Here’s our report for this year’s trip. Enjoy.
Eric & Pat
Prologue
Because we had to cancel our train trips back to Ohio in 2019 and 2020, we could hardly wait for 2021 to arrive so that we could set our vacation dates and purchase our Amtrak tickets.
At the beginning of 2021, the Southwest Chief and the Capitol Limited were only offering a limited number of departures a week. Although we assumed that they’d both be back to daily departures by the summer, we went ahead and arranged our travel dates based on this reduced service schedule.
To be sure of getting bedrooms on the Southwest Chief for the dates we wanted, we purchased our tickets very early in January. Even this far in advance, the coveted Bedroom E’s (which offer the smoothest ride) had already been booked on both our east and west-bound trains, and we had to settle for two Bedroom D’s.
Our SWC tickets were purchased using a combination of cash and the e-voucher that we’d been issued when COVID-19 forced us to cancel our 2020 trip. Our Pacific Surfliner and Capitol Limited tickets were purchased using travel points. The PS round trip Business Class tickets cost us 7760 points, and the CL round trip Coach tickets cost us 6248 points.
It was only after our e-tickets had been received and printed out that we made our hotel and rental car reservations.
In April and May, we both received Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 inoculations making us, theoretically, 95% protected against contracting the virus while we were traveling.
The day before our departure, we received e-mails from Amtrak with links to the site where we were to go to submit our pre-trip check ins for the passages from San Diego to LA and from LA to Chicago. These took us less than a minute each to complete and we immediately received acknowledgements that we were checked in. (To be on the safe side, we printed out copies of these acknowledgements to keep with the printed copies of our e-tickets.)
This year’s trip would be the tenth time that we’ve traveled from San Diego to Ohio and back on Amtrak.
Part 1: San Diego, California to Toledo, Ohio
Stage 1: San Diego to Los Angeles (June 29)
Our rail adventure officially got underway with our arrival at the Santa Fe Depot in downtown San Diego. (We consider the Santa Fe Depot to be our “home station,” since all our rail trips begin and end there.)
When we arrived, the station was not particularly crowded. Most of the people we saw were wearing masks, but a few weren’t. The Depot’s security consisted of a single, unarmed contract security guard.
When we went to check our one large suitcase through to Toledo, we learned that the Santa Fe Depot is no longer handling baggage. Instead, we were told that we would have to take our large suitcase along with us on the Pacific Surfliner and then check it in Los Angeles.
In the past, PS passengers would queue up outside in two lines: one for Business Class and one for Coach. This year, only Business Class passengers were allowed to queue up outside. Coach passengers had to wait inside the Depot.
Since the earlier you get into line, the closer you are to the front, we got into line almost an hour before our train was due to depart. That early, the platform was deserted, and we ended up being the first ones in line.
As it got closer to the time when southbound Pacific Surfliner No. 564 was due to arrive, an Amtrak agent appeared to open the heavy metal gate which keeps waiting passengers from wandering out onto the trolley tracks which must be crossed in order to get to where the trains load and unload.
A little over three weeks before we were scheduled to depart, we’d received an e-mail from Amtrak advising us that the Santa Fe Depot would be testing “zone boarding” for our Pacific Surfliner train #777, and that we would be receiving a new e-ticket that had our assigned zone number. When the new e-ticket arrived, it indicated that we had been assigned to Zone 1. When we informed the Amtrak agent that we were in Zone 1, she told us that “zone boarding” didn’t apply to Business Class passengers.
Pacific Surfliner No. 564 arrived at 11:16 a.m. Once all of its passengers were unloaded, it became No. 777 (Triple 7) for the trip north.
Incidentally, “Triple 7” is also the designation of the runaway freight train that Denzel Washington and Chris Pine attempt to stop in the movie Unstoppable. (Perhaps the scriptwriter came up with this designation from having ridden on a #777 Pacific Surfliner.)
Boarding for Business Class started at about 11:49 a.m.
When we boarded, the conductor told us to stow our big suitcase on a downstairs luggage rack as “luggage on the floor will be removed from the train.” By 12:00 noon, we were settled in our seats, our smaller carry-on items were in the overhead rack, and our little Uniden SC230 scanner was powered up and tuned to the channel that Triple 7’s crew was using. We’d also gotten out the annotated route map that we’d assembled using pages copied from Steam Powered Video’s Comprehensive Railroad Atlas of North America and which shows the entire route that we’d be following from San Diego to Toledo.
We departed on time at 12:05 p. m. Shortly afterwards the scanner reported “Triple 7 high balled and running.”
Once we were underway, and after sanitizing our fold-down trays, we got out the brown bag lunches that we’d packed for on the train. Shortly afterwards, an attendant came by passing out Business Class complementary snack packs containing hummus, cheese spread, almonds, brownie crisps, crackers, a beef stick, and dried apples. These we saved in case we wouldn’t be able to grab a bite to eat in Chicago before having to board the Capitol Limited. (A wise choice as it turned out.)
We got our first good view the ocean 33 minutes after departing from downtown San Diego.
Although most of San Diego County was experiencing a heat wave (it was sunny and almost 90 degrees when we’d left home that morning), along the coast it was overcast with temperatures in the low ‘70’s. Even though it was a weekday, the beaches and campgrounds were fairly well crowded.
Without slowing down, we went through the upscale beach community of Del Mar, passed the Del Mar fairgrounds & racetrack, and passed a control point identified on our railroad atlas map as “Crosby.” This designation was undoubtedly a nod to actor/singer Bing Crosby who’d lived in nearby Rancho Santa Fe and who’d been closely involved in planning and building the Del Mar Racetrack back in 1937.
By the time we departed from the Solana Beach station, our Business Class coach was almost full. As far as we could tell, everyone was masked as per Amtrak requirements.
As we were going by the Self-Realization Fellowship Temple in Encinitas, the engineer radioed the dispatcher, “Clear Swami.” (The Self-Realization Fellowship was founded in 1920 by Paramahansa Yogananda to disseminate the universal teachings of Kriya Yoga.)
At 1:18 p.m. just north of Oceanside, a trackside Radio Alarm Detector (RAD) reported that we were traveling at 88 miles per hour, that our train had 28 axles, and that there were no defects.
About a mile south of the San Clemente Pier, we saw a beached sailboat laying on its side in the sand, surrounded by law enforcement personnel.
As we got closer to Los Angeles, a few feeble rays of sunshine began to appear through the murk.
At 2:46 p.m., the scanner picked up the automated voice message from the RAD at milepost 144.45, which is about 10 minutes out from Los Angeles Union Station. Shortly afterwards, we crossed the Los Angeles River, made a sharp turn to the right, and began paralleling the concrete channel that keeps the river running on a straight course. (In addition to being a popular movie location, this channel often figures in the detective novels of Robert Crais and Michael Connelly, two of our favorite authors.)
After passing under the 1st Street Bridge, we looked off to our left to see if we could determine the approximate location where the Santa Fe’s Moorish-style La Grande Station had once stood. Prior to the opening of Los Angeles Union Station in 1939 it was the western terminal for such famous Santa Fe trains as the Chief and the Super Chief.
We arrived at Los Angeles Union Station at 2:56, only 5 minutes behind schedule.
