CONduit: The Adventure Continues
Friday, June 4th, 2004 11:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rolanniThe further adventures of Amtrak Train #49, Car 25117, Lake Shore Limited
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
The train rolled into Cleveland Station at 7:10 a.m., four hours behind schedule. Luckily, our connection to Salt Lake City doesn't leave Chicago Union Station until 2 p.m. We may make it. If we're close, says one of the attendants, they'll hold the train
for us. If we're not, Amtrak will put us up in a hotel and put us on the next train going our way. If that happens, we'll miss the library gig Thursday night. Urp.
But that's the future. In the past...
Around about 10 p.m. last night, Crew Chief Bob Schmidt discovered that Steve and I were going all the way to Chicago and moved us down to seats 23 and 24, mid-car. Once in our new digs, we had a glass of wine. Bob Schmidt stopped by to chat a bit and tell us about one of the conductors, who writes horror. Duty called eventually, Steve dozed while I had at Merry Gentry. It had been an adrenaline filled day and I was still somewhat wired.
The train quieted down by bits and pieces as people put their cellphones away, and settled in to sleep. At last, mine was the only light on. Steve slept fitfully and I didn't even want to try, but at last Merry wore me out and I nodded off. Sleep, as I say, was broken -- broken most thoroughly by a longish stop sometime in the early single digit hours. We looked, but there was only darkness outside the windows -- no station, no city, nobody on the road, if road there was – no stars.
Good ol' #49 at last got underway again. A crew member came by, saw we were awake and stopped to let us know that the train had run over a railway tie that had been left in the middle of the track. The conductors had removed it and the train was now moving
on. Which it did at a good clip. We both dozed off again, my head on Steve's shoulder, letting the train rock us to sleep.
And woke up to silence, the train once again motionless and nothing outside the windows but black night and the occasional headlight glare from a truck on the distant road. This was around 2:30 a.m., after we'd been stopped for awhile. It was too still and my back hurt from being crammed in the seat at a weird angle, so I straightened up, turned on the light and got back with Merry. My goodness, what adventures that girl has.
Steve woke up and we talked a little, low-voiced. One of the passengers across the aisle woke up and started folding papers, first loading her CD player and slipping the buttons into her ears. The guy in the seat behind me had a nightmare, kicked the back of my chair repeatedly, snorted awake, shifted position and went back to sleep.
We saw dawn bleach the edge of the sky a little after four, and at 5:30 a.m., the train started to move again.
The story from another crew member: The tie had in actuality been a pile of ties, which had splintered when the forward engine caught them up and though the conductors had removed the larger pieces, they had missed several which had gotten up into the workings and the wheel wells. In addition, the cowcatcher had been deformed by the impact and displayed a worrisome tendency to catch on the track. Concerned that we might derail, the conductors called ahead to CSX, which sent a crew down to weld the damaged cow catcher. The forward engine, with its compliment of splinters, was powered down and the back-up engine brought on line. Its now pulling the cars and pushing the forward locomotive, ever nearer to Chicago, bold heart.
The cafe car opened at 6:30 a.m. and breakfast was a microwaved bagel with cream cheese for me, an apple muffin for Steve and strong railroad coffee all around.
This train has been ill-wished from the beginning of the trip, according to Bob Schmidt, who naturally doesn't put it that way. There is, for instance, no dining car for the first class passengers and them others what're eager to pay five-star prices for two-star food. When they were putting the train set together at the yard in New York, the dining car was found to be defective in some way, and so it was "shopped." However, no other dining car was available, so a second café car was added, back near the sleepers, and stocked with frozen Stouffer's dinners, and that's what first class had for dinner. We did better, I'm thinking, with the d'angelo's sub that we packed in.
It's 7:40 a.m. and we're at the Elyria, Ohio station as I type. The schedule says we should've been here at 3:27 a.m.
This is going to be interesting.
Straying for a moment from the theme of disasters, the day outside my window is pleasant: slightly overcast and misty over Lake Erie as we rumbled through Cleveland. The marinas are so tight with watercraft you could walk from one end to the other, stepping from deck to deck. The Donald Z. Nelson was at dock being loaded with sand, or ore, or coal. A lone sailboat was out beyond the breakwater, sails full of wind. All of the water we've passed over or run by has been brown, and running swift, frothy with yesterday's rains. There are standing puddles in fields and yards, some patronized by a few puzzled but game Canada geese.
One of the joys of traveling by train is the lovely rolling greenness of the passing countryside. One of the horrors is seeing first hand how very much junk there is in this world. Man is the animal that clutters and leaves without cleaning up after himself.
Steve is dozing again. Me, I think I'll stare at the window a bit and then open the sample chapter file.
* * *
Eleven-fifteen. Just outside of Waterloo, Indiana. An hour delay for a disabled freight train on the track ahead. The cafe car has run out of food. Well, maybe they'll hold our train for us at Chicago.
* * *
We raised the station at 2 p.m., Chicago time, left Train 49, walked into the station by one door and were immediately waved out another.
"Train Five! To your right! Train Seven! To your right!" called the Amtrak employee at our entry gate. We obediently went right, dragging the duffel bag, and fetchingly draped with Sabu, my handbag, Steve's camera and laptop.
"Train Five?" asked the attendant at the next gate. "Straight down on your right."
So we went right again, traipsing past the mail cars to the first sleeper and Reggie the car attendant, who happily had us on his list. Upstairs we went, bearing, uh-huh, right, to room six and here we are, on our way to Naperville. It's 3:10 p.m., Chicago time, departure just forty minutes late.
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
The train rolled into Cleveland Station at 7:10 a.m., four hours behind schedule. Luckily, our connection to Salt Lake City doesn't leave Chicago Union Station until 2 p.m. We may make it. If we're close, says one of the attendants, they'll hold the train
for us. If we're not, Amtrak will put us up in a hotel and put us on the next train going our way. If that happens, we'll miss the library gig Thursday night. Urp.
But that's the future. In the past...
Around about 10 p.m. last night, Crew Chief Bob Schmidt discovered that Steve and I were going all the way to Chicago and moved us down to seats 23 and 24, mid-car. Once in our new digs, we had a glass of wine. Bob Schmidt stopped by to chat a bit and tell us about one of the conductors, who writes horror. Duty called eventually, Steve dozed while I had at Merry Gentry. It had been an adrenaline filled day and I was still somewhat wired.
The train quieted down by bits and pieces as people put their cellphones away, and settled in to sleep. At last, mine was the only light on. Steve slept fitfully and I didn't even want to try, but at last Merry wore me out and I nodded off. Sleep, as I say, was broken -- broken most thoroughly by a longish stop sometime in the early single digit hours. We looked, but there was only darkness outside the windows -- no station, no city, nobody on the road, if road there was – no stars.
Good ol' #49 at last got underway again. A crew member came by, saw we were awake and stopped to let us know that the train had run over a railway tie that had been left in the middle of the track. The conductors had removed it and the train was now moving
on. Which it did at a good clip. We both dozed off again, my head on Steve's shoulder, letting the train rock us to sleep.
And woke up to silence, the train once again motionless and nothing outside the windows but black night and the occasional headlight glare from a truck on the distant road. This was around 2:30 a.m., after we'd been stopped for awhile. It was too still and my back hurt from being crammed in the seat at a weird angle, so I straightened up, turned on the light and got back with Merry. My goodness, what adventures that girl has.
Steve woke up and we talked a little, low-voiced. One of the passengers across the aisle woke up and started folding papers, first loading her CD player and slipping the buttons into her ears. The guy in the seat behind me had a nightmare, kicked the back of my chair repeatedly, snorted awake, shifted position and went back to sleep.
We saw dawn bleach the edge of the sky a little after four, and at 5:30 a.m., the train started to move again.
The story from another crew member: The tie had in actuality been a pile of ties, which had splintered when the forward engine caught them up and though the conductors had removed the larger pieces, they had missed several which had gotten up into the workings and the wheel wells. In addition, the cowcatcher had been deformed by the impact and displayed a worrisome tendency to catch on the track. Concerned that we might derail, the conductors called ahead to CSX, which sent a crew down to weld the damaged cow catcher. The forward engine, with its compliment of splinters, was powered down and the back-up engine brought on line. Its now pulling the cars and pushing the forward locomotive, ever nearer to Chicago, bold heart.
The cafe car opened at 6:30 a.m. and breakfast was a microwaved bagel with cream cheese for me, an apple muffin for Steve and strong railroad coffee all around.
This train has been ill-wished from the beginning of the trip, according to Bob Schmidt, who naturally doesn't put it that way. There is, for instance, no dining car for the first class passengers and them others what're eager to pay five-star prices for two-star food. When they were putting the train set together at the yard in New York, the dining car was found to be defective in some way, and so it was "shopped." However, no other dining car was available, so a second café car was added, back near the sleepers, and stocked with frozen Stouffer's dinners, and that's what first class had for dinner. We did better, I'm thinking, with the d'angelo's sub that we packed in.
It's 7:40 a.m. and we're at the Elyria, Ohio station as I type. The schedule says we should've been here at 3:27 a.m.
This is going to be interesting.
Straying for a moment from the theme of disasters, the day outside my window is pleasant: slightly overcast and misty over Lake Erie as we rumbled through Cleveland. The marinas are so tight with watercraft you could walk from one end to the other, stepping from deck to deck. The Donald Z. Nelson was at dock being loaded with sand, or ore, or coal. A lone sailboat was out beyond the breakwater, sails full of wind. All of the water we've passed over or run by has been brown, and running swift, frothy with yesterday's rains. There are standing puddles in fields and yards, some patronized by a few puzzled but game Canada geese.
One of the joys of traveling by train is the lovely rolling greenness of the passing countryside. One of the horrors is seeing first hand how very much junk there is in this world. Man is the animal that clutters and leaves without cleaning up after himself.
Steve is dozing again. Me, I think I'll stare at the window a bit and then open the sample chapter file.
Eleven-fifteen. Just outside of Waterloo, Indiana. An hour delay for a disabled freight train on the track ahead. The cafe car has run out of food. Well, maybe they'll hold our train for us at Chicago.
We raised the station at 2 p.m., Chicago time, left Train 49, walked into the station by one door and were immediately waved out another.
"Train Five! To your right! Train Seven! To your right!" called the Amtrak employee at our entry gate. We obediently went right, dragging the duffel bag, and fetchingly draped with Sabu, my handbag, Steve's camera and laptop.
"Train Five?" asked the attendant at the next gate. "Straight down on your right."
So we went right again, traipsing past the mail cars to the first sleeper and Reggie the car attendant, who happily had us on his list. Upstairs we went, bearing, uh-huh, right, to room six and here we are, on our way to Naperville. It's 3:10 p.m., Chicago time, departure just forty minutes late.
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Date: 2004-06-07 02:02 pm (UTC)Adding in my trips before I met Sharon I'm probably pushing 50,000 miles -- and that's not as a commuter, but as a traveler.
Coming up? We'll be going to Trinoc*con by train in July. We made the run to BucConneer by train, and one run to ShevaCon by train...
Now what we need is an invite to a Gulf Coast convention -- and maybe Calgary...