February/March 2005 Trip Index

"Blah Blah Blah"

After getting off the train and walking up the stairs to street-level, I was disoriented. I had just left the Van Buren station, but it took me a moment to figure out which streets I was looking at. Once I did I started my long walk on Jackson, toward the station.

Once at the station I had time for a quick sandwich at the Metro Deli.  The Metropolitan Lounge at Union Station is really nice now. It was pretty nice when I had been there on my prior trips, but it was usually full of people and difficult to find a place to sit. Now it may be 2 or three times as large as it was, there are comfortable seats all over and several large flat screen TV displays. I enjoyed the atmosphere for maybe a half hour until boarding was called for the Empire Builder. We left right from the lounge, through the doors that led to the platforms.

I was going to Portland, so I was in the Portland sleeper, car 0830. They usually (always, maybe?) stick this car at the end of the train, although sometimes there may be some freight behind this car. As Amtrak wants out of the express freight business, I guess contracts will eventually expire and we'll see these go away completely, but for now, as of this writing, you can still see them. Unfortunately, my sleeper car did have a freight car behind it, which means I wouldn't be able to see anything out of the window at the rear of the train (other than another car). When I asked the Amtrak employee that led us to the train, he thought the freight car would be dropped off at our St. Paul/Minneapolis stop, but it was still on after that.

Before I made my reservations, I had done some research online to see which room might be best.    I picked room 12, located on the lower level, adjacent to the stairs. In online discussions, some people said that it was noisier and maybe a bumpier ride on the lower level, but for my prior trips with my father we were always in the lower level wheelchair-accessible sleeper anyway, so I was used to it and didn't mind the noise or the ride. As long as the train is able to remain on the rails, I don't tend to have many complaints.

I found out that there would be no sightseer lounge car on this trip. This was unusual for me, as every Superliner I had been on until then has had a lounge car. I didn't really miss it, as I was tired and sore from the brisk walk to the station that morning. I stayed on the lower level of the car most of the trip anyway.

Another surprise was that there are no longer vouchers to get complimentary/pre-paid meals from the snack bar instead of the dining car. When you purchase a sleeping room, meals have already been included in the price. Although I have never actually used one of these vouchers, I had been told by someone on one of the online message groups that you could use a voucher to grab a simple sandwich from the snack bar instead of a full-blown meal in the diner. All Amtrak employees that I asked were consistent in telling me this system hasn't existed for quite some time.

I didn't mind. Sometimes I ate in the diner (usually for breakfast) and once I grabbed a sandwich from the snack bar. I usually skipped lunch. I've found the meals on Amtrak to be pretty good, sometimes great. Most people I talk to on the train are happy with the food. Getting enough food is seldom a problem though, and I find the three full meals to be just too much so I usually skip the lunch.

Before this trip, I had never eaten in the diner. As I travelled with my dad in the accessible sleeper, meals would be brought to us. Technically I could have eaten in the diner, but I instead would always eat in the room with him. The dining car staff likes to fill tables as they can be filled and seats strangers together at the same table. Unless you're already a party of four people, you're likely to be eating very closely with someone you don't know. If you're travelling alone like I was, you're probably going to be sitting with three other people you don't know. I thought this would be awkward and unpleasant, but I enjoyed meeting and chatting with the different people. At no meal I had in the diner did I sit with the same people I had a meal with before. More often than not, I was at a table where nobody at the table knew anyone else at the table.

The train left on time. We had a few minutes at the Milwaukee stop, so I walked up to the front end to see what I could see of the lead engines. They were pulled up too far, and I could only identify the last one. The other two locos were P42 engines but I wasn't sure of the number. I would end up on this trip not really identifying these engines, as I was getting increasingly sore from my strained knee and hip, and having the last passenger car on the train meant a long walk to the front of the train. That's fine, I'm not the type to log every detail about every stop and every car or engine that's on the train. I just like to take pics of the engines when I can. That first afternoon on the train, we had several unscheduled stops in Wisconsin while we waited for some Canadian Pacific trains. Both times we only had to wait a few minutes.

The rest of the trip to Portland was uneventful. The scenery seemed to get more mountainous as we approached the Montana border. Our train had a few more unexpected stops, this time because of BNSF freight trains, but the stops were all very brief. In the middle of the second night, our train was split in two at Spokane, where we lost the diner car (which remained with the train to Seattle). Had we had a lounge car on our train, it would have remained on our train to Portland.

In the morning, instead of breakfast service in the diner, there were box breakfasts available from the cafe located below the coach section on one of the cars on the train.

We made it to Portland about 20 minutes late.  Click here to see my Portland photos.