The final chapter! While waiting in Portland's lounge, I was engaged in a conversation with a man who was on his way to Disneyland with his family. The Starlight was about 20 minutes late into Portland, and we boarded the train. Our car attendant was Julio Cesar, who turned out to be a very good and attentive attendant. Consist of the Starlight:
3 engines
baggage
transdorm
3 sleepers
Pacific Parlour car (I don't know if this is standard practice but it was in reality a CCC with a fancy name)
diner
lounge
4 coaches
We had no more gotten out of the station and were underway before we came to a stop to wait for the northbound Starlight to pass. No need for busing eastbound EM passengers from Klamath Falls to Pasco this day. Julio offered us a bottle of champagne as on the EB and again I took him up on his offer. And it was still ghastly! :blink: Our sleeper had a different design than any I'd ever been on. No crappy narrow closet with doors that rattle incessantly! Instead it was just an open space from ceiling to floor. And the toilets were the kind that flush when the lid goes down. No push-button flush.
As we traveled on our way south through the Oregon countryside, I was struck by how brown and dead some of the lawns looked. We passed by a cemetery on the outskirts of Salem and the grass looked as lifeless as those in the cemetery. I've never seen it so brown there.
Dinner came just as we were pulling about 15 minutes late into Eugene. James, a rather bland soul, was our dining car steward. I stayed with the seafood special, which was mahi-mahi. And it was excellent. Seated with us was a young engaged couple from Fresno who was travelling back home after visiting relatives in Lewiston, ID, near my home. They had traveled to and from Seattle by train and from Seattle to Lewiston and back by bus. The young woman remembered my hometown (CFX) as it is a Thruway stop and assured me the town was still standing. Not that I was worried; it has stood for about 130 years. I really didn't think my having been away from it for a week, at that point, was going to affect anything. But it was nice of her to say so. :lol:
After dinner it was time to go back and enjoy the views of the Oregon Cascades. By now it was dark, rainy, and gloomy, and clouds surrounded the tops of the hills. By 7PM I was dozing on and off, mostly on, and missed a lot of the scenery. Around this time, the toilets in our car, at least, conked out. I heard Julio tell someone that it was due to "problems with the high elevation". Considering they also conked out near Los Angeles, at sea level, I was left wondering at which altitude they did work. And why they couldn't work no matter what altitude. At any rate, I finally went to bed just as the train pulled out of Klamath Falls.
I woke up just before Sacramento, and took advantage of the lengthy stop there by wandering around outside. It looked like nothing had changed there since I had been there in March. Imagine that! :lol: I realized there is some hazard about wearing an Amtrak hat: A couple of passengers asked me for assistance, thinking I was Amtrak personnel. I guessed they missed the part about my having a digital camera in one hand and a camcorder around my neck. :lol: At any rate, I was able to direct one passenger to the terminal as I'd been there previously.
Right after we were underway from Sacramento we went to the dining car for breakfast. The bathrooms were restored to working order by now. Seated with us this time was a couple from Eugene who was on their way to San Jose for a visit with the woman's son, who had recently returned from Afghanistan and was recently discharged from the Marines and was now setting up an apartment in Oakland and was going to attend college in San Francisco. During breakfast, in which I had the old standby of veggie-filled omellette, croissant, hash browns, and milk, the woman's son called and it was discovered that Emeryville was much closer to where he lived so the couple decided to detrain there. Another phone call shortly afterward from him made his stepdad happy: The couple had given him a huge leather sectional sofa that had been the man's for years in his bachelor days. It was too big for his stepson's apartment, so the couple was going to take it back. That settled how they were going to get back to Eugene: by U-Haul truck. :lol: The man was very happy to get his sofa back. Now, you just don't hear those kind of stories from airline passengers! :lol: :lol:
After breakfast, my uncle went to the PPC aka CCC while I showered and went back to our room to read my Joe DiMaggio biography I'd picked up at Powell's and watch the countryside go by. At Salinas, a young mother with her son, age 3 or so, came aboard and got into the sleeper across the hall from me. Unfortunately. The kid was a jabberjaw, which on its face is nothing so out of the ordinary, but his voice was sharp, and it's constant rat-a-tat-tat was like so many knives running right through me. Fortunately it wasn't going to be too much longer before my lunch reservation so I could get away from him. My uncle had the right idea: he had lunch in the PPC aka CCC. I would have but didn't like the menu choice. At lunch, I had the Angus burger, and three of the best companions at lunch I'd ever had on a train: Me, myself, and I. :lol: It was a light lunch crowd and I had a table to myself. When I had passed through the PPC on my way to the diner, I was surprised to see that hardly anyone was using it. I wanted to make sure I got a good seat for the approach over the S curves to San Luis Obispo and for viewing the ocean, so I inhaled lunch, ran back to the room, grabbed my camera equipment, rail guides, and other assorted paraphanelia, and grabbed a prime table in the PPC. Phew! Safe from Jabberjaws!
I enjoyed the view from the PPC aka CCC, and was continued to be amazed at how there wasn't much traffic in it at all. Veronica was the car attendent here, and she had the most bubbly, upbeat personality I'd encountered on the trip so far. I was enjoying the view when disaster struck: Jabberjaws and his mom paused in the PPC (across from me! :angry: ) before their lunch reservation. And Junior was no less talkative (and annoying). I was beginning to wonder what horrible sin I was being punished for when they got up and went into the diner for lunch (and went back to their room afterward, thank God!).
Not only did I have prime seating for the upcoming view of the ocean, but the tables across from me were empty, too, so I had prime viewing for the S curves and the approach to San Luis Obispo which is better viewed on the other side of the train. I declined to attend the wine tasting event, and there was such a small crowd for it that it was held in the other half of the PPC aka CCC while the rest of us, what few there was, were left to enjoy the view. I had seen the approach to San Luis Obispo before, from video of a previous trip my uncle and aunt had taken, and it was just as awesome in person as it was on tape.
We had over an hour to spare at San Luis Obispo so I got out and fully enjoyed the long stop. Once back aboard, I grabbed a prime table for viewing the ocean. And once in view, it was no less spectacular as well. Out of San Luis Obispo, a lot of the ocean view is only accessible by train, as part of it runs through Vandenburg Air Force base and part of it runs through a couple of cattle ranches. So we got to see things that only Air Force personnel and cows see. :lol:
A little over an hour out of San Luis Obispo, we came to a stop in the middle of nowhere. An announcement came that the engineer had fallen ill and a replacement was meeting us here. He must have gotten ill almost immediately after beginning his portion of the trip and given plenty of advance warning about this because it was hardly 15 minutes before a replacement engineer showed up and we were on our way. For a few yards, anyway, because we came to another stop, where it was announced that this time we had to wait for a passing freight. I believe this was about the only freight I remember seeing the whole length of the Coast Starlight segment of the voyage. At any rate, the two stops amounted to about half an hour, the longest delay of the entire week-long extravaganza.
I decided to stay put in the PPC/CCC to enjoy the view of the ocean and also to make sure I didn't have to be anywhere near Jabberjaws. The meal I had there was excellent: Chicken fillets with some kind of sauce. I wished that ALL long-distance trains could have a PPC or something similar, though I know it would mean many more cars would have to be refurbished/rebuilt/manufactured. It was really traveling in style! As we departed Santa Barbara and rejoined the coast, the sun was beginning to set and that view was gorgeous as well. I mean, the view of Holdredge, Nebraska is NOTHING compared to sunset over the Pacific. :lol: My uncle and I continued to stay in the PPC/CCC until about the Van Nuys stop, where we made our way back to the room. Jabberjaws was still at it, even more loud and even more annoying, as if that was possible. He and his mom were going to transfer to another train with their eventual destination being San Diego. I said a silent prayer for anyone that was going to be seated near him on that train, gritted my teeth, and giving another silent prayer that my last nerve wouldn't shatter before Los Angeles.
Finally! Sweet relief for my poor ears! We got into LA Union Station right on time, and made our way to the Metro Plaza Hotel. I chose this one because of it's easy accessibility to Union Station and having never been there (well, to the hotel, anyway) I didn't realize just how easy it was: For those that have never been there, the sign on the hotel is visible as you exit the front doors of Union Station. We walked over to the hotel, and discovered upon entering the room that instead of two beds, like I stressed over and over, we had a room with one bed. :angry: And it felt as if the mattress was made out of concrete with steel rebar. I would have been just as comfortable sleeping on the floor. And the first time we used the toilet, it plugged up. Ah, well, I could have asked for a room with two beds and with assistance uplugging the toilet, but I'd rather bitch about it than solve the problem. :lol: :lol: Despite all that, I'd gladly choose the Metro Plaza if (I should say when) I travel to and from LA Union Station again.
After a mediocre to poor continental breakfast, we checked out and strolled down to the shops on Olvera Street for a bit of browsing before it was time to head to Union Station to catch the bus to LAX, where I was flying back to Spokane and my uncle into Bloomington, IL. At LAX, I had one last reminder why I prefer Amtrak to flying, though it's not always practical for me to travel exclusively by Amtrak: As we were in line, waiting to board our flight, the gate attendant announced that for those of us getting off in Spokane ( the flight stopped in Oakland first), there was a weather advisory in Spokane and that left the possibility of our flight delayed in Oakland or cancelled altogether. An announcement of that type, with such short notice, wouldn't happen on Amtrak!
Turns out I never head another word about it after we were airborne and in fact my mom, who picked me up at the airport, didn't know what the heck could have caused an announcement like that: It had been a beautiful day all day.
For me, what a trip! The trip of a lifetime! I know some would sneer at that, saying I never really "experienced" any of the 23 states I passed through, but whatever. You experience them your way, I experience them mine. Overall, the service was excellent, the Amtrak personnel themselves were great, if not always particularly outgoing and personable, and other than the toilets going out on the Coast Starlight for several hours, no equipment failures of any kind. All trains but one, the Coast Starlight, were early, and the Starlight was right on time. Just in seeing small samples of places I'd always heard about and never seen before will give me a lifetime of memories. And so will 17 hours of videotape and about 270 pictures. :lol: Speaking of which, I will begin to post those next week. I promise!
Now I can sit back, enjoy other's tales about their Amtrak trips, and dream up new Amtrak trips in the future. Perhaps a Sunset Limited-Texas Eagle trip could be in the works next; those are the only two long-distance trains west of the Mississippi I haven't traveled on yet.
One last note, which I found to be funny and ironic: At home Tuesday night, the railroad crossing signals that are about 50 feet from my front door activated. No trains have run on this section of the railroad for three years, since a trestle east of me burned. I was listening to my scanner, and after spending half an hour chasing their tails, the dispatcher and the city cop finally got ahold of the technician who could come to fix the problem. Problem is, he lived in Spokane--an hour's drive away. So for an hour and a half, I got to listen to the incessant clangclangclangclangclang of the railroad crossing signal bells. I guess the Fates decided I hadn't quite gotten my fill of all things railroad and sent me more!!! :lol: :lol: :lol:
Until next time........
3 engines
baggage
transdorm
3 sleepers
Pacific Parlour car (I don't know if this is standard practice but it was in reality a CCC with a fancy name)
diner
lounge
4 coaches
We had no more gotten out of the station and were underway before we came to a stop to wait for the northbound Starlight to pass. No need for busing eastbound EM passengers from Klamath Falls to Pasco this day. Julio offered us a bottle of champagne as on the EB and again I took him up on his offer. And it was still ghastly! :blink: Our sleeper had a different design than any I'd ever been on. No crappy narrow closet with doors that rattle incessantly! Instead it was just an open space from ceiling to floor. And the toilets were the kind that flush when the lid goes down. No push-button flush.
As we traveled on our way south through the Oregon countryside, I was struck by how brown and dead some of the lawns looked. We passed by a cemetery on the outskirts of Salem and the grass looked as lifeless as those in the cemetery. I've never seen it so brown there.
Dinner came just as we were pulling about 15 minutes late into Eugene. James, a rather bland soul, was our dining car steward. I stayed with the seafood special, which was mahi-mahi. And it was excellent. Seated with us was a young engaged couple from Fresno who was travelling back home after visiting relatives in Lewiston, ID, near my home. They had traveled to and from Seattle by train and from Seattle to Lewiston and back by bus. The young woman remembered my hometown (CFX) as it is a Thruway stop and assured me the town was still standing. Not that I was worried; it has stood for about 130 years. I really didn't think my having been away from it for a week, at that point, was going to affect anything. But it was nice of her to say so. :lol:
After dinner it was time to go back and enjoy the views of the Oregon Cascades. By now it was dark, rainy, and gloomy, and clouds surrounded the tops of the hills. By 7PM I was dozing on and off, mostly on, and missed a lot of the scenery. Around this time, the toilets in our car, at least, conked out. I heard Julio tell someone that it was due to "problems with the high elevation". Considering they also conked out near Los Angeles, at sea level, I was left wondering at which altitude they did work. And why they couldn't work no matter what altitude. At any rate, I finally went to bed just as the train pulled out of Klamath Falls.
I woke up just before Sacramento, and took advantage of the lengthy stop there by wandering around outside. It looked like nothing had changed there since I had been there in March. Imagine that! :lol: I realized there is some hazard about wearing an Amtrak hat: A couple of passengers asked me for assistance, thinking I was Amtrak personnel. I guessed they missed the part about my having a digital camera in one hand and a camcorder around my neck. :lol: At any rate, I was able to direct one passenger to the terminal as I'd been there previously.
Right after we were underway from Sacramento we went to the dining car for breakfast. The bathrooms were restored to working order by now. Seated with us this time was a couple from Eugene who was on their way to San Jose for a visit with the woman's son, who had recently returned from Afghanistan and was recently discharged from the Marines and was now setting up an apartment in Oakland and was going to attend college in San Francisco. During breakfast, in which I had the old standby of veggie-filled omellette, croissant, hash browns, and milk, the woman's son called and it was discovered that Emeryville was much closer to where he lived so the couple decided to detrain there. Another phone call shortly afterward from him made his stepdad happy: The couple had given him a huge leather sectional sofa that had been the man's for years in his bachelor days. It was too big for his stepson's apartment, so the couple was going to take it back. That settled how they were going to get back to Eugene: by U-Haul truck. :lol: The man was very happy to get his sofa back. Now, you just don't hear those kind of stories from airline passengers! :lol: :lol:
After breakfast, my uncle went to the PPC aka CCC while I showered and went back to our room to read my Joe DiMaggio biography I'd picked up at Powell's and watch the countryside go by. At Salinas, a young mother with her son, age 3 or so, came aboard and got into the sleeper across the hall from me. Unfortunately. The kid was a jabberjaw, which on its face is nothing so out of the ordinary, but his voice was sharp, and it's constant rat-a-tat-tat was like so many knives running right through me. Fortunately it wasn't going to be too much longer before my lunch reservation so I could get away from him. My uncle had the right idea: he had lunch in the PPC aka CCC. I would have but didn't like the menu choice. At lunch, I had the Angus burger, and three of the best companions at lunch I'd ever had on a train: Me, myself, and I. :lol: It was a light lunch crowd and I had a table to myself. When I had passed through the PPC on my way to the diner, I was surprised to see that hardly anyone was using it. I wanted to make sure I got a good seat for the approach over the S curves to San Luis Obispo and for viewing the ocean, so I inhaled lunch, ran back to the room, grabbed my camera equipment, rail guides, and other assorted paraphanelia, and grabbed a prime table in the PPC. Phew! Safe from Jabberjaws!
I enjoyed the view from the PPC aka CCC, and was continued to be amazed at how there wasn't much traffic in it at all. Veronica was the car attendent here, and she had the most bubbly, upbeat personality I'd encountered on the trip so far. I was enjoying the view when disaster struck: Jabberjaws and his mom paused in the PPC (across from me! :angry: ) before their lunch reservation. And Junior was no less talkative (and annoying). I was beginning to wonder what horrible sin I was being punished for when they got up and went into the diner for lunch (and went back to their room afterward, thank God!).
Not only did I have prime seating for the upcoming view of the ocean, but the tables across from me were empty, too, so I had prime viewing for the S curves and the approach to San Luis Obispo which is better viewed on the other side of the train. I declined to attend the wine tasting event, and there was such a small crowd for it that it was held in the other half of the PPC aka CCC while the rest of us, what few there was, were left to enjoy the view. I had seen the approach to San Luis Obispo before, from video of a previous trip my uncle and aunt had taken, and it was just as awesome in person as it was on tape.
We had over an hour to spare at San Luis Obispo so I got out and fully enjoyed the long stop. Once back aboard, I grabbed a prime table for viewing the ocean. And once in view, it was no less spectacular as well. Out of San Luis Obispo, a lot of the ocean view is only accessible by train, as part of it runs through Vandenburg Air Force base and part of it runs through a couple of cattle ranches. So we got to see things that only Air Force personnel and cows see. :lol:
A little over an hour out of San Luis Obispo, we came to a stop in the middle of nowhere. An announcement came that the engineer had fallen ill and a replacement was meeting us here. He must have gotten ill almost immediately after beginning his portion of the trip and given plenty of advance warning about this because it was hardly 15 minutes before a replacement engineer showed up and we were on our way. For a few yards, anyway, because we came to another stop, where it was announced that this time we had to wait for a passing freight. I believe this was about the only freight I remember seeing the whole length of the Coast Starlight segment of the voyage. At any rate, the two stops amounted to about half an hour, the longest delay of the entire week-long extravaganza.
I decided to stay put in the PPC/CCC to enjoy the view of the ocean and also to make sure I didn't have to be anywhere near Jabberjaws. The meal I had there was excellent: Chicken fillets with some kind of sauce. I wished that ALL long-distance trains could have a PPC or something similar, though I know it would mean many more cars would have to be refurbished/rebuilt/manufactured. It was really traveling in style! As we departed Santa Barbara and rejoined the coast, the sun was beginning to set and that view was gorgeous as well. I mean, the view of Holdredge, Nebraska is NOTHING compared to sunset over the Pacific. :lol: My uncle and I continued to stay in the PPC/CCC until about the Van Nuys stop, where we made our way back to the room. Jabberjaws was still at it, even more loud and even more annoying, as if that was possible. He and his mom were going to transfer to another train with their eventual destination being San Diego. I said a silent prayer for anyone that was going to be seated near him on that train, gritted my teeth, and giving another silent prayer that my last nerve wouldn't shatter before Los Angeles.
Finally! Sweet relief for my poor ears! We got into LA Union Station right on time, and made our way to the Metro Plaza Hotel. I chose this one because of it's easy accessibility to Union Station and having never been there (well, to the hotel, anyway) I didn't realize just how easy it was: For those that have never been there, the sign on the hotel is visible as you exit the front doors of Union Station. We walked over to the hotel, and discovered upon entering the room that instead of two beds, like I stressed over and over, we had a room with one bed. :angry: And it felt as if the mattress was made out of concrete with steel rebar. I would have been just as comfortable sleeping on the floor. And the first time we used the toilet, it plugged up. Ah, well, I could have asked for a room with two beds and with assistance uplugging the toilet, but I'd rather bitch about it than solve the problem. :lol: :lol: Despite all that, I'd gladly choose the Metro Plaza if (I should say when) I travel to and from LA Union Station again.
After a mediocre to poor continental breakfast, we checked out and strolled down to the shops on Olvera Street for a bit of browsing before it was time to head to Union Station to catch the bus to LAX, where I was flying back to Spokane and my uncle into Bloomington, IL. At LAX, I had one last reminder why I prefer Amtrak to flying, though it's not always practical for me to travel exclusively by Amtrak: As we were in line, waiting to board our flight, the gate attendant announced that for those of us getting off in Spokane ( the flight stopped in Oakland first), there was a weather advisory in Spokane and that left the possibility of our flight delayed in Oakland or cancelled altogether. An announcement of that type, with such short notice, wouldn't happen on Amtrak!
Turns out I never head another word about it after we were airborne and in fact my mom, who picked me up at the airport, didn't know what the heck could have caused an announcement like that: It had been a beautiful day all day.For me, what a trip! The trip of a lifetime! I know some would sneer at that, saying I never really "experienced" any of the 23 states I passed through, but whatever. You experience them your way, I experience them mine. Overall, the service was excellent, the Amtrak personnel themselves were great, if not always particularly outgoing and personable, and other than the toilets going out on the Coast Starlight for several hours, no equipment failures of any kind. All trains but one, the Coast Starlight, were early, and the Starlight was right on time. Just in seeing small samples of places I'd always heard about and never seen before will give me a lifetime of memories. And so will 17 hours of videotape and about 270 pictures. :lol: Speaking of which, I will begin to post those next week. I promise!
Now I can sit back, enjoy other's tales about their Amtrak trips, and dream up new Amtrak trips in the future. Perhaps a Sunset Limited-Texas Eagle trip could be in the works next; those are the only two long-distance trains west of the Mississippi I haven't traveled on yet.
One last note, which I found to be funny and ironic: At home Tuesday night, the railroad crossing signals that are about 50 feet from my front door activated. No trains have run on this section of the railroad for three years, since a trestle east of me burned. I was listening to my scanner, and after spending half an hour chasing their tails, the dispatcher and the city cop finally got ahold of the technician who could come to fix the problem. Problem is, he lived in Spokane--an hour's drive away. So for an hour and a half, I got to listen to the incessant clangclangclangclangclang of the railroad crossing signal bells. I guess the Fates decided I hadn't quite gotten my fill of all things railroad and sent me more!!! :lol: :lol: :lol:
Until next time........
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