tricia
Conductor
This was a trip shaped by soon-to-expire airline and Amtrak vouchers, as well as fixed-price (in points) AGR routing the LONG way around from Tucson to Georgia (via Chicago 
), due to track work south of Atlanta.
My husband and I flew to San Francisco for a very brief vacation. Our time there ended on Feb. 1 at Amtrak's Ferry Terminal bus station, to catch the bus connecting to the southbound Coast Starlight. That bus leaves early in the morning--but not too early to grab an excellent pre-breakfast snack at Acme Bread (opens at 6:20 AM) in the ferry marketplace right next door to Amtrak.
Bus delivered us uneventfully to Oakland's Jack London Sq station. The Coast Starlight was about half an hour late--we boarded shortly before 9:30 AM, and the dining car was still willing to serve us breakfast.
This was my husband's first overnight train trip, so I wanted it to be as comfortable as possible. Fortunately, the price of a roomette on the Oakland-to-LA, daytime, stretch of the Coast Starlight was low enough that, with three meals included for the two of us, it was a no-brainer to get one. Even more fortunately, our roomette was on the west side of the train, with a fabulous view of the ocean that afternoon. The train was very full--sleepers entirely so; not sure about coach.
The Coast Starlight arrived into LAX about 1/2 hour early, and no track number was yet posted for the Sunset Ltd, our next train. The waiting room at LAX was insanely crowded and very noisy--an unpleasant transition between two very pleasant roomette experiences.
Sunset Ltd left LA on time, at 10 PM, and arrived at Tucson on time, around 8:30 AM. The crabcake breakfast special on the train was fine--but of course a far cry from the glorious fresh dungeness crab we'd had in San Francisco.
After a couple of days in and around Tucson, my husband flew home from Phoenix, then I re-boarded the Sunset Ltd/Texas Eagle on Feb. 4, with a coach ticket to El Paso and a roomette from there on to Chicago. The sleeping-car attendant OK'd me stowing my luggage in the sleeper before boarding in coach.
A REALLY noisy, rude, and foul-mouthed group of family and friends was sitting a few rows behind my seat in the coach car. :angry: I wanted to read and do some writing, so after a few hours I moved up a car (with the car attendant's permission). Still, several members of that group kept going up and down the aisles through ALL the coach cars to the SSL and back, sometimes sitting down and gabbing en route. Loudly. There was only one child among them, BTW, and he was pretty quiet. If I'd had to ride all the way to Arkansas with that racket, I'd have lost my mind. Or killed someone. (Just kidding about that. I think. :blink: )
There were three coach cars behind the SSL and the dining car, none very full. The TX Eagle's coach car, at the very back of the train, was I think completely full--I talked with one coach passenger going all the way to Chicago who wanted to upgrade to a roomette (to get away from the noisy folks) and was told none were available. Two SL sleepers were at the front of the train, in front of the diner.
Somewhere in eastern NM, the conductor told me to move on back to my roomette, which I did.
In El Paso, a drug-sniffing dog and his handler boarded the train, starting with the last car on the train (our sleeper) and moving forward. By then, I'd got off the train to walk around a bit and see the station--when I returned, the dog was moving from our car to the next one forward. Apparently the dog had alerted to a bag in roomette 2 of my sleeper (or one of that room's occupants had tried to take the bag off the train--not clear exactly about this). As I re-boarded, the occupants of that roomette were denying ownership of the bag while two plainclothes officers were photographing their IDs and telling the two that they'd need to take the bag off the train. They asked me if I needed to get past them, and let me walk on by. There must not have been grounds to hold the two passengers, as they both continued on the train with us.
The re-shuffle of cars at San Antonio happened, and the TX Eagle part of the train left on time with two sleeping cars (one of them a transition sleeper), a Cross-Country Cafe, an SSL, and three coach cars.
Shortly before the engine-crew change at Ft. Worth, the departing conductor announced his goodbye, said he hoped to see us on future train trips, and added that "Friends don't let friends fly." We were still on time, even though we'd been stopped for a while not far from Fort Worth--the conductor made an announcement explaining that we were waiting for a freight train to pass and that BN&SF (NOT AMTRAK) owned the rails here and had final say on who goes when. He must have named BN&SF five or six times during that brief announcement.
They changed engines on the train at Ft. Worth--that and a wait for more freight traffic led to a departure nearly an hour late. We lost more time with freight traffic between Ft Worth and Dallas, and arrived in Dallas about 1 1/2 hours late.
But by the next morning, we were on time for our arrival in St. Louis, around 7:30 AM. And we stayed on time all the way to Chicago, arriving shortly before 2 PM.
By the time we got to Chicago, I must admit I was pretty tired of the Amtrak diner/CCC menu. For the money, I'm pretty sure Amtrak could provide food of MUCH better quality. Heck, I could do better than this just microwaving entrees from grocery store freezer shelves. The flat-iron steak on the TX Eagle was, for the money, frankly embarrassing--skimpy and sad. :blush:
In Chicago, I walked to and from the lake (or at least close enough to see it--snow on the ground made walking to the water not doable in the shoes I was wearing). Very pleasantly stimulating after so much continuous train time.
Something Amtrak might profitably pursue would be partnering with tourism boosters in cities (like Chicago) where many of its long-distance passengers have layovers, to come up with online or printed-brochure ideas for things to do and see not far from the station--and explicit directions on how to get there, on foot or by other transport. (While they're at it, they certainly ought to do a much better job providing info on how to connect to Amtrak via airports, local public transport, long-term and short-term parking at/near Amtrak stations, etc. But I digress. :mellow: )
I was ready to board the Capitol Ltd after a few hours of walking around. We left Chicago on time, at 6:10 PM. I was sorry, though, to find that the dining car menu was EXACTLY the same as it was on the Sunset Ltd/TX Eagle. :wacko:
A few more notes on food:
---a cold sandwich option at lunch would be a big plus, especially on routes where the diner serves an early lunch so it can close well before its final stop
---the vegetables served at dinner are just awful, an offense to anyone who likes vegetables. Ditto the various "pilafs" which are NOT helped at all by being soaked in water from the soggy veggies.
---the limits of an onboard kitchen are NOT a sufficient excuse for the quality of the food. I've eaten MUCH better meals thrown together by cooks working with whatever food shows up in donation boxes at campsites for large gatherings far from any real kitchen.
---quality of food could easily be improved without spending more money. And for what they're charging for these meals, passengers deserve a better deal.
Not related to food, but another Amtrak service shortcoming: PLEASE put shampoo in the showers. Also, it works MUCH better when the bag for dirty towels is kept in the hall rather than in the already very tight shower room. Ditto keeping a stack of clean towels on the luggage rack rather than in the shower room. The shampoo would cost very little. (Almost nothing if they put it in a bulk dispenser on the shower wall.) Re-locating the towels would cost nothing.
Another note on service: All of the service personnel on the trains so far described were courteous and competent. Tony on the TX Eagle especially stood out, in a very quiet way--constantly, unobtrusively busy making his sleeping cars (a full sleeper plus the transdorm) tidy, clean, and convenient for his "guests" as he called us, anticipating rather than waiting to be asked to do things.
That evening, the Capitol Ltd got stuck behind a disabled freight train. By the time we got to Pittsburgh, we were about an hour late. But I'm not going to complain about that because it gave us daytime views of some really nice woods/streams/hills scenery that we otherwise would have missed in darkness. I was surprised by how lovely the scenery was along the route the Cap follows through Pennsylvania. If you think you know the state from the (seemingly endless) car route on the turnpike, think again.
Digressing once again: I don't think I've ever seen anyone on this forum describe it this way, but I really got a lot out of treating my four-nights-on-trains as a sort of retreat. For the first time in YEARS I took a week off from the internet. I brought along different things to read, and some reference papers so I could do some big-picture thinking and writing and planning--the sort of thing that can sit on your to-do list for months before you find a a big enough block of undisturbed time to accomplish it. My time on the train was very restorative and productive for me. I look forward to doing something like this again in the future, perhaps regularly.
The Cap arrived in DC on time, which allowed me a few hours to visit the National Gallery and a couple of Smithsonian buildings. (Next time, I'd take the metro from Union Station to the Mall instead of doing it all on foot.)
My next and final train of this trip, the Crescent, left DC on time. I was immensely relieved to find a somewhat different dining car menu here (after the SAME DANG MENU all the way from San Francisco to DC :blink: :wacko: ). And glorioski there were even lamb shanks for dinner! :wub:
However, although the menu improved, my luck with onboard service finally ran out. The dining car service was almost unbelievably slow and inept--at dinner and then again at b'fast and lunch the next day.
While I was at dinner, the train stopped--and stayed stopped for a LONG time. When I returned to my roomette from dinner, the conductor was standing at the end of the car, talking with the SCA, so I walked down and asked him what was going on. He said "police activity" and looked grim. Later I learned that the train had hit and killed a pedestrian. When something like that happens, it's got to be awfully hard on the crew.
When we finally got to Toccoa, my final stop, the train was more than eight hours late--but I'm not going to complain about that. Aside from the Crescent, Amtrak had taken me on five separate trains all across the country (and then some! ), on time at each place I disembarked until that final leg, the delay for which was in no way Amtrak's fault.
Altogether, I had an excellent trip and look forward to more in the future.
Finally: Thanks to all of you on this forum for providing so much useful, or just plain interesting information. You've enriched my travels extensively. :hi:
), due to track work south of Atlanta.My husband and I flew to San Francisco for a very brief vacation. Our time there ended on Feb. 1 at Amtrak's Ferry Terminal bus station, to catch the bus connecting to the southbound Coast Starlight. That bus leaves early in the morning--but not too early to grab an excellent pre-breakfast snack at Acme Bread (opens at 6:20 AM) in the ferry marketplace right next door to Amtrak.
Bus delivered us uneventfully to Oakland's Jack London Sq station. The Coast Starlight was about half an hour late--we boarded shortly before 9:30 AM, and the dining car was still willing to serve us breakfast.
This was my husband's first overnight train trip, so I wanted it to be as comfortable as possible. Fortunately, the price of a roomette on the Oakland-to-LA, daytime, stretch of the Coast Starlight was low enough that, with three meals included for the two of us, it was a no-brainer to get one. Even more fortunately, our roomette was on the west side of the train, with a fabulous view of the ocean that afternoon. The train was very full--sleepers entirely so; not sure about coach.
The Coast Starlight arrived into LAX about 1/2 hour early, and no track number was yet posted for the Sunset Ltd, our next train. The waiting room at LAX was insanely crowded and very noisy--an unpleasant transition between two very pleasant roomette experiences.
Sunset Ltd left LA on time, at 10 PM, and arrived at Tucson on time, around 8:30 AM. The crabcake breakfast special on the train was fine--but of course a far cry from the glorious fresh dungeness crab we'd had in San Francisco.
After a couple of days in and around Tucson, my husband flew home from Phoenix, then I re-boarded the Sunset Ltd/Texas Eagle on Feb. 4, with a coach ticket to El Paso and a roomette from there on to Chicago. The sleeping-car attendant OK'd me stowing my luggage in the sleeper before boarding in coach.
A REALLY noisy, rude, and foul-mouthed group of family and friends was sitting a few rows behind my seat in the coach car. :angry: I wanted to read and do some writing, so after a few hours I moved up a car (with the car attendant's permission). Still, several members of that group kept going up and down the aisles through ALL the coach cars to the SSL and back, sometimes sitting down and gabbing en route. Loudly. There was only one child among them, BTW, and he was pretty quiet. If I'd had to ride all the way to Arkansas with that racket, I'd have lost my mind. Or killed someone. (Just kidding about that. I think. :blink: )
There were three coach cars behind the SSL and the dining car, none very full. The TX Eagle's coach car, at the very back of the train, was I think completely full--I talked with one coach passenger going all the way to Chicago who wanted to upgrade to a roomette (to get away from the noisy folks) and was told none were available. Two SL sleepers were at the front of the train, in front of the diner.
Somewhere in eastern NM, the conductor told me to move on back to my roomette, which I did.
In El Paso, a drug-sniffing dog and his handler boarded the train, starting with the last car on the train (our sleeper) and moving forward. By then, I'd got off the train to walk around a bit and see the station--when I returned, the dog was moving from our car to the next one forward. Apparently the dog had alerted to a bag in roomette 2 of my sleeper (or one of that room's occupants had tried to take the bag off the train--not clear exactly about this). As I re-boarded, the occupants of that roomette were denying ownership of the bag while two plainclothes officers were photographing their IDs and telling the two that they'd need to take the bag off the train. They asked me if I needed to get past them, and let me walk on by. There must not have been grounds to hold the two passengers, as they both continued on the train with us.
The re-shuffle of cars at San Antonio happened, and the TX Eagle part of the train left on time with two sleeping cars (one of them a transition sleeper), a Cross-Country Cafe, an SSL, and three coach cars.
Shortly before the engine-crew change at Ft. Worth, the departing conductor announced his goodbye, said he hoped to see us on future train trips, and added that "Friends don't let friends fly." We were still on time, even though we'd been stopped for a while not far from Fort Worth--the conductor made an announcement explaining that we were waiting for a freight train to pass and that BN&SF (NOT AMTRAK) owned the rails here and had final say on who goes when. He must have named BN&SF five or six times during that brief announcement.
They changed engines on the train at Ft. Worth--that and a wait for more freight traffic led to a departure nearly an hour late. We lost more time with freight traffic between Ft Worth and Dallas, and arrived in Dallas about 1 1/2 hours late.
But by the next morning, we were on time for our arrival in St. Louis, around 7:30 AM. And we stayed on time all the way to Chicago, arriving shortly before 2 PM.
By the time we got to Chicago, I must admit I was pretty tired of the Amtrak diner/CCC menu. For the money, I'm pretty sure Amtrak could provide food of MUCH better quality. Heck, I could do better than this just microwaving entrees from grocery store freezer shelves. The flat-iron steak on the TX Eagle was, for the money, frankly embarrassing--skimpy and sad. :blush:
In Chicago, I walked to and from the lake (or at least close enough to see it--snow on the ground made walking to the water not doable in the shoes I was wearing). Very pleasantly stimulating after so much continuous train time.
Something Amtrak might profitably pursue would be partnering with tourism boosters in cities (like Chicago) where many of its long-distance passengers have layovers, to come up with online or printed-brochure ideas for things to do and see not far from the station--and explicit directions on how to get there, on foot or by other transport. (While they're at it, they certainly ought to do a much better job providing info on how to connect to Amtrak via airports, local public transport, long-term and short-term parking at/near Amtrak stations, etc. But I digress. :mellow: )
I was ready to board the Capitol Ltd after a few hours of walking around. We left Chicago on time, at 6:10 PM. I was sorry, though, to find that the dining car menu was EXACTLY the same as it was on the Sunset Ltd/TX Eagle. :wacko:
A few more notes on food:
---a cold sandwich option at lunch would be a big plus, especially on routes where the diner serves an early lunch so it can close well before its final stop
---the vegetables served at dinner are just awful, an offense to anyone who likes vegetables. Ditto the various "pilafs" which are NOT helped at all by being soaked in water from the soggy veggies.
---the limits of an onboard kitchen are NOT a sufficient excuse for the quality of the food. I've eaten MUCH better meals thrown together by cooks working with whatever food shows up in donation boxes at campsites for large gatherings far from any real kitchen.
---quality of food could easily be improved without spending more money. And for what they're charging for these meals, passengers deserve a better deal.
Not related to food, but another Amtrak service shortcoming: PLEASE put shampoo in the showers. Also, it works MUCH better when the bag for dirty towels is kept in the hall rather than in the already very tight shower room. Ditto keeping a stack of clean towels on the luggage rack rather than in the shower room. The shampoo would cost very little. (Almost nothing if they put it in a bulk dispenser on the shower wall.) Re-locating the towels would cost nothing.
Another note on service: All of the service personnel on the trains so far described were courteous and competent. Tony on the TX Eagle especially stood out, in a very quiet way--constantly, unobtrusively busy making his sleeping cars (a full sleeper plus the transdorm) tidy, clean, and convenient for his "guests" as he called us, anticipating rather than waiting to be asked to do things.
That evening, the Capitol Ltd got stuck behind a disabled freight train. By the time we got to Pittsburgh, we were about an hour late. But I'm not going to complain about that because it gave us daytime views of some really nice woods/streams/hills scenery that we otherwise would have missed in darkness. I was surprised by how lovely the scenery was along the route the Cap follows through Pennsylvania. If you think you know the state from the (seemingly endless) car route on the turnpike, think again.
Digressing once again: I don't think I've ever seen anyone on this forum describe it this way, but I really got a lot out of treating my four-nights-on-trains as a sort of retreat. For the first time in YEARS I took a week off from the internet. I brought along different things to read, and some reference papers so I could do some big-picture thinking and writing and planning--the sort of thing that can sit on your to-do list for months before you find a a big enough block of undisturbed time to accomplish it. My time on the train was very restorative and productive for me. I look forward to doing something like this again in the future, perhaps regularly.
The Cap arrived in DC on time, which allowed me a few hours to visit the National Gallery and a couple of Smithsonian buildings. (Next time, I'd take the metro from Union Station to the Mall instead of doing it all on foot.)
My next and final train of this trip, the Crescent, left DC on time. I was immensely relieved to find a somewhat different dining car menu here (after the SAME DANG MENU all the way from San Francisco to DC :blink: :wacko: ). And glorioski there were even lamb shanks for dinner! :wub:
However, although the menu improved, my luck with onboard service finally ran out. The dining car service was almost unbelievably slow and inept--at dinner and then again at b'fast and lunch the next day.
While I was at dinner, the train stopped--and stayed stopped for a LONG time. When I returned to my roomette from dinner, the conductor was standing at the end of the car, talking with the SCA, so I walked down and asked him what was going on. He said "police activity" and looked grim. Later I learned that the train had hit and killed a pedestrian. When something like that happens, it's got to be awfully hard on the crew.
When we finally got to Toccoa, my final stop, the train was more than eight hours late--but I'm not going to complain about that. Aside from the Crescent, Amtrak had taken me on five separate trains all across the country (and then some!
), on time at each place I disembarked until that final leg, the delay for which was in no way Amtrak's fault.Altogether, I had an excellent trip and look forward to more in the future.
Finally: Thanks to all of you on this forum for providing so much useful, or just plain interesting information. You've enriched my travels extensively. :hi:
