Thunder Road
Service Attendant
- Joined
- Nov 2, 2011
- Messages
- 144
I made my first ever sleeper trip on 50 Thursday-Friday to go home from school for winter break. My dad accumulates AGR points by commuiting CWH-NYP, so he had enough for the roomette (otherwise there's no way I could afford a sleeper).
We left CHI on time (1 minute early even by my watch) and arrived at Dyer a whopping 17 minutes early! It was dinner time at that point. Given how people on here like to gripe about the food on the Cardinal, I was pleasantly surprised. Fine cuisine it was not, but I bought snacks before I boarded in preparation for the food being completely inedible, and that turned out to be totally unnecessary. I had the chicken pasta thing, which was fine, I thought.
The SCA (I don't remember his name, but everyone just called him "T") was great: attentive, friendly, and all that stuff a SCA should be, although he put my bed down during dinner already, which I thought was a bit early, as I wanted to stay up and read for a while longer. I also had a DeLorme GPS hooked up to my laptop so I could watch where we were and how fast we were going.
We were generally on time all the way to IND. Got there about 7 minutes early, but left 15 or so late after waiting for a freight to pass.
I decided to call it a night while we were still in the station at IND,although I had a little bit of trouble falling asleep (probably moreso due to the stress of finals week than the train) so somewhere past Connersville I decided to just watch the stars out the window, since we were in a pretty rural area and you could see a lot of them. Just then, a meteor! Immediately I remembered it was the peak of the Geminids, so I laid and watched for more meteors (saw 3 very bright ones and probably a dozen more that I couldn't quite tell if they were real or just my eyes) before finally dozing off somewhere before CIN. Now that's something you can't do on a plane or in a car!
I woke up a little before 8 am as we were just pulling out of Ashland, KY, noticeably late now. I rested a while longer, then got up and went to get breakfast. By that time we were sitting in Huntington, WV, and just as I ordered my omelette, the power went out. The waitress (who was also excellent, she joked with the whole car the entire time, after we told her to pay the diesel bill so we could get moving again) said that we had picked up somebody's private car in Cincy and were dropping it off here. Later when we pulled away I saw a New York Central car full of people, which I assume must've been it.
We got gradually later as the day went on. Otherwise, it was a normal Cardinal run. I had a roomette on the right, so I got to see most of New River Gorge, but none of the stations we stopped at. (We didn't stop at Thurmond.)
Quick aside: I could've sworn people on here said it was better to be on the left, but if you want to see the New River Gorge Bridge or the station at Thurmond, you need to be on the right. Did I miss something awesome on the left?
Back to the story: Dinner was right after Charlottesville along the infamous Buckingham Branch. My tablemate couldn't keep her tea in her cup as we bounced along at 30 mph, but other than that dinner was fine. (I still have no idea how the waitress - same one as at breakfast by the way - managed to not drop anything.)
We ended up about 3.5 hours late into WAS. They told us not to go into the station because we'd be leaving "as soon as the locomotive switch is complete," which still took 45 minutes, so I'm not sure why they wanted to keep us there.
I caught them speeding twice on the NEC, once briefly hitting 114 mph near Odenton (although I didn't act fast enough to get a screen shot of that) and again 112 mph near Aberdeen (pictured below). Besides those two and a few construction spots, we set cruise control for 110 almost the whole way, trying to make up time I assume.
All in all a great trip, and one I'd love to do again. Only maybe next time when there's more daylight.
It figures that my camera died just as we got to the bridge, so I had to whip out my cell phone. Pardon the quality of these two.
I have plenty more pictures of rivers, rocks, and dead trees, but I figure you guys have seen all that by now.
We left CHI on time (1 minute early even by my watch) and arrived at Dyer a whopping 17 minutes early! It was dinner time at that point. Given how people on here like to gripe about the food on the Cardinal, I was pleasantly surprised. Fine cuisine it was not, but I bought snacks before I boarded in preparation for the food being completely inedible, and that turned out to be totally unnecessary. I had the chicken pasta thing, which was fine, I thought.
The SCA (I don't remember his name, but everyone just called him "T") was great: attentive, friendly, and all that stuff a SCA should be, although he put my bed down during dinner already, which I thought was a bit early, as I wanted to stay up and read for a while longer. I also had a DeLorme GPS hooked up to my laptop so I could watch where we were and how fast we were going.
We were generally on time all the way to IND. Got there about 7 minutes early, but left 15 or so late after waiting for a freight to pass.
I decided to call it a night while we were still in the station at IND,although I had a little bit of trouble falling asleep (probably moreso due to the stress of finals week than the train) so somewhere past Connersville I decided to just watch the stars out the window, since we were in a pretty rural area and you could see a lot of them. Just then, a meteor! Immediately I remembered it was the peak of the Geminids, so I laid and watched for more meteors (saw 3 very bright ones and probably a dozen more that I couldn't quite tell if they were real or just my eyes) before finally dozing off somewhere before CIN. Now that's something you can't do on a plane or in a car!
I woke up a little before 8 am as we were just pulling out of Ashland, KY, noticeably late now. I rested a while longer, then got up and went to get breakfast. By that time we were sitting in Huntington, WV, and just as I ordered my omelette, the power went out. The waitress (who was also excellent, she joked with the whole car the entire time, after we told her to pay the diesel bill so we could get moving again) said that we had picked up somebody's private car in Cincy and were dropping it off here. Later when we pulled away I saw a New York Central car full of people, which I assume must've been it.
We got gradually later as the day went on. Otherwise, it was a normal Cardinal run. I had a roomette on the right, so I got to see most of New River Gorge, but none of the stations we stopped at. (We didn't stop at Thurmond.)
Quick aside: I could've sworn people on here said it was better to be on the left, but if you want to see the New River Gorge Bridge or the station at Thurmond, you need to be on the right. Did I miss something awesome on the left?
Back to the story: Dinner was right after Charlottesville along the infamous Buckingham Branch. My tablemate couldn't keep her tea in her cup as we bounced along at 30 mph, but other than that dinner was fine. (I still have no idea how the waitress - same one as at breakfast by the way - managed to not drop anything.)
We ended up about 3.5 hours late into WAS. They told us not to go into the station because we'd be leaving "as soon as the locomotive switch is complete," which still took 45 minutes, so I'm not sure why they wanted to keep us there.
I caught them speeding twice on the NEC, once briefly hitting 114 mph near Odenton (although I didn't act fast enough to get a screen shot of that) and again 112 mph near Aberdeen (pictured below). Besides those two and a few construction spots, we set cruise control for 110 almost the whole way, trying to make up time I assume.
All in all a great trip, and one I'd love to do again. Only maybe next time when there's more daylight.
It figures that my camera died just as we got to the bridge, so I had to whip out my cell phone. Pardon the quality of these two.
I have plenty more pictures of rivers, rocks, and dead trees, but I figure you guys have seen all that by now.
