We left to see Kaitlin, Torben and the pups last Wednesday, September 28, and came back Tuesday, October 3. The trip there was quite an adventure.
For higher resolution click on the above picture. Here’s an expanded view:
The woman at the Lamy station phoned in the morning to tell us the train would be late, and she warned, “At Amtrak we say a late train will always be later.” She was right. We logged on the Amtrak site to watch the train’s progress to guess when we should leave for Lamy — we allow two hours to get there. As it turned out, the train continued to be delayed so we waited at Lamy for about three hours before we got on the train. (8:30 instead of 1:15.)
Then as we reached each stop on the way we compared the arrival time with the scheduled time and could see that the schedule was slipping more and more.
The problem was the engine broke down so the whole train was towed by a freight engine, which has a lot of power but can’t reach the higher speed of passenger locomotives.
Another problem is once a train gets out of its allotted time slot, it has to wait for any other train that needs the track. One nice thing is they had WiFi for sleeping car passengers. It was slow and we sometimes lost the signal, but we could try to give Kaitlin an estimate of when we would get there. She had a 40-minute drive to pick us up, and we didn’t want her waiting for hours at Union Station. At one point the conductor said we might arrive around 4 am, so just before she went to bed we told her not to get there before then. We kept track of our schedule slippage, and when it was clear we wouldn’t arrive until after 5, we emailed her the update. She saw it when she woke up so went back to bed for another hour.
As it turns out, we’re thankful the train didn’t arrive any earlier — it turns out Union Station is closed from 1 am until 5 am, so she would have had to wait in the car!
Anyway, she was there to meet us, and she had already checked us into the motel and had put food in our refrigerator so we didn’t have to worry about getting up for breakfast. We were thoroughly pampered, and it melts my heart when I think of it.
The rest of the trip was great.
That was a late train! I used to love taking the train, I believe this would have put me off my infatuation with the rail. I got stuck on a ‘milk’ train once, and I thought that was bad.
I remember spending hours on a milk train once — it was hot and crowded. At least we had a sleeping compartment on this one. It would have been worse if this was our first trip, but it was our third by train. It’s still a lot better than driving or flying.
I envy you your ability to still travel by train. I wish that I could too. It has been over a decade since I did.
We would happily use a magic wand to whisk us there, but the train is a lot better than flying or driving.
wow that is a “delay” – they might as well, have said “you’ve on the next schedule, and left it at that…” at least you were travelling in some type of comfort in your sleeper and you had enough wi-fi to keep your family in the loop…
I was on a bus today [one of many] and she kept trying to hurry people on/off because apparently she was behind schedule. It got even worse when a foreigner hailed her from the wrong stop (in a long string of stops] she kept telling the poor woman she was at the wrong stop, and woman kept trying to leave – I finally interrupted this distorted flow and said “Next time…go back to the other stop…” the woman wanted to go to Sky Tower and yes this bus would get eventually but actually our driver should have directed her across the road, shorter loop…
other passengers could see she was a tourist, she took out a book about stuff in with foreign language in it. I just hope someone got her off at the right stop, because I got out earlier…
Yes, we were really pleased that they had WiFi this time. They didn’t on our previous trips and it made a huge difference.
We had a wonderful trip from Seattle to Vancouver, Washington. That was in January of this year: snow everywhere. Our friends picked us up at the station. They said it had been so slippery outdoors that this was the first time in days that they had ventured out.
We got caught in heavy snow in the high Sierra on a trip on the Union Pacific from Chicago to San Francisco. This was way back in the 60’s, and we were stuck for hours. No one told us anything. They did give us meal vouchers and that was it. So we started flying instead.
Trains may not be perfect, but nowadays they are better than flying!
What a fun trip! Carl took the 3 day trip from Harper’s Ferry WV, to Vancouver Washington, twice last year to see his brother. He really enjoyed it! I guess those delays are just par for the course, because he had them too, and overnighted in Chicago. But he just enjoyed the ride and would love to do it again! Me? I would be fine for a day, but by the 3rd day, I’d be taking hostages! …Poor Carl! 😉
That would be way too long for us too! I would prefer a magic wand to whisk us there. 🙂