Rails All Around the USA:
Summer, 2005
Rail Journal 1:
Ann Arbor to Seattle
June 9 - June 21, 2005
Laurence Krieg
08:53 6/10/2005 Friday
Boarded
Amtrak 351 Wolverine Service at Ann Arbor. P52 number 127 on
the point; number 25 is on the rear. We're rolling along the Huron River.
Due at 08:23, it was late and left at 08:42. About 30-40 passengers boarded.
The station agent explained that the lateness was due to track work between
Ann Arbor and Dearborn on minor washouts caused by heavy thunderstorms
that swept through the area Sunday.
In the club car, a group of five Canadians are sipping beer and talking loudly about real estate and lawyers.
This morning's news carried a story about gasoline prices: $2.12 per gallon of self-serve regular unleaded in the Detroit area; $2.25 in the west of Michigan. Crude is seling for about $55/barrel, "on rumors of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia being in ill health."
09:16 Jackson
The giggly, overweight 30-something gals in the seat behind me are getting
off to smoke.
The junior conductor, an African-American named Quintin, notices the gals
playing cards and drinking vodka; he asks them if they like to "party"
and when they reply enthusiastically, he recommends Wheat Street in Chicago
- clubs all along it.
A gentleman about my age asks to sit by me so he can plug in his laptop.
He's working on a paper about X-ray lasers. I'm reading about W3C's CSS
page model. I guess we're the geek-seat.
10:37 Kalamazoo
This is the last smoke-stop before Chicago, so there's a minor stampede of smokers getting off. Conductor Quintin says, "This is your last chance before California!" the gals scream, "California?!?" to which Quintin replies, "California, Chicago, they're all the same." Energentic disagreement from the gals.
11:22 EDT west of Kalamazoo
This is the stretch of track owned by Amtrak, where a fair amount has been invested in track and signal improvements for high-speed running, including PTS. The signal boxes and wayside equipment, even the mileposts, have been newly installed. East of Dowagiac we stretched out and ran at least 90, though I've decided not to get up my GPS to monitor progress. Very smooth and quiet. We just passed through a construction zone where the tracks were tilted first to one site, then to the other. Now we're back up to speed.
11:16 CDT northern Indiana
We
amble along at about 30 mph. Conductor Quintin says it's because the ties
have just been replaced, and a slow-order is in effect until the ballast
settles. We merge onto the mainline and pick up speed.
13:40 6/10/2005 Chicago Union Station
Amtrak
351 arrived about three minutes early in Chicago today. As always, I've
been upstairs to enjoy the restored monumental architecture of Chicago's
Union Station. I had time to cross Jackson Street and have a bite and
a sip at Starbucks before the "OK to board."
My Train Attendant (TA) for the trip in Superliner sleeper 0731 is Isaac
R.
14:15
The
Empire Builder pulls out right on time! Oops - but stops after
a few feet and waits for Train 49 and some air conditioner work to be
completed.
Note: Train 49, the Lakeshore from New York and Boston,
is scheduled into Chicago at 09:30.
14:19
TA in car 0730 comes on the intercom and says he has a door that won't close. Someone has already tried to fix it and has not been able; could the conductor please send someone else?
Isaac comes in to familiarize me with the roomette, and I list all the sleepers I've been on. He says he presumes I know where the light switches are. I mention the zero-budget proposal for Amtrak and asked what he thought of that. "Every year, they propose some ridiculous figure - I just don't worry about it any more." He went on to recount that Amtrak was started by Nixon in 1972 with hundreds of vice presidents getting political payoffs. It cost "mega-money" then, as he put it. Now, every administration, Republican or Democrat, threatens to cut the funding to little or nothing.
Meanwhile, in the dark-orange glare of the multivapor lights, Metra bi-levels, bells clanging, back in or roar out, their locomotives on their north (outer) ends. These are mainly the F59PHI units, though a few are the older EMD models (not F40s). An Amtrak regional - probably a Hiawatha - pulls out with a P52 at each end. Through the lighted windows, it looks like every seat is filled.
15:28
Under way at last, we emerge from the cave of Union Station into the canyons of Chicago apartments. Soon we're passed the apartments and are in a winderness of rusting, decaying late 19th century industrial buildings.
The conductor collects my ticket, and mentions that it's nice and cool in this car. I ask about the AC on the car with the problem, and he says there's a broken valve that they didn't have on hand in the station. "They're just going to have to live with it, and that's bad. Really bad in this weather." It's in the 90s outside, and not much cooler inside, if at all. I recall the AC failed on the Starlight's Pacific Parlour lounge last year, somewhere in mid-Oregon. It became a ghost-car in short order.
Speaking of equipment problems, the electrical outlet in this roomette doesn't work, though the lights do. Isaac says it had the same problem on the eastbound trip. I asked to switch to the room across the hall, which is empty now, but he wouldn't let me. "The folks getting on in Minneapolis might have asked for it [room 10] specially." Yeah, right - he's afraid he'll have to clean up my mess in this room, since I've already settled in. But he welcomed me to charge up anything I need there until Minneapolis. I ran my extension cord over to room 9's plug, stringing it over the corridor by using parts of the door frame to hold it up, and sliding the door shut to make sure it stays up. So far, so good.
15:43
By now, the wasteland has given way to the trees and neat lawns of Chicago's north suburbs. No whistling at the crossings, though, as mentioned in the FRA discussion on "Quiet Zones". (www.fra.dot.gov/??)
16:21
Well out into the country now, and past the Chicagoland quiet zones. The horn is sounding pretty often now, and as often as I hear it in the distance, there's nothing like being on the train with it. I can't help it - it brings tears to my eyes. In spite of delays, equipment problems, and underfunding, there's nothing as wonderful as being on a whistling train. Sure, we're strolling along behind a frieght at about 40 MPH now, and how can that compare with a Shinkansen, a TGV, or even an Acela? True, the speed of the silent Eurostar from England to Paris in 2000 was awesome, but the urgency of this diesel's horn has a totally different, and romantic appeal. (Of course, I might not feel so romantic if the AC in this car wasn't working.)
16:32
Totally stopped in the middle of vast corn fields. The conductor says
a drawbridge in Milwaukee is stuck open, and a "parade of trains"
is waiting for it. He promisses a slow ride into Milwaukee.
16:38 On our way again.
Dinner: Prime rib with baked potato; chocolate pyramid for desert.
Companions:
Gary (East Lansing; accompanying grandchildren to Glacier National Park);
Bob (Chicago, bound for Seattle and an Alaska cruise with family); and
Jenine (New York, returning to her native Portland, Oregon). Sunset over the
fields of central Wisconsin.
09:13 6/11/2005
Now stopped in Rugby, North Dakota. A group is boarding and will be riding to Minot, an hour and a half up the line; they will be occupying the sightseer lounge, which is closed to other passengers, presumably because there was no other space on the train for the group.
I had a very good night last night. Upper berth, as usual, but this time I put a pillow between me and the safety webbing. That took care of the semi-conscious feeling I've had in the past, that the berth is tilted slightly toward the abyss. The pillow made a very snug, comfortable nest of my top bunk.
Woke up about 4:30 (5:30 home-time) and stumbled to the bathroom. I was determined to sleep some more, and succeeded fairly well. At 6:50, when my alarm went off, I decided to take a shower, and I feel much the better for having done so. "A cleaner and a finer boy," as my mother used to say.
At breakfast, I sat with John and his wife, whose name I've forgotten. John is about my age, with a round, rubicund, jolly face and trim white beard. He's a computer scientist specializing in the knowledge management aspects of artificial intelligence. He's on his way to a conference in Portland. I had "Railroad French Toast" with susage; the french toast is my traditional first breakfast in the dining car, in honor of the french toast I had on the Atlantic Coast Line when I was ten, going from Washington to Sarasota with my mother and sisters. Amtrak's inerpretation is a bit thinner, using square-loaf bread rather than the French-loaf I remember from the ACL.
The weather is mostly cloudy and hazy. The country has been very flat,
though is now getting a bit more rolly. There are many pools of standing
water in addition to the lakes and marshes dotting the landscape. Trees
are relatively scarce, and mainly seem to be planted as windbreaks around
the farm houses. The lack of trees is amply make up for by the abundance
of birds: mainly water fowl, most commonly ducks. There have also been
cranes, egrets, hawks, red-wing blackbirds, and just now a black bird
similar to a red-wing, but a little bigger, with a bright-yellow head.
In
the Minot newspaper, which was delivered to everybody, was a story about
the flood caused by recent downpours. Governor Hoegen will be making a
quick trip to the area to view the damage.
The journal ends here, but the photos 
tell the story from this point on.
Note - "Related Logs"
In the left-hand navigation area of each rail journal, you'll see a link to the "Related Log". This will take you to a spreadsheet (in HTML format) with entries for each station stop along the way. Warning: this will be of interest only to the more rabid railfans!
So, railfans: These entries give fairly exact times - departure times, if not otherwise noted - from all the station stops we visited while I was awake. Stations visited while I slept have times marked zzz, and calculations are based on the last and first stations visited while I was awake. Mileage is supplied from the Amtrak timetables, as is the scheduled time of departure (and arrival at major stations). From this is calculated the average speed of the train between stations, and the amount of lateness (in red) or earliness (in green - yes, it did happen occasionally!).