Thanksgiving Trip

Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum

Help Support Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Status
Not open for further replies.
Joined
Dec 7, 2003
Messages
6
Location
Cincinnati
I’m somewhat late in posting this trip report, but I thought I would anyway. My wife and I took the Cardinal and Southwest Chief from Cincinnati to Newton, KS for Thanksgiving week to visit my parents. On the trip west (Nov 24), the trains were relatively on time, being only about 15 minutes late. That, I believe, is highly unusual for the Cardinal. In fact, we were about 20 minutes early at Indianapolis, presumably due to schedule padding.

The Southwest Chief, of course, is much more enjoyable than the Cardinal because of the Chief’s Superliner equipment. It even seems that I can sleep more comfortably in the Superliner coach seats than the Amfleet seats, but it might be my imagination. I was impressed with all the mail and express cars we had behind us—7 MHC’s (if that is still the proper description for the boxcar type mail cars) and 14 RoadRailers. We had to wait a few minutes several miles outside of Newton for the eastbound Chief to pass, presumably because some of that line is single track, although I never can tell since that part of the trip is always at night.

On the return trip (Nov 29), the Southwest Chief seemed to be using a second lounge car as the third coach car. It was empty until Kansas City, when all the passengers boarding there were instructed to find a seat in the lounge car, or else find a seat in one of the coach cars if they could. Is Amtrak that short of coaches? Even on the busy Thanksgiving weekend, I would have thought that all of the long distance trains would have adequate equipment. And when we boarded the Cardinal at Chicago, the conductor announced that the train was overbooked and that those who couldn’t find seats should go to the lounge car. I guess reserved coach sometimes means reserved lounge. Fortunately we boarded early enough that we had seats in coach.

The Southwest Chief was on time arriving in Chicago, and the Cardinal was about 45 minutes late in Cincinnati, but I still consider that reasonably on time.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top