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Monday, May 8th Today's travel was from Cardiff to Liverpool. My original plan was to stop over for lunch in Chester, where I'd have to change trains anyway -- but SarahZ pointed me toward Gladstone's Library in the town of Hawarden, which has a café (it also has overnight rooms). I caught the...

Heh, jis got his trip report posted before I managed to finish writing this one, even though my trip was before his... Toward the beginning of this year, I noticed that the dollar-to-pound exchange rate was a lot better than it was the last time I went to the U.K. Although I traveled to a lot...

The current restaurant/bar/brewery is basically a "rebranding" of the previous concept after it was closed for over a year during Covid -- it's the same ownership, just with a different name and a somewhat different food menu and beer list.

In most cases, you only get the benefits of a hotel chain's elite program if you book directly through official channels -- so you would probably not get those 7,000 Bonvoy points if you booked through Amtrak's hotel site.

I'd like to see another southbound train departing L.A. within the 7:10-10:10 A.M. gap, and another northbound train departing San Diego within the 4:01-7:01 P.M. gap. (I know, they're somewhat hamstrung by the presence of Metrolink and Coaster trains, particularly on weekdays.)

Not sure about Northern California, but it's been beautiful in Southern California the last few days. I believe these eastbound CZ and SWC cancellations may be due to westbound trains having been delayed and/or canceled due to recent severe weather in the Midwest.

Ha ha.

The short answer is, yes, you can basically go wherever you want (the exception is express bus services, but you're fine for the entire Metro rail system, as well as "local" and "rapid" bus routes). If you expand the text where it says "EZ Transit Pass Program" on this page, you'll see this:

Yes, the Los Angeles office of the National Weather Service issued a blizzard warning for the second time ever (the first time was 1989). It only applies to the mountains, though - I'm at a lower elevation where it's 50 degrees, so I'm only getting rain.

I've heard that Braniff's orange 747s were nicknamed "Great Pumpkins." :D

Note for the original poster that this refers to the Santa Fe Depot (in downtown San Diego), not the Old Town station. You could check your bags if you're able to make a trip downtown the previous day, but otherwise, you'll just have to carry your bags on when you board at Old Town.

Along with making sure to have a penknife handy in case the ring comes off someone's pudding can, right?

My guess is that the website is, at present, assuming the construction will be complete (and full train service will be restored) by March 16th. I'm not sure I would make that assumption. Assuming the construction is still going on and you decide to take the train on the 15th: you will be on...

I think of water ice as being something different from a snow cone -- the shaved ice is more coarse in a snow cone than it is in water ice. (Also, secondarily: water ice tends to be served in a flat-bottomed cup, and snow cones tend to be served in, as the name suggests, a conical cup.)

Nice - I'm a fan of time travel/alternate history novels, and I really liked their novel from a couple years ago, "The Future of Another Timeline."

Here's a tweet from Amtrak regarding that train - I would guess they were trying to fix a problematic locomotive at Fullerton, but then they ended up going back to L.A. to swap it out.

Pajamas (which I'm fine with sleeping in and for walking down the sleeping car hallway to the restroom in).

Many recent car models have similar automatic-braking safety features... since the loaders/unloaders wind up driving a lot of different cars, I'm sure they're somewhat familiar with the quirks those features can have.

You could get from Norfolk to Chicago on the George Washington (Norfolk to Newport News was actually on a connecting bus), but there were no passenger trains into northern Wisconsin by the early 1970s. The closest you could get is one of the Wisconsin stations on the route of the Empire Builder...

Following up: Amtrak and BART have now "made up," just in time for BART's 50th-anniversary celebration.