scutterbear
Train Attendant
- Joined
- Jan 13, 2010
- Messages
- 26
So I made the trip from montana and made it home safely! YAY!!
I thought I would give my newbie perspective since this was my first trip.
I caught the empire builder out of whitefish montana and took it all the way to chicago.
I learned very quickly that a train can be late. LOL, it was six hours late. They got caught behind a freight train that broke down out of washington and therefore was late getting to leave whitefish. Fortunately my brother took me to the station so when we realized it was going to be several hours, he took me up to big mountain and we went sight seeing at the ski lodge. I did feel sorry for the other passengers from the lodge that showed up early that morning to catch the train. They had to wait in the station for six hours.
I was nervous at first but after the train got going, I eased up a bit. I did get a sleeper roomette. It was smaller than I expected but was adequate. And I am a big fella so that is saying a lot. I took some video footage of the roomette in case anyone wants to see it. It's up on my youtube channel.
Our car attendant was a fella by the name of Tanner. I have to give high praise to him for a job done very well. He did a great job and made sure that I had everything I needed. He also quickly became my hero because he let me know each and every smoke stop, even the short 4-5 minute ones. He was very nice and I made sure I let his boss know what a great job I thought he did.
The food on the empire builder was wonderful. I was really impressed. Good sized portions, hot and very tasty. And I was served in my room.
Since we were six hours late getting started, I was worried because I had a 4 hour layover in chicago. You can do that math.
) So I thought I was going to have to spend the night in chicago. But we actually got there with 20 minutes to spare. So they made up a heck of a lot of time on the trip. I had just enough time to run upstairs for a quick smoke and then back downstairs to catch the city of new orleans. (I will make a seperate post on that review).
The plus side to the train being late is that I got to actually see most of glacier park going east. It is usually still dark there til about 9am so I would have missed most of the park if we had left on time. The scenery is breath taking. I will post some pics later on for those that haven't seen it from the train view.
Overall, for my first trip, I was impressed with the empire builder. I recommend it to anyone.
I thought I would give my newbie perspective since this was my first trip.
I caught the empire builder out of whitefish montana and took it all the way to chicago.
I learned very quickly that a train can be late. LOL, it was six hours late. They got caught behind a freight train that broke down out of washington and therefore was late getting to leave whitefish. Fortunately my brother took me to the station so when we realized it was going to be several hours, he took me up to big mountain and we went sight seeing at the ski lodge. I did feel sorry for the other passengers from the lodge that showed up early that morning to catch the train. They had to wait in the station for six hours.
I was nervous at first but after the train got going, I eased up a bit. I did get a sleeper roomette. It was smaller than I expected but was adequate. And I am a big fella so that is saying a lot. I took some video footage of the roomette in case anyone wants to see it. It's up on my youtube channel.
Our car attendant was a fella by the name of Tanner. I have to give high praise to him for a job done very well. He did a great job and made sure that I had everything I needed. He also quickly became my hero because he let me know each and every smoke stop, even the short 4-5 minute ones. He was very nice and I made sure I let his boss know what a great job I thought he did.
The food on the empire builder was wonderful. I was really impressed. Good sized portions, hot and very tasty. And I was served in my room.
Since we were six hours late getting started, I was worried because I had a 4 hour layover in chicago. You can do that math.
) So I thought I was going to have to spend the night in chicago. But we actually got there with 20 minutes to spare. So they made up a heck of a lot of time on the trip. I had just enough time to run upstairs for a quick smoke and then back downstairs to catch the city of new orleans. (I will make a seperate post on that review).The plus side to the train being late is that I got to actually see most of glacier park going east. It is usually still dark there til about 9am so I would have missed most of the park if we had left on time. The scenery is breath taking. I will post some pics later on for those that haven't seen it from the train view.
Overall, for my first trip, I was impressed with the empire builder. I recommend it to anyone.
