Zephyr Detour via Wyoming

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Trogdor

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I just got back last night (Saturday) from a brief trip out west. The primary purpose of the trip was to ride the Zephyr's detour through Wyoming, while Union Pacific does track work on the Moffat line. Since I had enough Amtrak Guest Rewards points for a "one zone" sleeper, and that reward ticket could include transfers, I decided to go to my favo(u)rite city, Vancouver, BC.

Due to time limitations, I had to fly out that way. I got a decent price from Air Canada on a two-connection trip from Milwaukee via Toronto and Edmonton. However, when I got to the airport on Friday, August 26, I learned that my MKE-YYZ (Toronto) flight was cancelled. Fortunately, Air Canada was able to rebook me on their partner airline, United, on a flight to Chicago (flying Milwaukee to Chicago is a waste, but nevertheless...) that departed five minutes after my Toronto flight was supposed to have left. In Chicago, I had a 45-minute connection to a nonstop flight to Vancouver. The end result of this was that I actually got to Vancouver 3.5 hours earlier than I originally intended.

For those interested, in Vancouver I spent the time riding and photographing (with not even the slightest hint of harassment) SkyTrain and their buses, and was able to ride a 1954 Brill trolley, as well as a 2005 New Flyer trolley pilot bus ("trolley" in this sense refers to an electric trolley bus). I also rode the #15 Cambie line for the last time, as the final electric trolley buses on that line will be running just a few hours from now, before the wires are permanently removed from that street to make way for construction of a new rapid transit line to the airport.

Anyway, my return home started August 31, on the 5:45 am bus from Vancouver to Seattle, where I boarded the Coast Starlight. I had been ticketed in first class twice before on that train, and both times the Pacific Parlour car was blanked. This time, however, 39972 was there, right behind my sleeper. I missed a Parlourless train by one day, as the previous day's Starlight had a dining car instead of the Parlour.

We left Seattle just a couple of minutes late, and were somewhat close to schedule until we reached Portland. There, the train transfers from BNSF to Union Pacific. Immediately, we were delayed by about 10-15 minutes trying to get the dispatcher to allow us to proceed. From there, we enjoyed a decent ride, not being horribly delayed in any single spot.

Thursday, September 1, we arrived in Sacramento, where I alighted. The train was about two hours late, which was nice for me since I didn't have to get off at six-something in the morning. This also enabled me to eat breakfast in the dining car, though, unfortunately, I have been suffering from a mystery illness of some sort off and on for the last two months (and the symptoms have included nausea and a loss of appetite), and it was "on" that day. Therefore, I was unable to finish any of the meals I had in the dining car that day. But I digress...

I had a couple of hours to kill in Sacramento, so I did a little bit of walking (trying to find my way around, as the main exit from the station to the street was blocked by construction), and wound up riding one of the light rail lines to its southern end and back downtown.

The Zephyr arrived in Sacramento about 20 minutes late, and I boarded the transition sleeper, where I had room 22 (this was my first time ever in a transition sleeper). The scenery through the Sierra Nevada mountains was great, and the sightseer lounge actually had clear windows. Car 33000 had a tag on the upper level indicating that it had been rebuilt at Beech Grove in 1995, but I don't know if it has undergone any work since then. My experience has been that most Superliner I lounges have had really dirty, cloudy windows, but this car must have had its glass replaced fairly recently (i.e. mid 1990s or later). Once again, though, because I wasn't feeling all that great, I spent a bit too much time sitting in my room, and not enough in back, enjoying the view. Fortunately, the room across from me (#21) was unoccupied, so I at least had the option of looking out the left side of the train from time to time.

The Zephyr also had a volunteer from the California State Railroad Museum ride from Sacramento to Reno, making occasional announcements about scenic highlights along the way. These announcements were train-wide (as opposed to lounge-car-only), so I was able to hear them while sitting in my room.

I managed to get to sleep at a reasonably decent hour (though I forget exactly what hour that was, but it was after we left Winnemucca). I didn't wake up until the train was in Salt Lake City, at around 5:00 am. I fell asleep before the train pulled out, but I figure we were around 1.5 to 2 hours late by that time. When I woke up for good, we were still in Utah (I had a GPS connected to my laptop, so I knew exactly where we were), but were headed north.

Sometime after breakfast, we entered Wyoming, my first time ever being in that state. Some people would call Wyoming's scenery "boring." I would say "repetitive" is a better word. The line has some great scenery (though not quite as good as the Colorado route), but you happen to see the exact same thing for about 10 hours, broken only occasionally by a couple of houses and a rusted car. For those that want to see this line, but don't have the opportunity to ride a train over it, Interstate 80 follows much of the same route.

Around noon on Friday, September 2, we stopped in Green River, WY (as opposed to Green River, UT, which is a regular Zephyr stop). This was a crew change point for both the Amtrak crew and the Union Pacific pilots, and they let us step off the train for a few minutes. After we got going again, the dining car opened for lunch.

During the conversation at lunch, I would learn that one of the guys at my table happened to be member "RandyJay" at this forum. The other man at the table was a professional golfer that changed careers, and was now working for his dad's construction business in Michigan.

The trip through Wyoming wasn't without excitement. At some point, one man tried to open a door and jump from the train. The crew decided he was mentally unstable, and had EMS and police meet the train at Hanna. A few hours later, apparently there was another passenger threatening to open the door and jump from the train. However, he managed to stay on the train at least until Denver (he may have even traveled further, but as far as I am aware, nobody actually jumped from the train).

My one-zone Guest Rewards ticket was to Denver, and I had booked coach from Denver to Chicago. When I booked my ticket, the DEN-CHI sleeper fare was $260 or so. However, before the train made it to Denver, the conductor sold me a $150 upgrade for the remainder of the trip, enabling me to stay in my room.

In Denver, I met someone from another forum who is now retired and works part-time washing the Zephyr's windows when it arrives in the station. He happened to have a handful of stuff for me, including some Wyoming detour route Guides put together by ColoRail, as well as the latest information on Amtrak's hurricane disruptions, courtesy of NARP.

When we pulled out of Denver, we were just under three hours late. Even though the detour is supposed to be faster than the regular route, enroute delays (i.e. freight congestion, stopping to put off a crazy passenger, etc.) caused us to lose about an hour.

I remember the track through eastern Colorado and western Nebraska to be particularly bad (i.e. near derailment quality) the last time I rode the route, back in early 2003. Either the track has since been fixed, or I was just too tired to notice, because I slept right through everything, waking up as the train was near Lincoln, NE.

We left Lincoln three hours late, but then stopped a few minutes later. We waited for three westbound freights (the first of which didn't show up for about an hour) before proceeding. By the time we got to Omaha, we had lost two hours, and were five hours late. So, BNSF decided to pull a UP on us.

Five hours, of course, made me quite nervous. The Zephyr's scheduled arrival in Chicago was 3:20 pm, and the last Hiawatha departs at 8:05 pm. The Hiawatha is one train that they absolutely will not hold for connections (Michigan service trains are also in that category), so if we didn't get in by 8:00 (allowing five minutes to race across the station to the other side and get to tracks 17/19), I wouldn't have a train ride home.

Randy was scheduled to take the Galesburg-Springfield connection to the Texas Eagle, but they announced that we were too late for that, and passengers making that connection should continue to Chicago to be reaccommodated. In fact, two Amtrak customer service representatives boarded in Galesburg to get a jump start on the reaccommodation process. Passengers headed to Michigan were either put on buses (if going to western Michigan), or put on train 48 to Toledo, where Amtrak paid for them to take taxis to their destinations (Detroit, Ann Arbor, etc.). Passengers on train 30 were either put up in a hotel and booked on the next day's train, or put on train 48 (if going no farther than Cleveland) or 50 (if going to Washington, DC). Obviously, trains 48 and 50 were held for our arrival.

I was told that I would either have to run like hell (not the actual words used) and get on 341, or I'd have to go to customer service to be put on a taxi to the Greyhound station and take a bus home. I had done that once before, and didn't enjoy it, and didn't want to do it again. Nevertheless, I figured that would be inevitable.

While I was waiting to see the customer service guy in the dining car, the conductors had to restrain a drunk passenger that was causing trouble. They removed him from the main passenger area, and brought him up to the conductor's lounge in the dorm car to isolate him.

The crew had announced an estimated arrival time in Chicago of "8:05" so I was curious to know if there was any possibility of us being a minute or two ahead of that estimate, so that I might have a snowball's chance in hell of catching the Hiawatha. I went down to ask the conductors of their best guess at my chances of catching the train. The drunk was blabbering about something, making no sense in whatever he was saying, so I just ignored him. When I was done talking to the conductors, the drunk got right in my face and decided to shove me into the baggage rack.

This caused the conductors to call for police assistance, and the man was arrested at Naperville. Ironically, the delay in taking the man off the train, the police asking me for a statement and providing information about pressing charges, etc., made us lose about 10 minutes at Naperville. This killed any chance of me being able to catch the train home.

We finally pulled into Chicago Union Station at 8:15 pm (so, even without the Naperville delay, I doubt I would have caught train 341). The Amtrak customer service folks in Chicago wanted to take my $18 Hiawatha ticket and give me $14 for the Greyhound ticket to Milwaukee (which I would buy once I got to the bus station). The last time I was in this situation, they gave me a full refund of the ticket price, but didn't give me anything for the bus ticket (net result being that I was up a couple of dollars after subtracting the cost of the bus ticket). In this case, I didn't see it as an exchange in my favor, and declined their offer and kept my ticket. (I could either spend $14 on a Greyhound ticket, or $18 on my next Hiawatha ticket.)

The Greyhound station was absolutely chaotic. People were crowded everywhere, there was no particular line for anything, and nobody seemed to know exactly where they were supposed to be to catch their bus. The Chicago-Milwaukee schedule at 9:30 didn't even start to board until 9:50. Greyhound had three buses operating on this schedule for the labor day weekend, and there didn't seem to be any particular order to the way in which they were doing things. My bus finally left around 10:15, and got to Milwaukee at 11:45. Greyhound has been advertising improved service between Chicago and Milwaukee with new, "more comfortable" buses, but I will gladly spend the extra few dollars and take the train whenever I have a need to go to Chicago.

Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. I'm sure RandyJay will have some comments to add when he gets back home (he should be on the Texas Eagle as I type this).
 
Great report Robert - I'd like to ride that train sometime. We were in Vancouver a few months ago. Great city. Shame you didn't have time for the Rail Museum in Sacramento!

Tom
 
Robert,

Thanks for the mention in your report - I certainly enjoyed meeting you and the time we spent conversing - perhaps we can do it again someday! Sorry to hear your final segment on the 'hound was not without problems. As you can tell, I'm a little behind in getting back to the board after my trip home . . . . . but as you mentioned, BNSF's little UP tactic just east of Lincoln blew my same-day connection to the Eagle. At least Amtrak was kind enough to overnight me in Chicago and get me out on the next day's train. Thanks again for short tour of CUS!

Don't think I can add anything to your nice report, but I will mention that I had my little share of chaos as well, in that Eagle passengers were "bus bridged" from St Louis to Little Rock and vice versa due to a derailment somewhere in between. The transistion from train to bus at St Louis was rather chaotic, with no guidance from Amtrak personnel to be found - sort of every person for themselves. We arrived at Little Rock about 1 hour down from scheduled departure time, and waited yet another hour for train 22 to get turned into train 21, again with no significant information provided by the station agents. Fortunately the rest of the trip home was uneventful, and thanks to padding in the schedule I arrived in San Antonio only an hour or so (and one whole day) late.

Again, thanks for the great report, and for all of the information you were able to provide enroute!

Randy
 
Both to Robert and to Randy

Robert, I really enjoyed your report.....am just now responding to it because I was on vacation the week beginning with Labor Day when you posted it. So, I somehow overlooked it. Anyway all those wild drunks, getting swung at, people trying to jump off, etc....as unpleasant and sometimes scary as these things can be at the time, if you survive them, they make for GREAT memories!!! (like my N.E. power blackout in NYC for just one example).

Hope your mystery illness has been diagnosed and is being treated.

Interesting to see how the 'hound in CHI did not seem to have its act together any more than anybody else.

Glad you got to meet Randy Jay. Always good to hear about one board member meeting up with another.

RANDY--

Good to hear from you again. I always remember you for one reason in particular--I actually know a person (a retired guy at my work ) named Randy Jay. So I never forget you. I have to keep the two of you separate in my mind, and must remind myself that the two of you almost surely do not resemble at all.
 
Hi, Bill,

Good to hear from you as well. Yes it was nice to meet another forum member - Robert is a super nice guy - really made the trip more enjoyable.

Looking forward to meeting you too one of these days - now wouldn't it be something if I DID ressemble the other Randy!
 
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