VOLCANIC THRASH
How close we got to this one not happening needs to be laid down for posterity. I was due to fly out on Friday April 23rd. Due to an inconsiderate volcano in Iceland choosing to erupt the previous week no planes had flown anywhere in Western Europe since the previous Thursday.
By Tuesday 20th things really were looking desperate, with the BA website suggesting all sorts of unpalatable scenarios which I really had no stomach for.
Glory be, - Wednesday 21st saw the resumption of flights and the return of my blood pressure to normal levels. It’s on!
As usual, if it has wheels and a propelling motor it’s listed below although rubber - tyred stuff isn’t making an appearance this year. If it won it’s underlined. If it didn’t win I didn’t sulk (with one notable exception) as I was just grateful to be there.
Thursday April 22nd - Escape to the country of the loud.
I was left to my own devices for the day, which actually helped the packing process no end. Goodbye dogs, goodbye cats, everything packed, taxi to Shipley for
144011 Shipley - Leeds
43207/285 Leeds - Kings Cross
5511/6511 - Kings Cross - Paddington (Hammersmith and District)
There I met Andy, Duncan and Ashby. StePHen (with the PH emphasised) Ashby took great umbrage in being referred to as Steve A in the 2008 denouement and will henceforth be identified as Ashby.
332004 - Paddington - Terminals 1, 2 and 3
Except that Terminal 2 is having a well deserved rest so we had a lengthy trudge through subterranean passageways to T1 for a beer and an ill tempered taxi driver to our bed for the night.
Friday April 23rd - Tora Tora Tora!
The others were on an earlier flight so I got the bus on my own back to T1 for
332012 T1, 2, 3 - T5
Anything else is boring airport stuff except the little shuttle thing between T5 and the other bit of T5 which was 04.
And the plane. Oh, the plane. It was a British Airways 747; it was smelly, stained, under-equipped and knackered. It got us to O’Hare in one piece but not one peace of mind in my case because I staggered off it a sweating gibbering wreck. I don’t like flying at the best of times but this one really did me in, and a 45 minute wait to get through security didn’t help my composure.
Skytrain car 11 and CTA 2295/6 on Blue Line got me to the hotel where a shower and an hour with my head down perked me up sufficiently.
During my fester at Heathrow I’d learned that Metra’s surviving F40C’s - 611 and 614 - had been in action last night. My enforced recuperation meant that I’d missed any chance of a shot at them but I was able to meet up with the guys again, supplemented by the Stowmarket Massive (Tim).
A couple of CTA moves (3314/5 and 2665/6) got us to Addison, on Red Line, for a brew pub near Wrigley Field baseball stadium for whatever meal my body clock thought it was and 2931/2 got us back to the hotel.
Saturday April 24th - Dealing with your demons
Tim and I thought that a fine way to feed ourselves gently into the Amtrak maelstrom would be a quick spin to Glenview and back.
51 (Train 331) Chicago - Glenview
Was a suitable start.
If I may be permitted to quote from my 2008 review “…it’s compulsory that I have either 13 or 62 whenever I’m in America.” Since 2008 I’ve been gleefully spilling salt, breaking mirrors, walking under ladders and laughing at magpies, convinced that the hex had been broken.
62 (Train 332) Glenview - Chicago
Tim scored it, and I’ve now had the blighter five times in three different decades. Oh well.
Over to OTC for a quick spin out to Berkeley.
136 (Train 29) OTC - Berkeley
Plenty of movement on Proviso yard, including a patched SP motor 14 years after the takeover.
139 (Train 506) Berkeley - OTC
After lunch in the Union Station bar Tim left us and Andy, Ashby, Duncan and I went to find our transport of delight.
15/53 (Train 7) Chicago - Seattle
Another dud, in the form of 15, but what the hell.
The train crew was Seattle based and our car attendant, Doris, was a 35 year Amtrak veteran and a real gem. Her claim to fame was that she’d invented the route guides which we now take for granted, initially putting them together for the Empire Builder on her own initiative.
When you don’t do Amtrak on a regular basis, and you don’t know the road it’s hard to evaluate performance but we all got the impression that 15 and 53 were a particularly fit pair; hitting 79MPH off slacks and stops seemed very rapid for locos renowned for slow loading and this characteristic endured all the way through Sunday as well.
Once North of Milwaukee we began to notice a natural phenomenon that featured heavily throughout the rest of our trip - the scrap car crop. Most farms and settlements appeared to be growing at least three abandoned cars and - on this leg - the apogee was somewhere near Wisconsin Dells where we passed a large wood full, as far the eye could see, with rusting vehicles of all descriptions.
We never really got to the bottom of what happened at Winona. This is a crew change point and as we rolled in the local police were there to meet the train. They quickly departed but the train stayed put, due to an individual lying comatose and face down on the lower deck of the café lounge. Eventually an ambulance and a fire engine arrived and the obstruction was removed with all the finesse of the Keystone Kops.
I’d been hoping to stay awake to view the loudness of Minnesota Commercial, who are based adjacent to Minneapolis station but I was overwhelmed by the events of the day and retired as gracefully as I could.
Sunday April 25th - First Class return to Leeds
The first shack that we rolled through on sitting down to breakfast was Leeds, North Dakota, which is a long way from home.
In fact it’s a long way from anywhere. We speculated on what it must be like to live in one of these isolated prairie towns, and I think the answer is that from a European perspective it is impossible to comprehend.
Recommended reading to add some substance and history to today’s scenery would be Main Street by Sinclair Lewis and, specifically, Badlands by Johnathan Raban, which tells the disturbing story of Northern Pacific’s mendacious efforts to fund their expansion by enticing settlers to farm land inherently unsuitable for intensive agriculture along this route. Although we’d become inured to the scrap metal crop by this stage it belatedly struck me that much of the blight that we saw today was probably the remains of abandoned homesteads.
Montana is the “big sky state” and is aptly named but even the sun couldn’t brighten the raw, desolate look of the townships as we got further west. Shelby and, in particular, Browning looked more like they belonged in Mongolia although I accept that this is the coldest part of the lower 48 and it was still early spring.
In a snow flurry we crossed the Continental Divide and descended the spectacular Marias Pass, which also marks the end of the high plains. From this point Andy and I were both struck by the similarity of the landscape to parts of Switzerland, with deep, verdant valleys and substantial trees for the first time in many hours.
We turned in after Whitefish, where it was beginning to get dark. Although on the face of it we hadn’t done much today we’d passed through three distinct climactic zones and seen some of those bits of America that only Amtrak lets you truly appreciate.
Monday April 26th - Who killed Bambi?
Probably the most disconcerting thing you’ll ever hear on Amtrak is something bouncing about under the train, followed by an emergency brake application. I’d slept through the Spokane shuffle but woke up to this in the very early hours.
It turned out that we’d hit a deer, the remains of which had pinballed under the train then bounced up between our sleeper and the diner, knocking out the air hoses on the way. The conductor described this as “a messy one.”
As I drifted back to sleep world I got the distinct impression that things up front were a little noisier than previously and on convening for breakfast we realised there’d been a swap at Spokane.
53 still led, but was now back to back with another Genny. Stevens Pass is a superb bit of engineering and the sharp curves on the descent gave us a clear view of dud 99 inside.
As is often the case for me, the dudness of the new motor paled into insignificance in the surroundings. Spokane - Seattle was new track and what a fantastic bit of James J Hill it really is.
After a pleasant run along the coast of Puget Sound we got to Seattle spot on time and said goodbye to Doris and the Empire Builder. With rather less regret I also said goodbye to a persistent conspiracy theorist who had been trying to make friends with me ever since Chicago (why just me?) but not before he’d given me a crudely typed tract explaining that all the evils of the world were down to the Wright brothers.
Our first goal in Seattle was to go up the Space Needle but we were thwarted in this by an unspecified farce with the connecting monorail, so instead we went on a beer and food crusade before I left the others and toddled off for:-
468 (Train 507) Seattle - Tacoma
Although the Sounder and Cascades services share BNSF trackage for most of their route, Sounder veers off about a mile North of Tacoma Amtrak station and takes a former Milwaukee branch to its own station at Tacoma Dome which is far closer to the city centre. It’s a good 15 minutes walk between the stations but my hotel was next to Tacoma Dome.
Showered and changed I headed out for a few Sounder moves. Always mindful of the American unfamiliarity with bashing I had intended to explain my intentions to the Sounder staff and luckily the first person I encountered at Tacoma Dome station was the head of security for the Southern end of the operation who listened to me with increasing bemusement but agreed to act as a contact if anyone up the line got suspicious.
905 (Train 1514) Tacoma - Sumner
911 (Train 1509) Sumner - Puyallup (pronounced Pugh-lip)
901 (Train 1516) Puyallup - Sumner
903 (Train 1511) Sumner - Puyallup
909 (Train 1513) Puyallup - Tacoma
At Tacoma Dome Sounder connects with a short (and free) light rail system which I rode until I found a likely looking place for my evening meal.
1001 Tacoma Dome - Union
1003 Union - Tacoma Dome
Tuesday April 27th - Reclining in the Parlour
A leisurely start to follow a deep sleep in a stationary bed:-
470 (Train 501) Tacoma - Portland
Already on board was Rick, who had flown into Seattle after I’d left the previous day.
I have mixed feelings about the Talgo stock. It’s salubrious and comfortable but I found the outside views to be badly restricted by the high backed seats and small windows, which was a disappointment on this scenic leg.
Portland is an exciting city that I’ve spent a lot of time in previously. We didn’t think we’d get a lunch on the Starlight so, as I did last night, we rode about on the free light rail system looking for a place to eat. Unfortunately the first tram we got was dud, and the eating place I spotted turned out to be a garage.
103 Union Station - University
235 University - Union Station
We got a good meal in the end and got back to the station to see the Starlight arrive in a torrential downpour behind THREE winning Genocides! The golden gloves were out, however, and 75 was removed at Portland, leaving
4/195 (Train 11) Portland - Santa Barbara
The ever rotating cast of neds (the three that I’d left behind in Seattle, supplemented by Ian) were firmly established in the Parlour Car, a splendid establishment presided over by a lady. I knew that if I didn’t write her name down I’d forget it and I didn’t write her name down, but she took us under her wing and kept us plied with drink.
So the afternoon and early evening passed in splendid civility until an hour or so into our ascent of the Cascades when we came to a prolonged halt, ironically on the site of one of the landslides of 2008. Apparently a UP freight ahead was in trouble, leading to frenzied speculation about rear end assistance, would it count, how would we get the loco numbers etc.?
It was academic - the freight eventually got itself clear and I went to bed.
Wednesday April 28th - It’s Chico Time!
So it was because Chico, California, is where I woke up to establish that we were just shy of three hours late, but a big hole in the timetable almost halved that by the time we got away from Sacramento.
It’s a slow day on the Starlight. By timetable the 130 miles from Sacramento to San Jose takes a little over three hours although there’s never a dull moment as the sights of the bay area slip by.
I was on my own again from San Jose but, Amtrak being Amtrak, I wasn’t on my own for very long as I was befriended by some kettle neds on their way to LA for a weekend run with 3751. Another magical Amtrak afternoon, trading tales then falling into reverential silence as we descended the horseshoes into San Louis Obispo.
The “Coast” bit of the Coast Starlight is best done as I did it - on a beautiful sunny evening, with good company and a comfortable lounge car chair that I was genuinely sorry to leave at Santa Barbara.
Having eaten and drunk on the Starlight, and arriving 75 minutes late it was bedtime for me. Luckily I can resist brewpubs because I passed two on the five minute walk between the station and my hotel.
Thursday April 29th - The law of diminishing returns
Here’s a lesson for anyone contemplating Business Class on Pacific Surfliners - don’t bother. Because it’s only $10 more than Coach, lots of people go for it and as a result it’s more crowded than the cheap seats.