dan72
Lead Service Attendant
- Joined
- Apr 30, 2006
- Messages
- 418
Sorry about the delay in posting this. Here is part I of my trip report. I hope to have Part II in a few days.
July 9, 2007 MSP to CHI
I arrived at the MSP Midway Station about 6:40 a.m. and promptly checked in my bag with the ticket counter. I was a little skeptical as I would not see it until late tomorrow evening when I arrived in Boston. I checked online earlier that day and it was due in on time which was a relief for me as the day before it was five hours late. I peeked out onto the tracks and saw the switch engine waiting with the St. Paul coach.
The lobby was already quite busy, so I grabbed a seat and relaxed for awhile…this kind of turned out not to be such a good idea. In the past, getting a seat of choice on the EB was never a problem. However, I also never have ridden it in mid-July. As people were piling into the station, the crowd gathered more and more where the conductor takes tickets and assigns cars. Also a church youth group and a girl scout group showed up as well. By now the lobby was packed and I stupidly was sitting quite far away. The EB rolled in on time and after a few minutes a large crowd came in. When the conductor came in to take tickets, he started announcing cities closest to St. Paul first beginning with Red Wing and Winona. After each city was announced, only a handful would get up to be boarded. Then came the announcement for Chicago and everybody left (which was 90% of those in the lobby) stood up to be boarded. As I presented my ticket, I was instructed to the last coach. As I was getting on board, I realized this car was very full. I made my way to the upstairs and to my relief, a set of seats on the left side was still open (my favorite to sit for this part of the EB as it rides right along the Mississippi). I was about to settle in when a woman from behind me asked if I could move as her and her daughter were traveling together. I agreed and sat next to a gentleman on the right side who had already pulled the curtain shut and was curled up with a pillow falling asleep. I guess that is one of the pitfalls of traveling alone on Amtrak which I had not done before…prepare to be moved as space is needed. We departed about 15 minutes late as it took so long to get everybody aboard.
After about 10 minutes, an attendant (our car did not have one as they had a no-show that day) came along and unlocked the door so we could access the rest of the train. I quickly grabbed my camera bag and headed for the sightseer lounge. I sat on the right side on a lounge chair and photographed the St. Paul and Mississippi to Hastings. Once we crossed, the Mississippi was on the left. There was a gentleman sitting in a booth reading a book and I asked if he minded if I sat with him so I could take pictures of the river. He was kind and invited me to join him. He was traveling from Everett, WA to the DC area to be with his ailing father. He would be taking the Capitol Limited later that evening. We had a pleasant conversation and even watched each others items if one of us needed to get something to eat or drink or use a restroom. However, he was also one who was quite eager to discuss religion and was a member of such an organization that quite actively shares its views with others (I will withhold the name as I do not wish to be disparaging at this point). As much as a religious discussion would have been interesting with this person, the Sightseer Lounge is no place for this to happen, so I did what I could to keep us off the topic as much as possible. I decided against going to the dining car as it was so full, however much to my disappointment, the only lunch-related item left to purchase was soup. Otherwise, they were out of everything else save a few breakfast items.
The day so far was beautiful until we reached Milwaukee and it starting clouding up. By the time we reached Chicago, it was pouring outside. It was fun watching the Metra and Amtrak trains pull in and once they stopped, the water would just wash down the sides of the cars. We arrived about ½ hour late which wasn’t too bad as we did have occasional slow orders and a few stops to let freight go by. After dropping off my carry-on in the Metropolitan Lounge, I met up with a former co-worker of mine at CUS and we ended upstairs at the Corner Bakery in the food court where we caught up on each other’s lives and office gossip. Rush hour had reached a fever pitch during this time and CUS was hopping! Her Metra train departed at 7:00 so I saw her to her track. It was still pouring outside, so I decided to head back to the Metropolitan lounge to cool off (it was really humid in CUS) and check some email before boarding the LSL.
CHI – BOS 7/9/2007 – 7/10/2007
At 8:15 p.m., we were lead out of the Metropolitan lounge to our awaiting train. I was assigned to the Majestic View Viewliner which was the fourth car in the consist and was in rommette #2. After settling in and hooking up chargers to my power squid, I made my way to the dining car for the reception. The staff were very friendly and welcoming. I sat with three other people and we exchanged the usual where we were from, going, etc and enjoyed a plate of cheese and crackers with a couple of glasses of chardonnay. The dining car was heritage fleet car with dark blue upholstery. It was a nice car and I would have loved to known its history. After about 45 minutes of chatting, I headed back to my compartment. James, my attendant stopped by to help get my bed ready. I choose to sleep on the top bunk since I was by myself and could crawl down and sit in the seats if I wished. He explained how everything worked and checked to see if I needed anything. He was very friendly and had a great sense of humor. We departed about10:15 and sat back and watch the Chicago skyline disappear in the distance. After transferring a day’s worth of pictures from my camera onto my laptop and backing them up on my iPod, I decided to try and lay down to sleep. As is the case for most people, it was more of a series of cat naps. I awoke when we were in Toledo and saw a beautiful bridge lit up over the Maumee River.
I went back to sleep and awoke again as we pulled into Cleveland. I was on the Lake Erie side so I watched us pull in next to Cleveland Brown Stadium and the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame. I decided to get up and see if I could go outside and my car was open. I spent some time on the platform watching the sunrise over our train and take some pictures of the area. So far, we were on time, however, that was about to change once we switched to CSX after Cleveland. I headed for the shower and went to the dining car for breakfast where I met Diamond, a woman from Boston returning from Michigan. She was surprised to hear that I was traveling to a conference by train, but she also mentioned her dislike of flying. She informed me that she got a phone call this morning telling her that we were going to be bussed after Albany. Although a service alert had been posted online, it had disappeared a few days later. I followed up with my attendant and he said he had not heard of anything, but would check with the conductor later on. I had the Bob Evans Scramble for breakfast. As others have stated, it looks like dog barf, but it does taste quite good.
For lunch, I came into the dining car about 10 minutes before they were going to open, but they invited me to go ahead and have a seat. I ended having lunch with Vivian, who was from New York City. She is in a similar field of work as I am, so we had an interesting conversation comparing notes about our professions. She too, was surprised to find out I was traveling to a conference on Amtrak. After lunch, I headed back and enjoyed some more scenery and took a cat nap as well.
We arrived into Albany almost two hours down thanks to slow orders and waiting for CSX freight trains to go by. I did enjoy my Viewliner a lot, and as Alan has commented on this forum, I also found them to be a better to Superliner sleepers in many respects. One thing I like about this car was that the shades were built into the door and windows which made for better privacy. Just before arriving, I followed up with James about the bus situation and he said I would definitely be on a train. I told him I was relieved, as I was a bit worried about when I would get a chance eat. He told me to grab something now from the lounge since the Boston train would not have a lounge car (which I found a bit weird as I know the website said I would have a lounge car). I went to the lounge car and even though the attendant had closed down, she graciously got me a hot dog to hold me over to Boston.
As we pulled in, 448 was at the platform waiting for us to board. As I approached the conductor, I told him I was in business class. “We don’t have business class” and asked me my destination. I told him Boston and he pointed to the last car. I was really ticked off at this point, but made my way in to the Amfeet I coach which appeared to have been refurbished in recent year, found a seat, and settled in. It turns about there were only about 30 people heading for Boston in this car, so I had plenty of room to spread out over two seats. After waiting about 20 minutes for the go ahead out of Albany, we were off. The tracks were quite rough at this point and we were bounced around a lot. Some people tried to leave our car, but turned back saying we could not get out. I finally decided to investigate it myself and found that the security door had been closed between cars. Given that no announcement had been made that we could not leave the car, I decided to risk Amtrak employee anger (I still was kind of ticked-off about the whole business class thing anyway) and went ahead and opened it up and went explore the train a bit. Much to my surprise there was a fully stocked lounge car ahead of the second coach. As much as I liked James, that little bit of bad information was a quite annoying. Since a hot dog would not last long anyway, I ordered a snack and sat down and read the paper for awhile before returning to my coach seat
We arrived at South station at about 12:30 – 1.75 hours late. I was directed to the baggage car to claim my luggage and to my relief, it had made it without any problem. As much as I wanted to take some pictures of the two Acela sets sitting at the platform, I was really tired at this time I just wanted to get out and find a taxi to get to my hotel. My conference started at 8:00 a.m., I was going on about 4 hours of sleep, and my body was still on Central Time. This trip was business, so I figured I getter get down to it.
In spite of the glitches along the way (which I had somewhat prepared myself for as this is known to happen on Amtrak and traveling in general) I really enjoyed the trip out. The staff overall were really great (except for the shortness of the conductors on 448) and they helped make the trip a lot of fun.
Part II will be posted in a few days. I hope this post wasn’t too long. If so, Alan, please let me know. Thanks!
Dan
July 9, 2007 MSP to CHI
I arrived at the MSP Midway Station about 6:40 a.m. and promptly checked in my bag with the ticket counter. I was a little skeptical as I would not see it until late tomorrow evening when I arrived in Boston. I checked online earlier that day and it was due in on time which was a relief for me as the day before it was five hours late. I peeked out onto the tracks and saw the switch engine waiting with the St. Paul coach.
The lobby was already quite busy, so I grabbed a seat and relaxed for awhile…this kind of turned out not to be such a good idea. In the past, getting a seat of choice on the EB was never a problem. However, I also never have ridden it in mid-July. As people were piling into the station, the crowd gathered more and more where the conductor takes tickets and assigns cars. Also a church youth group and a girl scout group showed up as well. By now the lobby was packed and I stupidly was sitting quite far away. The EB rolled in on time and after a few minutes a large crowd came in. When the conductor came in to take tickets, he started announcing cities closest to St. Paul first beginning with Red Wing and Winona. After each city was announced, only a handful would get up to be boarded. Then came the announcement for Chicago and everybody left (which was 90% of those in the lobby) stood up to be boarded. As I presented my ticket, I was instructed to the last coach. As I was getting on board, I realized this car was very full. I made my way to the upstairs and to my relief, a set of seats on the left side was still open (my favorite to sit for this part of the EB as it rides right along the Mississippi). I was about to settle in when a woman from behind me asked if I could move as her and her daughter were traveling together. I agreed and sat next to a gentleman on the right side who had already pulled the curtain shut and was curled up with a pillow falling asleep. I guess that is one of the pitfalls of traveling alone on Amtrak which I had not done before…prepare to be moved as space is needed. We departed about 15 minutes late as it took so long to get everybody aboard.
After about 10 minutes, an attendant (our car did not have one as they had a no-show that day) came along and unlocked the door so we could access the rest of the train. I quickly grabbed my camera bag and headed for the sightseer lounge. I sat on the right side on a lounge chair and photographed the St. Paul and Mississippi to Hastings. Once we crossed, the Mississippi was on the left. There was a gentleman sitting in a booth reading a book and I asked if he minded if I sat with him so I could take pictures of the river. He was kind and invited me to join him. He was traveling from Everett, WA to the DC area to be with his ailing father. He would be taking the Capitol Limited later that evening. We had a pleasant conversation and even watched each others items if one of us needed to get something to eat or drink or use a restroom. However, he was also one who was quite eager to discuss religion and was a member of such an organization that quite actively shares its views with others (I will withhold the name as I do not wish to be disparaging at this point). As much as a religious discussion would have been interesting with this person, the Sightseer Lounge is no place for this to happen, so I did what I could to keep us off the topic as much as possible. I decided against going to the dining car as it was so full, however much to my disappointment, the only lunch-related item left to purchase was soup. Otherwise, they were out of everything else save a few breakfast items.
The day so far was beautiful until we reached Milwaukee and it starting clouding up. By the time we reached Chicago, it was pouring outside. It was fun watching the Metra and Amtrak trains pull in and once they stopped, the water would just wash down the sides of the cars. We arrived about ½ hour late which wasn’t too bad as we did have occasional slow orders and a few stops to let freight go by. After dropping off my carry-on in the Metropolitan Lounge, I met up with a former co-worker of mine at CUS and we ended upstairs at the Corner Bakery in the food court where we caught up on each other’s lives and office gossip. Rush hour had reached a fever pitch during this time and CUS was hopping! Her Metra train departed at 7:00 so I saw her to her track. It was still pouring outside, so I decided to head back to the Metropolitan lounge to cool off (it was really humid in CUS) and check some email before boarding the LSL.
CHI – BOS 7/9/2007 – 7/10/2007
At 8:15 p.m., we were lead out of the Metropolitan lounge to our awaiting train. I was assigned to the Majestic View Viewliner which was the fourth car in the consist and was in rommette #2. After settling in and hooking up chargers to my power squid, I made my way to the dining car for the reception. The staff were very friendly and welcoming. I sat with three other people and we exchanged the usual where we were from, going, etc and enjoyed a plate of cheese and crackers with a couple of glasses of chardonnay. The dining car was heritage fleet car with dark blue upholstery. It was a nice car and I would have loved to known its history. After about 45 minutes of chatting, I headed back to my compartment. James, my attendant stopped by to help get my bed ready. I choose to sleep on the top bunk since I was by myself and could crawl down and sit in the seats if I wished. He explained how everything worked and checked to see if I needed anything. He was very friendly and had a great sense of humor. We departed about10:15 and sat back and watch the Chicago skyline disappear in the distance. After transferring a day’s worth of pictures from my camera onto my laptop and backing them up on my iPod, I decided to try and lay down to sleep. As is the case for most people, it was more of a series of cat naps. I awoke when we were in Toledo and saw a beautiful bridge lit up over the Maumee River.
I went back to sleep and awoke again as we pulled into Cleveland. I was on the Lake Erie side so I watched us pull in next to Cleveland Brown Stadium and the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame. I decided to get up and see if I could go outside and my car was open. I spent some time on the platform watching the sunrise over our train and take some pictures of the area. So far, we were on time, however, that was about to change once we switched to CSX after Cleveland. I headed for the shower and went to the dining car for breakfast where I met Diamond, a woman from Boston returning from Michigan. She was surprised to hear that I was traveling to a conference by train, but she also mentioned her dislike of flying. She informed me that she got a phone call this morning telling her that we were going to be bussed after Albany. Although a service alert had been posted online, it had disappeared a few days later. I followed up with my attendant and he said he had not heard of anything, but would check with the conductor later on. I had the Bob Evans Scramble for breakfast. As others have stated, it looks like dog barf, but it does taste quite good.
For lunch, I came into the dining car about 10 minutes before they were going to open, but they invited me to go ahead and have a seat. I ended having lunch with Vivian, who was from New York City. She is in a similar field of work as I am, so we had an interesting conversation comparing notes about our professions. She too, was surprised to find out I was traveling to a conference on Amtrak. After lunch, I headed back and enjoyed some more scenery and took a cat nap as well.
We arrived into Albany almost two hours down thanks to slow orders and waiting for CSX freight trains to go by. I did enjoy my Viewliner a lot, and as Alan has commented on this forum, I also found them to be a better to Superliner sleepers in many respects. One thing I like about this car was that the shades were built into the door and windows which made for better privacy. Just before arriving, I followed up with James about the bus situation and he said I would definitely be on a train. I told him I was relieved, as I was a bit worried about when I would get a chance eat. He told me to grab something now from the lounge since the Boston train would not have a lounge car (which I found a bit weird as I know the website said I would have a lounge car). I went to the lounge car and even though the attendant had closed down, she graciously got me a hot dog to hold me over to Boston.
As we pulled in, 448 was at the platform waiting for us to board. As I approached the conductor, I told him I was in business class. “We don’t have business class” and asked me my destination. I told him Boston and he pointed to the last car. I was really ticked off at this point, but made my way in to the Amfeet I coach which appeared to have been refurbished in recent year, found a seat, and settled in. It turns about there were only about 30 people heading for Boston in this car, so I had plenty of room to spread out over two seats. After waiting about 20 minutes for the go ahead out of Albany, we were off. The tracks were quite rough at this point and we were bounced around a lot. Some people tried to leave our car, but turned back saying we could not get out. I finally decided to investigate it myself and found that the security door had been closed between cars. Given that no announcement had been made that we could not leave the car, I decided to risk Amtrak employee anger (I still was kind of ticked-off about the whole business class thing anyway) and went ahead and opened it up and went explore the train a bit. Much to my surprise there was a fully stocked lounge car ahead of the second coach. As much as I liked James, that little bit of bad information was a quite annoying. Since a hot dog would not last long anyway, I ordered a snack and sat down and read the paper for awhile before returning to my coach seat
We arrived at South station at about 12:30 – 1.75 hours late. I was directed to the baggage car to claim my luggage and to my relief, it had made it without any problem. As much as I wanted to take some pictures of the two Acela sets sitting at the platform, I was really tired at this time I just wanted to get out and find a taxi to get to my hotel. My conference started at 8:00 a.m., I was going on about 4 hours of sleep, and my body was still on Central Time. This trip was business, so I figured I getter get down to it.
In spite of the glitches along the way (which I had somewhat prepared myself for as this is known to happen on Amtrak and traveling in general) I really enjoyed the trip out. The staff overall were really great (except for the shortness of the conductors on 448) and they helped make the trip a lot of fun.
Part II will be posted in a few days. I hope this post wasn’t too long. If so, Alan, please let me know. Thanks!
Dan
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