 2 ½ hour wait before boarding the Capital Limited for Washington. That gave me time to explore Chicago Union Station.
Sadly I don’t have much good to say about the Capital Limited. The car attendant and other Amtrak personnel were helpful and courteous as they were on all the trains I traveled on. In fact I have nothing bad to say about any of the Amtrak personnel on any of the trains, they were all helpful and courteous. The train itself is another story. The car I was in could have used a lot of careful maintenance. A high school cross country runner could go faster than the train did most of the time between Chicago and Washington. As a result we were 4 ½ hours late in arriving in Washington. The car attendant blamed CSX for the delays. The service in the diner was slower on this train than it was on Starlight, the 8:30 dinner group was not called until after 9:30. There was a tour group on the train which was getting off at Cumberland, MD where they had a bus tour scheduled. We were supposed to arrive there at about 9:45 AM but didn’t arrive until after 1:00 PM, the tour group members were not happy campers. Apparently Amtrak did not want to feed the tour group so lunch was delayed until we left Cumberland about 2:00 PM. My son and his wife were driving up from North Carolina to meet me in Washington. Since I was supposed to arrive at 1:30 PM which would be before they arrived we had planned that I would take the Metro to Alexandria where they would meet me. Because the train was so late they drove up and met me at Washington Union Station. But that meant that we left Washington during the rush hour, but we survived that and got to our hotel OK.
We spent two days in Washington. The highlights for me were the Holocaust Museum and the World War II memorial. Everyone, especially those born after WWII should see the Holocaust Museum to be reminded of what can happen if we are not careful in voting for the leaders of our country. Hitler did not come to power by a direct military coup. I was reminded of the elderly couple whose house we moved into, uninvited, in 1945 when we left the Ruhr and were driving towards the Danube. We asked them what they thought of Hitler and they replied that they were in bad straits economically and Hitler promised them a better life which happened when he took power. But then things took a bad turn and they could do nothing about it. Probably telling us what they thought we wanted to hear, but when a politician promises 2 chickens in every pot we had better ask who is going to pay for the chickens.
It rained lightly off and on both days we were in Washington but we did see most of what we had planned on without getting too wet. We left Washington on Monday and that night saw on the news that Washington had over 4 inches of rain that day. We were glad that we had decided to leave when we did. We spent 3 days traveling to New Bern, NC where my son and his wife live. A good part of that time was on the Outer Banks where we visited Kitty Hawk, Roanoke Island of Lost Colony fame as well as the beautiful English Gardens.
After spending a week with my son and his wife, he took me to Wilson, NC where I boarded the Palmetto for what was supposed to be a 5 ½ hour trip to Washington. However, a strong wind blew large trees across the tracks which had to be cleared causing a 1 ½ hour delay. The next day I boarded the Capital Limited for Chicago. Unfortunately the return trip on this train was not much better than the East bound trip and we arrived in Chicago 2 ½ hours late. The car attendant, Emmanuel, was courteous and helpful but I got the distinct impression that he was quite new on the job. The AC in my room could not be controlled and the heat control didn’t work. The temperature in the room soon resembled a refrigerator. I asked the Emmanuel if he could adjust the temperature in the room but he had no better success than I did. To reduce the flow of cold air he stuffed a towel into the air control register, and gave me another blanket. The two combined made the room livable and I slept OK that night, but that seems a heck of a way to run a railroad.
Sleeping car passengers boarded the Southwest Chief at 2:45 PM and the train left Chicago on time at 3:15 PM. Fred, the car attendant, was a complete contrast to Emmanuel on the Capital Limited. He was obviously an old hand at the job and even introduced himself as the “porter.” When I remarked about the title he said he had been on the job a long time and didn’t mind being referred to as the porter. The scenery from the Chief does not equal that on the Starlight or the Empire Builder but I enjoy looking at the prairies of the Midwest. I guess that comes from spending the first 16 years of my life in South Dakota. The Chief was 20 minutes late getting into Flagstaff and we stepped off the train into a snow storm. No one was prepared for that. The cars in the parking lot were covered in snow. I quickly called a taxi and got to my hotel. The next morning I was on a thruway bus headed back to Phoenix. It started to snow again just before we left Flag. There was no snow in Phoenix and the high temperature was only 71 degrees, low for May.
My rating of the trains I traveled on this trip, excluding the Palmetto, would be as follows:
Thanks for such a thorough report. The Coast Starlight seems to be getting consistantly low marks for diner service lately.
I'm glad that your trip was enjoyable but found it touching when you wrote of 'going solo'.
The WWII Memorial was the highlight of my last sightseeing trip to Washington on Veterans Day about three years ago. Given your service in that war, I am happy that you had a chance to see it for yourself.
Of particular interest was your mention of going to Kitty Hawk. I proposed to my wife just at closing time at the Wright Brothers Memorial in Kitty Hawk. I wanted to do so at a place monumental enough that it would still be there long after we are no longer living......I also wanted it to be at a place on the extreme opposite side of North Carolina from where we live. In the event she said no then I would have not ever again had the need to pass through Kitty Hawk!
Again, thanks for a tremendous trip report. I hope that you'll chime in more often around here.
train lady Member # 3920
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Mesaman, thanks for a great report.
HopefulRailUser Member # 4513
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Indeed, very interesting. Glad you liked the Best Western Pioneer Square, I thought it was great. But I must confess I don't feel LA Union Station is that bad. It retains a lot of the original inside and outside appearance. Compare it to King St. Station in Seattle, that was sinfully modified and will be a long time coming back.
palmland Member # 4344
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It was great to read a report from someone who knew what train travel was like in the 'golden era' of the 40's and 50's. I'd be interested to hear more of your pre-Amtrak travels and how that compares to today's trains. I guess we should be thankful that we have even have LD passenger trains today even though they are a shadow of years past.
I agree with Notelvis that your trip report was touching and made me realize how many of us are so fortunate to have a spouse to share the more memorable moments of our lives.
smitty195 Member # 5102
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Thank you for such an excellent and detailed trip report. it's interesting to note in so many trip reports that Amtrak could do such a better job with so little effort (such as having someone in Klamath Falls and Eugene to explain the buses and loading information).
Regarding your comments about history and Hitler. You are very wise, and I wish that your wisdom could somehow be conveyed to those who seem to be blinded by promises of current-day politicians. I understand PRECISELY what you are saying, and you are very accurate in your statements. I wish we could learn our lessons from history, but we seem destined to repeat our mistakes all over again.
Thank you for your service to this great country.
box283 Member # 5546
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great report...thanks for posting, and also thanks for defending our freedom during 'the big one'!
sbalax Member # 2801
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Outstanding report, Mesaman! Thank your for taking us all along for the ride.
Frank in dark and cool SBA
sojourner Member # 3134
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Thanks for the report, Mesaman.
RRRICH Member # 1418
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Great report, Mesaman!! Hope to see you around this forum more!!!
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