Rails Around the USA:
Summer, 2005

Rail Journal 2: Seattle to Oakland

June 9 - June 21, 2005

Laurence Krieg

Wednesday, 6/22/2005

I rode Cascades train 507 south from Seattle to Tacoma. The Talgo was brisk and comfortable, arriving in Tacoma one minute late, 45 minutes after leaving Seattle. The equipment nameplate listed Spain and Seattle as places of manufacture. Interestingly, when I changed my original Starlight sleeper ticket from Seattle to Tacoma, it cost one dollar more to ride on the Cascades. I don't know if this was because of a ticket change fee, or the added value of the brisk, timely Talgos.

I walked from the Amtrak station in Tacoma to Sound Transit's Tacoma Dome station, about 3 blocks. There are no signs from one station to the other, and within the Tacoma Dome station area, the signage from the bus station to the Link light rail stop is poor to non-existant. I had to ask a passer-by in the automobile garage area where to go, after a small sign led me in and nothing pointed the way out to the light rail stop. I stopped for a while at what looked like a bus or trolley stop, and only after considering for a while noticed that over the crest of the hill was a more likely stopping area. After wandering up there, it became apparent that I had fianlly reached the right spot.

Once on the Czech-made trolley, the ride was quick and quiet. The system seems to include traffic light coordination, so that when the trolley is ready to go, it never has to wait for anybody else. There are also signs in several places that light up to let people coming out of parking garage driveways know that the trolley is in the area. I found all that an amusing contrast to the way streetcars were originally run, as part of the normal street traffic. The Theatre District station at 9th and Commerce is one block north of the busy Pierce Transit bus center. It seems a curious decision not to stop at the transit center; perhaps the system planners were concerned about traffic congestion as the trolley and busses wait for passengers.

11:52 6/23/2005

I walked to the head of the light rail line, enjoyed the 10-minute ride along with an excited 6-year-old boy and his mother. A young rail fan in the making? The walk back to the Amtrak station was much easier knowing where to go - there were certainly no signs along the way.

Aboard Amtrak 11, the southbound Coast Starlight. With P42s 122 and 192 on the point, the train pulled into the station at 10:58, just five minutes late, and we left Tacoma at 11:06. Since Tacoma is a "no-time" stop, I suppose that made us 14 minutes late.

After leaving the station, we got as far as the Ruston signal, at the head of the single-track Nelson Bennett Tunnel under Point Defiance. There we waited about 30 minutes for northbound traffic: a BNSF freight and a Cascades Talgo. Beyond the tunnel there was a maintenence of way crew working on one track, extending the single-track section and general slow-down.

At lunch today I had an angusburger and cheesecake. Table-mates included Griff, the Park Service volunteer narrator, and Jack and his wife from somewhere near Seattle. Jack had not been on a train since riding the Milwaukee Road's Olympian Hiawatha. Griff is a retired Northwest Airlines pilot, who used to fly as far afield as Tokyo and Beijing. He really seems to enjoy this volunteer work, and serves twice each month: once on the Starlight from Seattle to Portland and back, and once on the Builder from Seattle to Havre and back. He says he no longer enjoys flying as a passenger, because it's so crowded and such a hassle.

All southbound trains are being held in Portland while UP does trackwork. We have been told the Starlight will be the first train allowed through. (What about those Cascades to Eugene?)

17:27

After an hour and forty-two minutes in Portland - an hour and twenty-two minutes longer than scheduled - the Starlight pulled out of Union Station and crept through the docklands and industrial yards along the Wilamette. I didn't see if the Cascades train left ahead of us or not. After rolling onto the rich agricultural plain of the Wilamette valley, we started alternating between stretches of 69 MPH and 30 MPH. I can only guess we're meeting caution signals because of following some other train.

18:15

We're now running at a steady 70 MPH south of Salem. Though "steady" describes the speed, it certainly doesn't describe the stability of the cars. This stretch of track - though not too old, since it's all welded rail - is clearly in need of maintenance. In fact, there are spots so rough they slam everyone around, bringing to mind unpleasant memories of the City of New Orleans on its side in a Mississippi swamp. None the less, our engineers are sticking faithfully to the speed limit.

We just passed the village of Tangent. And indeed, we're on a tangent that stretches from Albany, Oregon, due south nearly thirty miles to Halsey. At the moment, we're waiting for a UP manifest, headed up by a pair of SD40-2s, to make its way into Shedd slding. In addition to many empty center-beam flats, the most obvious cargo is scrap metal, including hundreds and hundreds of automobiles reduced to small rectangular cubes. Autos may rule the roads, but trains carry them from their factories to the roads and from the roads to their graveyards.

Sokhavy Chea is the TA for this car, and she says her family came over from Cambodia. She's tall and slender, I'd guess 5'11" and about 130 pounds, in her late 20s. Her English is almost native, so I'd guess she came over at the age of 3 or 4. Further conversation with her confirms that she was 3 when she came to the States; she grew up in Los Angeles. Sokhavy is on the "extra board" and works whatever trains she's needed on. She's been working with Amtrak for about a year, and was furloughed for several weeks when work was scarce.

08:20 6/24/2005

Gliding through the groves south of Chico between 60 and 80 MPH, we're about five hours behind schedule. Without padding in the timetable, we'd get to Oakland about 1 PM, compared to a scheduled arrival time of 8:35.

It looks like a typical central California summer day: blazing sun, cloudless sky, the horizon tinged with brown. The air conditioning in this part of the car isn't working, so the temperature is building up. Ben, in the Parlour Car, just announced the start of the first movie momentarily, so I won't have the cool refuge of the Parlour Car's lower level available. I'll move into the upper level soon. Hopefully, the gaggle of high school kids who were holding noisily forth at breakfast time will be attracted to see the movie, and it will be somewhat more peaceful in the upper level.

08:52

Just crawled across a tressle over the Feather River, whose canyon, so well beloved by rail fans, I've never seen. At Binney Junction, we're slowly joining the former Western Pacific line and snaking south through Marysville.

09:22

This part of California, between Yuba City and Sacramento, appears to specialize in rice paddies. We're sailing at sixty between bright green, flooded fields with snaking earthen barriers to separate the various parts.

09:49

There are an unusually large number of train attendants in their 20s on this run. These young employees are understandably popular with the teenage passangers. I overheard an exchange between one teenage girl and a young male attendant with whom she wanted to sit at breakfast. He explained that it would get him into trouble, because he would be considered to be sexually harrasing her. Understandably, she wondered why she wouldn't be considered to be harrassing him. "Because you're the passanger - you guys are always right!"

11:53

Snaking along the industrial east shore of San Francisco Bay, going 45 most of the time, but past Sobrante speeding up to 69. We've met a couple of California/Amtrak trains, running with their F59PHI locomotives on the west end, regardless of the direction they're going. Now running through Richmond at a steady 80, past the BART yard and into the "real" bay area.

12:06

Emeryville, 3 hours and 56 minutes behind scheduled. Could be worse, I suppose. Time to stop journalling and put the computer away.

The next journal relates to my stay in the San Francisco Bay area.
The next rail journal takes me from Oakland to Oxnard.