RailFanLNK
Conductor
Bill and I ended parting ways for awhile. He went to the Sightseer Lounge car to start reading the book, "Waiting On A Train". I remained at my coach seat with my book, "Beyond The Final Score" by Tom Osborne, the former head coach for the Husker football team. T.O. goes to my church and is a really nice guy along with his wife Nancy. I mowed through his book and finished at 8:45pm last night in the roomette we decided to grab.
We arrived into GBB right on time which was great. Now...what are we going to do in a strange city for 4 hours? Well we found a military museum at the VFW Hall and called a cab. It was kinda icey out so we decided against walking. The cabdriver drops us off to a packed VFW Hall. I couldn't figure out why so many people were there and they were all playing bingo. We had a woman who welcomed us that was a volunteer there and hung out with us and talked about the musuem and GBB passionately. We were waiting for the gentleman to come down and unlock the musuem. He arrived and Jim was wonderful and a very proud WWII veteran. He was a clerk who worked with McCarthur. After showing the musuem he offered to "drive us around GBB" and show us around. It was a real treat. We then window shopped for about 1 more hour and it was now time for the #5 to be arriving. It was on time, we had killed our 4 hour layover fairly quickly and decided to upgrade to a roomette since it was at the low bucket price of $107. Dinner would have cost us $60 total so we thought this was a no-brainer and it was. We had LaVonna (?) as our SCA and she was excellent. She made our beds up while we had dinner in the dining car and we had the steak. They weren't calling it the Flat Iron Steak but whatever it was it was excellent. Our dinner mate was "Jim" who worked for a University in Illinois somewhere. He had never been on Amtrak and his boss gave him a trip to San Francisco to conference all paid for in a Deluxe Bedroom. He was LOVING it.
He had the steak as well and I gave him all sorts of "rail info" for the remaining parts of his trip. He was travelling alone but was already thinking of what trip he could do with his wife and three kids. I gave him tips! All in all, the dining car was great. Our waitress was Adrienne and she was quick, fun and knowledgeable.
We left the Dining Car around 8:30pm to find our beds turned down. I got all my belongings together since we detrain at midnight. (if on time) I finished up my book on Tom Osborne and was alsleep by 9pm. I awaken in Omaha NE a service stop where they change out the conductors and fuel the CZ. I slept intermittently the next 50 miles but was pretty much awake and stareing out the window until we arrived 25 minutes early in to Lincoln' Amtrak Station. We had a great trip, great food, met people, relaxed, read and just genuinely had a fun day!
We arrived into GBB right on time which was great. Now...what are we going to do in a strange city for 4 hours? Well we found a military museum at the VFW Hall and called a cab. It was kinda icey out so we decided against walking. The cabdriver drops us off to a packed VFW Hall. I couldn't figure out why so many people were there and they were all playing bingo. We had a woman who welcomed us that was a volunteer there and hung out with us and talked about the musuem and GBB passionately. We were waiting for the gentleman to come down and unlock the musuem. He arrived and Jim was wonderful and a very proud WWII veteran. He was a clerk who worked with McCarthur. After showing the musuem he offered to "drive us around GBB" and show us around. It was a real treat. We then window shopped for about 1 more hour and it was now time for the #5 to be arriving. It was on time, we had killed our 4 hour layover fairly quickly and decided to upgrade to a roomette since it was at the low bucket price of $107. Dinner would have cost us $60 total so we thought this was a no-brainer and it was. We had LaVonna (?) as our SCA and she was excellent. She made our beds up while we had dinner in the dining car and we had the steak. They weren't calling it the Flat Iron Steak but whatever it was it was excellent. Our dinner mate was "Jim" who worked for a University in Illinois somewhere. He had never been on Amtrak and his boss gave him a trip to San Francisco to conference all paid for in a Deluxe Bedroom. He was LOVING it.
He had the steak as well and I gave him all sorts of "rail info" for the remaining parts of his trip. He was travelling alone but was already thinking of what trip he could do with his wife and three kids. I gave him tips! All in all, the dining car was great. Our waitress was Adrienne and she was quick, fun and knowledgeable.We left the Dining Car around 8:30pm to find our beds turned down. I got all my belongings together since we detrain at midnight. (if on time) I finished up my book on Tom Osborne and was alsleep by 9pm. I awaken in Omaha NE a service stop where they change out the conductors and fuel the CZ. I slept intermittently the next 50 miles but was pretty much awake and stareing out the window until we arrived 25 minutes early in to Lincoln' Amtrak Station. We had a great trip, great food, met people, relaxed, read and just genuinely had a fun day!
