In all trips, it eventually becomes time to head home again. After being fairly warm Wednesday evening and Thursday, Chicago's weather is brisk and cool again (more like March than May), but at least I don't work up a sweat lugging my baggage on the 'L' to Union Station.
I check in at the Metropolitan Lounge for first-class passengers, where the receptionist writes the wrong year on my pass, and go across the hall to check one of my bags into the baggage storage room until it's time to board the train.
It turns out that seating space is at a premium in the Metropolitan Lounge, partly because the California Zephyr is delayed and partly because it's the Friday before Memorial Day. I stand against a column within view of the TV in the lounge, which is tuned to CNN, which is reporting an explosion in an apartment building in the San Fernando Valley. Since my ultimate destination is an apartment building in the San Fernando Valley, I'm slightly worried until they reveal the vital piece of information that the building was in Encino, not North Hollywood.
Eventually, the announcement comes that we've been waiting for...well, no, not really. An announcement comes that the Southwest Chief is delayed due to mechanical problems. The aerial pictures of an apartment building on fire turn into General Tommy Franks answering reporters' questions at a news conference.
Boarding finally starts about half an hour late, at 3:15, while the Texas Eagle is also boarding. They called passengers needing Redcap assistance for the Chief first, but general boarding for the Eagle first, and this seems to be causing no end of consternation for some people in the lounge (although they may be wondering what happened to the Zephyr). Then general boarding for the Chief is called, I go across the hall to collect my bag, and an Amtrak representative leads the sleeping car passengers down the hall and around past the ticket counters, avoiding the main Amtrak lounge, and finally out to Track 24.
On this train, I'm in Room 6 in the sleeping car named "District of Columbia." While we're still sitting in the station, both the sleeping car attendant, Audrey, and the train chief (whose real title, I think, is Product Line Supervisor) drop by the room to introduce themselves. Meanwhile, two tracks over, the California Zephyr finally backs in, gets loaded up, and pulls out at 4:08, just under two hours late.
10 minutes later, over the P.A. system, they finally reveal to us that the "mechanical problem" involves one of the freight cars that's going to be added to the end of the train. I check the fine print in the timetable to make sure Amtrak's real name is still the National Railroad Passenger Corporation.
At last, at 4:45, the Southwest Chief pulls out of the station, and promptly comes to a halt in the Amtrak yard to add the freight cars, and then to wait for a gap in the parade of Metra commuter trains on the line to Aurora. (Because of the reroute on the Empire Builder on Saturday, I'm retracing my steps that far.) There are enough freight cars on the back of the train, and this route is mountainous enough, that there are five locomotives on the front. (The Builder and the Starlight both had only two.)
At 5:27, the train is under way once and for all, 2 hours and 13 minutes late. Everything's going along fine until there's an unexplained stop near Galesburg during which the power to the train is turned off, which ends up putting the train 2 hours and 31 minutes down into Galesburg, at 8:52 P.M. It's dark when the train crosses the Mississippi, although Audrey makes an P.A. announcement in the car about it anyway. I go to bed shortly after the stop in Fort Madison, Iowa.
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| Mendota, Illinois. |
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| Another view of Mendota, Illinois. |
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| Sunset over the Illinois prairie and U.S. 34, near Kewanee, Illinois. |
During the night, I'm dimly aware at one point that we seem to be doing quite a bit of starting and stopping, but I kind of assume we're switching out some of the freight cars at Kansas City. So when I wake up at about 6:30 A.M. and feel the train slowing down as if we're about to stop, I look out the window thinking we're still about 2 and a half hours late (thanks to schedule padding between Kansas City and Lawrence, Kansas) and expect to see Hutchinson or maybe Newton, if we got a little bit later during the night. Instead, I first see a few more tall buildings than I'd expect Hutchinson or Newton to have, and then I see a copper-covered dome that looks suspiciously like it might be a state capitol building. It's Topeka, where we were supposed to have stopped at 1:37 A.M., so the train is now just under five hours late.
The only good thing about being this late is getting to see a lot of Kansas in daylight. It's surprisingly green. After many viewings of a certain Judy Garland movie, I was expecting it to be more, uh, sepia-toned.
Finally, at about 8:20, the conductor gets on the P.A. system and goes through the litany of "why this train is five hours late." There was heavy rain in Iowa and Missouri that caused signal problems and had the railroad worried about flash floods (in fact, I find out after I get back that about a week and a half prior to this, the Southwest Chief had to be annulled for a couple of days due to flash floods over that very same stretch of tracks), and then there were problems with freight cars at Kansas City, and then a passenger fell getting on the train at Kansas City, and then they decided to have paramedics meet the train at Lawrence to check out the passenger, and then this train had to wait in a siding for a while to meet its eastbound counterpart, which they didn't want to delay because it was actually running close to on time. Just another eventful night on Amtrak.
Since we're so late, we manage to block traffic in downtown Newton during what passes for Saturday morning rush hour while making the station stop, and then the train has to make an unscheduled stop at a grade crossing just outside the small town of Offerle, Kansas, to switch conductors and engineers rather than making the exchange in Dodge City (they're only allowed to be on duty for a maximum of 12 hours).
The Chief somehow falls even further behind schedule, and the train leaves Dodge City, which has a very "tourist trap" look to it, 5 hours and 53 minutes late. The old train station here looks like it's under renovation, which is also true at the next stop, Garden City, where all the boarding passengers are standing crowded into a tiny space between areas that are fenced off for construction. I hope they haven't been standing there for 5 hours and 53 minutes.
And there's another dining car time zone anomaly, just like the one on the Empire Builder, as the steward announces that the dining car is already operating on Mountain Time, so lunch will start at noon, but it will still be 1:00 on the rest of the train. Past Garden City, the scenery has started to change from fields and plains to rocky hills.
There's a servicing stop in La Junta, Colorado, and thanks to more schedule padding, the Chief departs a mere 4 hours and 42 minutes late. This is the stop where the newspapers get loaded on the train, so I finally get the morning paper just before 2:00; it's the Pueblo Chieftain, "134th Year, and Still on the Job."
Arguably, the scenic highlight of this trip is the crossing of Raton Pass between Colorado and New Mexico. I'd seen pictures of an old sign at the summit pointing out that it's the highest point on the Santa Fe, but it must have been on the other side of the train from my sleeping car room.
Announcing the Las Vegas, New Mexico, stop, the conductor says, "Not the Las Vegas with the bright lights and the dancing girls, but Las Vegas, New Mexico." He also claims we'll get to Albuquerque at 8:30.
That turns out to be a slightly optimistic estimate, and the Chief pulls in at 8:55, which is only 4 hours and 8 minutes late. I get off for some fresh air and because I've been led to believe that it's mandatory to look at the Native American jewelry that's being sold on the platform. There's nothing I can't live without, so I instead watch the train's windows being washed by a man with a squeegee on a long pole.
The "all aboard" signal is called at 9:25, but the train doesn't actually start moving until 9:53, then stops again just beyond the station, presumably for some business involving the freight cars, not really getting under way until 10:05.
| Topeka, Kansas, where it would be nowhere near this bright if the train were on time. (And it's not even that bright because it's a gray, overcast day.) This is the kind of picture I take when I've just woken up, fumbled around trying to figure out where I put my camera, and then blearily waited for a tree not to be blocking the dome. |
| The only accurate train-related thing about the movie "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" is the statement that the train doesn't stop in Wichita, meaning John Candy and Steve Martin have to go to Newton. It's yet another station Amtrak defaced in the 1970s by putting up their standard "rail passenger station" sign that's now out of date (if for no other reason than that hasn't been the Amtrak logo for two years now). |
| A Dairy Queen in Hutchinson, Kansas. I understand that they completely made up the word "brazier," and anybody who says differently is going to have to answer to Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Greene. |
| U.S. 50 and U.S. 56, combined east of Dodge City for a total of 106. |
| The under-construction train station in Dodge City. |
| Dodge City, Kansas, where the street paralleling the railroad tracks is Wyatt Earp Boulevard. |
| Garden City, Kansas. |
| Trinidad, Colorado, as you may be able to tell from the letters proudly displayed on top of the hill. |
| What I believe to be a high school auditorium in Trinidad. |
| Raton, New Mexico. |
| A sign next to the Raton station. Aside from certain pay-per-view "sporting" events, is there anywhere that injury prevention isn't practiced? |
| A store in beautiful downtown Raton, making me wonder if the J.C. Penney company still owns the trademarks on "Golden Rule" and "New York Store." Either they don't, or they're not aware of the existence of this store. |
| The trailing end of the Southwest Chief as it winds through New Mexico. Actually, the end isn't visible in this picture, because there are at least 30 freight cars back there. |
| Las Vegas, New Mexico, which has at least one thing the other Las Vegas doesn't: Amtrak train service. |
| Lamy, New Mexico. The Santa Fe Southern is a tourist railroad that runs between Santa Fe and Lamy, and I have no idea what the train is doing here at this time of day (about 7:50 P.M.), because according to their web site, the regular tourist service departs Lamy for Santa Fe at 3:00. There are a couple of people standing on the flat car, so I think this may have been a chartered special run or something like that. (That's right, the railroad now known as the Burlington Northern Santa Fe doesn't serve one of the two cities in its name.) |
| Albuquerque, New Mexico. The old train station burned down a few years ago, and this is the replacement. |
| The Southwest Chief at Albuquerque. |
| I think this is the only place on the Amtrak system where train car windows get washed during the trip. It's too bad, because the Pacific Parlour Cars never come through here, and I know of at least one with dirty windows. |
| My window is above and to the right of the "R" at the end of "Superliner" (pretty much dead center in this picture). |
Again, I wake up right around the time we're slowing down to make a station stop, but this time, it's right where I expect the train to be, namely, Needles, California. The Southwest Chief leaves at 6:25, five hours and 15 minutes behind schedule, and heads through the desert.
Just before 7:00, the conductor comes on the P.A. system and apologizes for making such an early announcement, but makes the announcement that passengers for the Coast Starlight will get off the train in Barstow and take the bus to Santa Barbara, passengers for the San Joaquins will get off in Barstow and take the bus to Bakersfield, and passengers for the Pacific Surfliner will get off in Fullerton and just take the next southbound Surfliner that comes along. (Actually, he calls the Surfliner by its old name, the San Diegan.)
Although the timetable warns that "a limited menu is available...on Train 3 the morning arriving at Los Angeles," the dining car apparently has all the breakfast items on the menu, and I'm not sure whether it has more to do with the train being late or the timetable being wrong.
There seems to only be one bus waiting in Barstow, so I guess it's going to go to Bakersfield and then on to Santa Barbara, but the driver only has about three hours and 20 minutes to get to Santa Barbara before the Starlight is scheduled to leave. I don't have to worry about that, fortunately. The Chief leaves Barstow at 9:22, five hours and 40 minutes late, while the bus is still getting loaded up.
Cajon Pass, between Victorville and San Bernardino, is supposed to be another scenic highlight. This train normally goes through in the very early morning hours, but now it's broad daylight.
Following some slow running over Cajon Pass, the Chief is a little over 6 hours late into the following stops, San Bernardino, Riverside, and Fullerton. The timetable gives the train two hours and 1 minute between Fullerton and Los Angeles, but in a blatant example of schedule padding, it only takes 38 minutes to go that far, and the Southwest Chief arrives only four hours and 45 minutes late.
I lug my baggage across the Union Station concourse area to the subway station, ride to the end of the line at North Hollywood, take the bus to the nearest stop to my apartment, and walk two blocks north. My cat is somewhat nonplussed when I walk in. There's a message on my answering machine about a Memorial Day barbecue that's going on right now. I start my computer downloading 15 days' worth of e-mail, change my shirt, and head for the park where the barbecue's happening.
From May 11th through May 26th, I managed to ride some kind of train every day for 15 consecutive days, which is a personal record. Now I have to figure out a way to beat it...
I should point out here that this was, all in all, a great trip, with only two major problems:
1. The Southwest Chief not leaving Chicago on time because of problems with a freight car. (All the other on-time problems weren't Amtrak's fault, and in the case of the Empire Builder, I personally didn't mind at all because the reroute meant I got to ride over some "rare mileage.")
2. The new national dining car menu got real old, real fast.
| Needles, California. |
| The desert between Needles and Barstow. The Southwest Chief normally passes through here in the middle of the night. I've driven through this area on Interstate 40 a couple of times. |
| Barstow, California. |
| Connecting passengers at Barstow, waiting for the bus to pull up. |
| This building in Victorville, California, looks like it would be a very nice train station... |
| But it's not. It's the bus station. Amtrak stops in front of this structure (I firmly disagree with the theory on display here that painting the word "station" on something automatically makes it into a station). |
| Cajon Pass. The trucks near the top of the hill are on Interstate 15. I think it's been foggy in this area every time I've driven through. |
| Watching the train go by. |
| Riverside, California. |
| Fullerton, California, and as I wrote way back on the "pre-trip" page, it is, indeed, a bittersweet moment knowing that seeing this station signals the imminent end of my trip. (However, the fact that we're running so late means it's less bitter and more sweet than it would be otherwise.) |
| I really can't get away from Amtrak. This is a billboard near the Fullerton station for the Pacific Surfliner service. It has the "Amtrak California" logo at the bottom, which means it was paid for by the California Department of Transportation. I'm happy to see my tax dollars at work in this way. |
| But I know I'm really almost home when I see Dodger Stadium up on the hill as the train is making its final approach into L.A. Union Station. The end. |