wayman
Engineer
First part, written 7:32 AM on the 24th:
I'm lounging in the plush Club Acela at 30th St Station awaiting the 8:16 departure of the Cardinal. Then I'll have a nice civilized breakfast in the dining car and perhaps retire to my room and nap on the upper berth until lunchtime...
But as nice as all that is, little can compare with the grand decorations:
Douglas Adams wrote "It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the phrase, 'as pretty as an airport.' Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort."
Train stations, quite the opposite.
Second part, written 10:33 AM on the 25th:
Home is where the heart is.
Home is where the hearth is.
Home is where the coffee mugs say Norfolk Southern.
The sleeper for the Cardinal was bad-ordered at Sunnyside, so the train was 2:45 late out of NYP after a spare sleeper was substituted and the train re-checked, and 2:40 late at PHL. By Charlottesville we were only 2 hours late []. Pretty damn good compared to everyone else's holiday travel, it sounds like. (Not that Amtrak was immune from weather this week, not by far! But everything ran very smoothly for me.)
I had roomette 8 in "River View", and my car attendant was Charles, likeable but not all that chatty.
The diner-lite was superb. Unfortunately, the late boarding meant I missed breakfast, but I had a great meal of a turkey, cranberry, and walnut sandwich followed by cheesecake, accompanied by a half-bottle of chardonnay. There were surprisingly few diners at first-call for lunch, just myself and one other couple (school administrators in northern New Jersey, who will spend Christmas lunch in Chicago before departing that afternoon on the Southwest Chief for Flagstaff, a trip to the Grand Canyon, and back). It's hard to avoid talking about nothing but politics the moment I let slip that I worked for Obama; the same happened with one of the lounge attendants at 30th St. It's just like the primary--everyone has advice for him that for some reason they feel they should tell me.
The lead service attendant in the diner was Michael, a wonderful tenor who sang as he served and also, I learned, is the longest-tenured dining car employee on Amtrak. We chatted at some length over my meal and I lingered over coffee for some while. He started with the Seaboard Coast Line, before A-Day, and then started with Amtrak working the Floridian (RIP, Miami to Chicago). Every few years he moves to a different crew base in order to explore the country. He's worked out of New York, Washington, Jacksonville, Chicago, New Orleans, Los Angeles... on nearly every train, with every type of dining car, through service cutbacks and restorations, through seven (soon eight) presidential administrations' varying concepts of what Amtrak should be. He has stories to tell, and he presently lives in South Philly (working out of New York), so perhaps I'll have a chance to hear some of them (having gotten his address).
We got to Charlottesville at 4:00 PM, I met my parents, and we were in Lynchburg for dinner, followed by the start of 24 Hours of A Christmas Story (hour fourteen and counting...). For those who want the abbreviated version, here it is.
Oh, and since we were just on the cusp of dinner by that point and I'd missed breakfast, Michael gave me an ice cream to take with me (signing a dinner meal ticket for just the ice cream with my sleeper number in exchange of course).
And that's how I made it from the big city to the small city:
I'm lounging in the plush Club Acela at 30th St Station awaiting the 8:16 departure of the Cardinal. Then I'll have a nice civilized breakfast in the dining car and perhaps retire to my room and nap on the upper berth until lunchtime...
But as nice as all that is, little can compare with the grand decorations:
Douglas Adams wrote "It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the phrase, 'as pretty as an airport.' Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort."
Train stations, quite the opposite.
Second part, written 10:33 AM on the 25th:
Home is where the heart is.
Home is where the hearth is.
Home is where the coffee mugs say Norfolk Southern.
The sleeper for the Cardinal was bad-ordered at Sunnyside, so the train was 2:45 late out of NYP after a spare sleeper was substituted and the train re-checked, and 2:40 late at PHL. By Charlottesville we were only 2 hours late []. Pretty damn good compared to everyone else's holiday travel, it sounds like. (Not that Amtrak was immune from weather this week, not by far! But everything ran very smoothly for me.)
I had roomette 8 in "River View", and my car attendant was Charles, likeable but not all that chatty.
The diner-lite was superb. Unfortunately, the late boarding meant I missed breakfast, but I had a great meal of a turkey, cranberry, and walnut sandwich followed by cheesecake, accompanied by a half-bottle of chardonnay. There were surprisingly few diners at first-call for lunch, just myself and one other couple (school administrators in northern New Jersey, who will spend Christmas lunch in Chicago before departing that afternoon on the Southwest Chief for Flagstaff, a trip to the Grand Canyon, and back). It's hard to avoid talking about nothing but politics the moment I let slip that I worked for Obama; the same happened with one of the lounge attendants at 30th St. It's just like the primary--everyone has advice for him that for some reason they feel they should tell me.
The lead service attendant in the diner was Michael, a wonderful tenor who sang as he served and also, I learned, is the longest-tenured dining car employee on Amtrak. We chatted at some length over my meal and I lingered over coffee for some while. He started with the Seaboard Coast Line, before A-Day, and then started with Amtrak working the Floridian (RIP, Miami to Chicago). Every few years he moves to a different crew base in order to explore the country. He's worked out of New York, Washington, Jacksonville, Chicago, New Orleans, Los Angeles... on nearly every train, with every type of dining car, through service cutbacks and restorations, through seven (soon eight) presidential administrations' varying concepts of what Amtrak should be. He has stories to tell, and he presently lives in South Philly (working out of New York), so perhaps I'll have a chance to hear some of them (having gotten his address).
We got to Charlottesville at 4:00 PM, I met my parents, and we were in Lynchburg for dinner, followed by the start of 24 Hours of A Christmas Story (hour fourteen and counting...). For those who want the abbreviated version, here it is.
Oh, and since we were just on the cusp of dinner by that point and I'd missed breakfast, Michael gave me an ice cream to take with me (signing a dinner meal ticket for just the ice cream with my sleeper number in exchange of course).
And that's how I made it from the big city to the small city:
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Have A Great X-Mas with your family!!! 
