posted
How 'bout a trip report to lighten the mood around here?
This past Saturday (November 6) I took a ride from Cary, NC to Washington, DC aboard #92, the Silver Star. The title refers to the lunch I enjoyed in the diner while crossing the James River at Richmond.
Julie had advised (correctly) that 92 would arrive on-time so I pulled up and parked at the Cary station about twenty minutes before the scheduled 8:15am departure. This Cary station was constructed in the early 1990's when North Carolina first started dabbling in passenger trains and originally housed a DMV office with a small passenger waiting room in the lobby. The DMV has moved to newer digs down the street and their office space is now undergoing renovation to house a larger waiting room and.... supposedly... gain a ticket agent. We'll see. Currently though, the building is padlocked and a port-a-john is located on the porch. Hope that renovation commences quickly.
By boarding in Cary, I was nicely settled into my assigned window-seat by the time I gained a seat partner in Raleigh. TIP - in boarding a northbound train, Cary offers more and safer parking and you'll have a better chance at finding space before the regular crowd shuffles in at Raleigh. I often do the same thing southbound making my way up to Baltimore to board either the Carolinian or Palmetto.
Amtrak's on-board personnel continue to perform at a level above what I had come to expect four or five years ago. Perfect? Far from it. Hopeless? No, not at all. On this trip our coach attendant made the usual announcement of staying near the train during the Raleigh smoke break and added "Remember folks, the train didn't leave you. YOU left the train." The on-board folks made a valiant effort to keep the place acceptably clean. Was it great? No. Was it lousy with smelly, overflowing trash bins and bathrooms? No. It was a coach where many people had already been there overnight.
In a shout-out to GBN - the passenger behind me had a lengthy, unpleasant cell phone conversation with someone on his receiving end in New Jersey.... at one point the passenger exclaimed "We're in the Carolina's - there is nothing here but woods!"
My seatmate, like myself, was enjoying a book on the ride. Being an IT guy from the Research Triangle Park, he was reading a Kindle. I was doing it the old-fashioned way with a new paperback that I ordered on-line. For-the-record- the portability of the Kindle looks really great BUT I still really enjoy reading a good book and then finding a place for it on my bookcase after I have polished it off..... kind of like a trophy.
Let me note that I was reading 'Through the Heart of the South' a first novel by one of our RailForum regulars. Great train reading Mr. Doodlebug but now I'm not sure whether to shelve it alongside John Ehle's 'The Road' or on the case with Pat Conroy's historical fiction based on coming-of-age as a white teeneager in the 1960's south. I'll reread a few sections in the next few days and make a decision soon.
One other sidebar - At one point I scribbled the note "Hollywood Beach - Rufus Jr. and me!" One of Mr. Doodlebug's central characters was a Pullman man working the Hollywood Beach Sun Lounge on the Silver Meteor and I had just a week previous encountered the Hollywood Beach on a Salisbury, NC - Asheville excursion train!
Back on the Silver Star though - we rolled through the CSX bottleneck between Rocky Mount and Petersburg right on time with coaches about 90% full. We did not go into the hole for an opposing freight or passenger train at all. Yes, the economy is slow and freight is down BUT I also believe that congestion in this area traditionally gets tighter as the day wears on. That the Star squirts through before lunch is probably an advantage..... and 92 has been making it to Washington on-time or early pretty much every day for the last month or so.
At some point around 10:30am the diner LSA passed through our coach taking lunch reservations. She had 11:45am and 1:15pm slots still available and I asked for one of the earlier ones.
No announcement about the diner being open was made so I went to check at about 11:55am. Apparantly the 11:45 slot had been pretty underutilized as I was one of just 5 people there for lunch. I cannot ever remember being seated by myself and not having anyone else show up to be seated with me.
That was thing.....it wasn't that other people arrived later and were seated elsewhere. No one else came period until the 12:30 reservations started coming in. By this time we were crossing the James River and I was finishing my cheeseburger.
The food was average....maybe a shade below that even..... but the salmon walls and greenish ceiling of the heritage diner made for a lunch ambiance that we won't experience on Amtrak much longer..... assuming that 25 new Viewliner Diners really do start rolling off the line in 24 months or so.
So.... in a nutshell..... I had a nice train ride because the sun was shining and everything more-or-less happened the way a reasonable train passenger would expect it to work. Sometimes no real adventure is also an adventure!
Ocala Mike Member # 4657
posted
Great report, David, and, borrowing from GBN, sounds like "more positives than negatives".
palmland Member # 4344
posted
Glad you had a good trip, David, thanks for the report. Nice to have a positive story about a train riding adventure rather than hand wringing about the state of Amtrak or our government. I think I've had enough of that for a while. Hope we hear more about your Asheville excursion.
Interesting comments on the Cary station. I have often thought of using Raleigh/Cary as the starting point for a train/plane trip. But, now with SWA starting service to SC in March, that's less likely.
notelvis Member # 3071
posted
Hi Mike, Palmland -
The thing with using Cary for a train/plane trip is that there is no direct local transit between RDU and the train station......even though the two are less than 10 miles apart.
On this quick trip I left my vehicle at the train station overnight. My wife then picked the vehicle up Sunday morning and picked me up at RDU when I flew back on Southwest.
As for Southwest Airlines, I am keeping my eye on how this develops. SWA had previously announced plans to begin serving Charleston, SC and Greenville, SC in 2011. Good news as I'm only 90 minutes from GSP.
The unexpected news was SWA's recent announcement of their intentions to swallow AirTran. THIS move gets SWA into Charlotte and Atlanta for the first time. Also gets them a route into Asheville, NC if they want it.
I can't imagine SWA going in to BOTH GSP and AVL now..... and if they have Charlotte will they really still want Charleston..... not sure yet how it plays out. I do know that I would love a daily nonstop from Asheville to BWI and/or Chicago...... but I'm trying not to get my hopes up.
Doodlebug Member # 4564
posted
Thanks for the kind words, Notelvis. I hope you enjoyed the book. I'm embarrassed to say I did not know of John Ehle and his books even though we shared an alma mater and a city in common. Now I'm going to have to expand my own reading horizons.
If my memory is correct, Cary was not a passenger stop for any of the Seaboard's silver trains, but it could have been a stop for locals. The current station is where the former Southern and Seaboard lines merge to become a stretch of double-track railroad to Raleigh.
The two railroads' lines diverged at a point just west of the current Raleigh Amtrak station, which is on the former Southern, now Norfolk Southern, line. The Seaboard's line turned north at that point, which I believe carried the railroad name Fetner, and ran to the Seaboard station, which is a couple of blocks north of the State Legislative Building. It is still there, but I believe it is a nursery and gardening supply business. You can still see where the curving platforms were.
The Silver Star began stopping in Cary a couple of years ago when a platform was built on the former Seaboard (south) side of the station. The Carolinian and Piedmonts stop on the north side of the station.
notelvis Member # 3071
posted
Hello Doodlebug -
Yes - I enjoyed your book and hope to share some thoughts about Hamlet with you in the near future.
A couple of favorite John Ehle books are 'The Road' and 'The Winter People'. Ehle wrote with a particular compassion for the 'mountain' people and both of these novels share a common theme of man from 'outside' trying to build a life with a native woman...... that 'The Road' is constructed around a fictionalized (but somewhat accurate) account of the building of the railroad from Morganton to Asheville is bonus.
Thinking strictly trains for the moment though - Yes, I very much liked the Seaboard station in Raleigh and think it's a pity that CSX abandoned the Seaboard as a through route north of Raleigh (which neccessitated the move to the former Southern Depot....). The Seaboard Depot was at least twice the size as the current station and offers much more parking....... it would have done a better job meeting the increased demand in Raleigh.
My sister studied at the NC State School of Vetrinary Medicine in the early 1980's and briefly dated a fellow who lived in an old house in downtown Cary about two blocks from where the current NS and CSX lines converge. I recall the original Seaboard station was still standing nearly 30 years ago and it was a block nearer the junction (but still between the two railroads) than is the current station. It looked like the kind of station where only the local passenger trains would call...... but of course when Seaboard exited the passenger business, Cary was a sleepy little town out in the country......hardly the place it has become over the last 20 years.
posted