A TE/CS trip

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JayPea

JayPea

Engineer
AU Supporting Member
Joined
Sep 9, 2006
Messages
4,470
Location
Colfax, WA (CFX)
Preliminaries: I began my journey, after an overnight stay at a motel near the Spokane airport, bright and early on the 5th of August. After being abused, degraded, humiliated, and stripped of my rights by the TSA and too stupid and apathetic to do anything about it ;) I flew from Spokane to Denver first, then to Midway from Denver. All flights smooth and left early from Spokane, and got into Denver half an hour early. After a nearly 6 hour layover in Denver, I flew to Midway. I retrieved my luggage and grabbed a cab to the Summit Amtrak stop, where I would travel to Bloomington and meet my uncle. The next day we would begin our TE/CS trip. The cabbie neither spoke much English nor had a clue where the station was, so I navigated for him as best I could. I had prepared for him not to know where he was going so had thoroughly studied Google Maps for complete directions.. At any rate, with my doing everything but driving for him, we got there in plenty of time to catch Licoln Service 307. It was on time, and our coach attendant and cafe car attendant were top-notch. I was disappointed, though, as the high-speed track south of Dwight topped off at 96 mph, and that only briefly. It averaged about 90 mph between Dwight and Pontiac. We got into Bloomington right about on time, maybe a few minutes late.

100 or so miles down, nearly 4000 to go! I'm posting this as traveling west of Alpine, TX, on my phone and there's no signal (No signal in West Texas??? Whatta surprise! :lol: so may be awhile before I can post again. Stay tuned!
 
Wow, Texas has shrunk! :eek: Last time i went to Alpine it was 400 Miles West of San Antonio! :giggle: (I know you meant to say something like 2,000 Miles down, 4,000 to go! Enjoy the Big Nowwhere and get ready to say Hello to the Homeland Security Border "Protectors" in El Paso and across the Desert! (Your Taxes @ work preventing hordes of Foreigners and Drugs out of the Homeland! :rolleyes: )
 
Jim, the "100 miles down, 4000 to go" refers to the trip report, not where I am now! :lol: (}ust west of Valentine at this moment). And I already met one of the Border Patrol's finest, at San Antonio. He was doing nothing more than sitting against the fence outside the station. We will miss out on the Border Patrol at El Paso, since the earliest we could get lunch reservations was 1PM and we'll be stuffing our faces then! :lol:
 
Taking advantage here of a good signal and being stopped for freights near Tornillo, TX

August 6th: We (my uncle and I) began our trip at Bloomington. The new Bloomington station is very nice and a marked improvement over the old one. The TE was a few minutes late, not too bad. We had two engines on this version of the TE. I could see a marked improvement in the quality of the tracks south of Bloomington. Brad was our SCA. He greeted us at the beginning of the trip and the next time I saw him again was the next morning and that only accidentally as he was waiting to assist a couple off the train at their stop at Longview, TX just as I emerged from the snower.

The TE was od course equipped with a CCC rather than a full diner, and service was exceedingly slow. Chris, the SCA, and Thelma, the server, were very friendly, but the 2 person crew just didn't cut it. We had 5:45 dinner reservations and still hadn't been able to order dessert by 7PM. We were seated with a young couple from Fort Worth who were on their way back home from Milwaukee, where they would be moving to soon for schooling. I had the steak and wasn't all wild about it. I did notice a marked improvement in the quality of the salads: two tomatoes instead of one. :lol:

We decided to leave before dessert in order to film our entrance into St. Louis. Our roomette was on the left side, and the guy across the hall generously allowed me to sit in his room to film, as the view is great from the right side.

We got into St. Louis early, and had plenty of time to wander around before getting back on the train. We called for Brad to put our beds down around 9:30. We're still waiting for him to do so. :angry:

As a result, we did it ourselves, and crashed around 9:45.

More to come!
 
Day 2: I awoke for just a bit at Little Rock, then fell back asleep. I woke up for good at Texarkana, then went to breakfast shortly thereafter. We were seated with a middle-aged couple bound for Longview. ( was daring and tried the special: Crab cakes with tomatoes and hollandaise sauce over whole wheat biscuits. Excellent!!! We were 20-25 minutes late, then hit the UP gauntlet (UP = Universal P<short version of Richard>s) :angry: :angry: :angry: . We were held up by one long freight, hit slow orders for several miles, and, about 20 feet from the Marshall station, had to wait several minutes for a "train" consisting of one engine and one hopper car. Think they coulda waited for that one. Between one thing and two others, we were 45 minutes late out of Mineola. Due to padding and a shortened break at Dallas, we left big "D" only 7 minutes down. Lunchtime was right after Dallas, during which time I had the Angus burger. It was very good.
 
Day 2 again (hit the Post button accidentally) :rolleyes:

We were seated with a couple headed to Tuscon. Once again, thanks to padding, we got to Ft Worth almost half an hour early. We wandered into the station, where apparently we caused a stir by walking up to the second floor and taking a few pictures of the interior of the station. Someone saw that and we ended up being approached by a lady cop. No big deal. She just asked if we were with Amtrak and that was that. I walked down to the Ft Worth Convention Center, then headed back for the air conditioned comfort of the train.

Though we were early arriving into Ft Worth, we were almost half an hour late leaving it because we had to wait for the northbound TE to arrive. We continued to lose more time at Cleburne and MCGregor, but was gained some back at Temple. We were joined at Temple by Jim Hudson, as he had gone from Austin to Temple earlier that day. The plan was for him to join us for dinner, but we were too late at Temple for the 5PM dinner seating, so I had made 5:45 dinner reservations. That didn't work too well either, as it left Jim with too short a time to have dinner before getting off at Austin. We'd met Jim in the SSL at Temple, and even though the CCC was full, LSA Chris graciously let Jim join us at the table anyway. We were joined shortly by a man who was traveling to Alpine. As both my uncle and Jim are the types tnat never met a stranger, soon our companion was joining in our conversation full bore. This man is(or was) a psychologist; hope he didn't analyze us! :eek:

Jim left us at Austin, and our dinner companion continued the conversation with us. We left Austin almost an hour late, but made up some time into San Antonio, so that we were just a few minutes late. After a wrong turn or two, we went on the River Walk. We had to wait about half an hour/45 minutes after returning to the station, but it wasn't quite ready yet. As we waited outside, the SL came in, with a couple of private varnish cars on the back. As soon as the coach and sleeper from the TE were attached to the SL, we hit the sack. And slept well, over 6 hrs nearly straight through, which I never do.

Tomorrow: UP rears its (very) ugly head :angry:
 
Day 3: I awoke after 7am, somewhere between Del Rio and Sanderson. We went to breakfast shortly thereafter. We had breakfast with an older couple from Lafayette, LA. The man was a retired farmer and my uncle had been a farmer for years so they talked shop. I had the omelet and was disappointed to see the standard biscuit replaced with an inferior whole wheat one. The omelet was very good, though. Veronica was the LSA and is one of the most pleasant and cheerful Amtrak employee I have ever encountered. She did her job very well, too. Our server was excellent too. I only know her as C. Gamble. Veronica, by the way, was the lounge car attendant on a CS trip I took four years ago and was just as cheerful then. Nice to see that four years as an Amtrak employee hasn't soured her yet. ;) The SCA was another invisible man; I rarely saw him.

Jim Hudson the day before had given me several copies of Trains magazines, just what one needs to get them through the less than scintillating West Texas scenery :lol: We got into Sanderson and Alpine early; in the case of Alpine, early enough to get an extended smoke stop at Alpine. W continued to make good time. We looked to be early into El Paso early until UP decided that wouldn't do. :angry: About half an hour to 45 minutes before El Paso, we came to a halt. Our conductor informed us of freight traffic ahead of us and we would be departing shortly. "Shortly" turned into 45 minutes before the freight finally lumbered by. Though
 
<dratted post button hit again> :rolleyes: Anyway, though our conductor assured us we'd now underway, we moved a few feet and stopped. A maintenance crew had to inspect the tracks first :rolleyes: We got underway again, crawled along at 15 mph for a few miles, and stopped again. :rolleyes: Two more freights got priority. Turns out we had priority over the two freights, but there had been a shift change amongst the dispatchers, and dispatcher #2 rescinded dispatcher #1's orders and gave priority to UP instead, twice. :angry: For good measure, a few more minutes, and another stoppage for a 4TH UP freight! Only then did UP decide that it might not be a bad idea to get us into El Paso sometime this century, so we got the green light all the way to El Paso. What had been a surplus of half an hour became a deficit of 90 minutes. I should mention in the midst of all these shenanigans we had lunch. I had another excellent Angus burger. We had lunch with a woman traveling to California (hubby was watching the dogs) and a man from Seattle who had taken a Traveleresque trip to Oklahoma City and back for a reunion.

We cut the stop at El Paso short, and made up a little time between each stop up to Tucson. We had dinner with an older couple traveling to LA. I had tilapia and it was good. At Tucson, my uncle and I met his brother in law and sister in law, who live in Tucson, for a short visit on the platform. We left Tucson only 40 minutes down. We went to bed just before the Maricopa stop, so we could get up early for the early arrival into LA.
 
Day 4: Not much to say about the train, as The Invisible SCA woke us up at 4:15. We got into L at 5AM, half an hour early despite UP's best efforts to delay us as much as possible. The car was a madhouse with everyone scrambling at once to get ready. No mention was made about being able to stay put until 6:30.

We got to the Metro Plaza shortly thereafter. We were able to leave our bags there, and in fact were able to check in at that time though of course no rooms were ready. We waited in the lobby for about 40 minutes before heading to Philipe's for breakfast. Philipe's is everything it's cracked up to be!

We decided to make a last-minute reservation for a LA City Tour. That lasted a good portion of the day, especially as the bus driver picked us up and dropped us off at our hotel and the tour began and ended in Hollywood. It was well worth the 70 bucks.

After the tour, we got settled in our room, and wandered down to Olvera Street to look around. After dinner there, we looked around some more before retiring to the room for the night.

Day 5: Today it's a case od so far so good. We were serenaded by a guy singing rap songs at 6AM this morning on the street by the hotel :rolleyes: . We headed to Philipe's again for breakfast before heading out to LAUS. The CS backed into the station about 30-40 minutes before our departure. Right now we are at Oxnard, on time or close to it anyway. Toni is our car attendant, whom we've had before, and Tricia the LSA, also whom we've had before. Just about ready for a smoked salmon sandwich in the PPC for lunch!
 
To Guest LSA: You're welcome! Continuing on our journey, we had lunch in the parlor car. The smoked salmon and cream cheese on a bagel was great! So was the cheesecake with blueberry topping. I usually don't eat in the parlor car because I'm not crazy about the food they serve, but the salmon was excellent. The trip up the coast was uneventful. We won the Amtrak lottery as our roomette is on the left hand side for optimal viewing of the Pacific. My uncle spent most of the time in the parlor car while I spent mine in the roomette, taking advantage of the view.

For the run north of San Luis Obispo, I got lucky as the roomette across the hall from me was vacant, so I could film the train out of windows on both sides of the train during its run through the S curves. We'd been early almost all the way up the coast, which gave us longer stops at both Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo.

My uncle had spent a good part of the afternoon in the parlor car conversing with a couple of men, and they joined us for dinner. This dinner crew, with Trisha as the LSA wasn't nearly so loose and outgoing as Veronica and her crew on the SL. They did their jobs, though. We had a new menu as of this day, which didn't seem much different than the old one. I had the mahi-mahi, which was excellent.

As we made our way up Northern California, we continued to be on time. No UP freights to slow us down. On a couple of occasions, we were joined in our room briefly by a man who, rather loudly and drunkenly proceeded to, pun intended, rail about the slow and inadequate Amtrak passenger system as opposedd to the glory days of the steam age. Last we saw of him he was headed back to his room, two bottles of Heiniken in hand. Gilroy, CA is known as the "Garlic Capital of the World" and as we passed through, it was very apparent on this day why. The odor of garlic was overpowering!

We arrived in the twlight at San Jose early, so we again got an extended stop. Our fantastc luck as far as running on time or early ended just outside San Jose. We were held up for little over half an hour waiting for a CalTrain. Both the CS and TE/SL were very good about announcing reason for delays.

Just after we got going again, we decided to hit the sack. Day 5 now complete, another great day to be traveling Amtrak!
 
I was your server that serve you at breakfast time. I have pass message on to Veronica and she was very please. Hopefully I see you again as I intend to work the starlight in the winter . I usually work in the diner :)

Once again glad you had pleasant experience .
 
You was one with ice tea.i also had up you guys lunch ( your uncle had diet Pepsi and you had the sandwich with ice tea and cheesecake with stawberry topping .)
 
Toni is an amazing SCA... One of my favorites. Tricia however, I am not a fan of. Any issues in the dining car?

Specifically..

Does Tricia still wear a hoodie while working as if uniform requirements don't apply to her?

Does she still walk around writing names on a white board as if she is a kindergarten teacher?

Does she still announce on the PA that cell phones and all other electronic devices are not allowed in the dining car?

And is "C. Walsh" still on her crew as waiter? (The absolute rudest Amtrak employee I have ever encountered).

Sorry for all the negatives... I'm just curious. Coast Starlight is one of my favorite train rides ever no matter the crew... It's just that good of a trip.
 
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Re Trisha:

She didn't wear a hoodie on this trip

She did (as did her cohorts) use a white board to write names on. She made the announcement, too, about cell phones, though she didn't ban them altogether, just asked they be turned off

I didn't see a "C. Walsh" in the dining car this trip. Doran and Andrew were our servers. Neither would win any awards for friendliness, but they were in no way rude either.

Yeah, I don't think much of Trisha either. Too rude and consescending for my taste. Toni, on the other hand, is excellent--proof positive such employees do exist within Amtrak.

And I agree wholeheartedly about the CS. I just wish it were a longer ride!
 
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Good... Sounds like C. Walsh got replaced then. I had a good experience with Andrew but after a few meals with C, anyone would seem polite.

Thanks for the reply... And yes Toni is amazing. Thankfully I've run into a few others as good as Toni... They are out there!
 

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