Just Married

[Ryan]

First, the reason for the trip:



We're starting on 51, we rolled out one minute early by my watch. Waiting in the Club Acela was nice, but I was a bit surprised on the prohibition on outside food and drink - it would be nice to be able to get a meal and enjoy it in peace if you were to have a longer wait.

 

[MrEd]

congratulations.

 

[JayPea]

Congratulations! That's a mighty fine reason for a trip!!!

 

[Bill Haithcoat]

Congrats and best wishes.

 

[Bob Dylan]

First, the reason for the trip:


We're starting on 51, we rolled out one minute early by my watch. Waiting in the Club Acela was nice, but I was a bit surprised on the prohibition on outside food and drink - it would be nice to be able to get a meal and enjoy it in peace if you were to have a longer wait.

Congrats to you both! The bride is beautiful, the groom was there!(typical newspaper story re weddings!)Ive noticed that WAS seems to be the pickiest about bringing food and drink into the lounge, they wouldnt even let me bring in a Diet Coke from the food court! :blink:

Hope the trip is great, what a neat way to start a life together,my late wife and I did this in Canada and it's very cool!Please give us a trip report upon return without the personal details! :lol:

 

[the_traveler]

Congratulations to you both. Let me know when you roll into PDX!

my late wife and I did this in Canada and it's very cool!

Everything in Canada is cool much of the time - even the weather may get cold sometimes! :lol:

 

[GG-1]

Congratulations to you both. Let me know when you roll into PDX!

my late wife and I did this in Canada and it's very cool!

Everything in Canada is cool much of the time - even the weather may get cold sometimes! :lol:

Aloha

Beside the congratulations, I must comment about LOL caused by Traveler and his comments, he has such a delightful warped mind. :lol:

Mahalo

 

[Ryan]

Day 1:

380 miles behind us, we're about 40 minutes down arriving into Charleston. We sat for about 10 minutes at Afton waiting to meet 50 coming down the mountain, the other ~30 minutes of delay when we arrived in Clifton Forge and had to wait around on some CSX traffic. Our TAS apparently comes off the extra board, they told him to jump on 51 as soon as he walked into the crew base in New York. We haven't seen him since (not a problem, we told him at the beginning that we were going to be pretty low maintenance). Being 40 minutes down really put us on the edge of enjoying the New River Gorge, the sights were fantastic, but the pictures not so much because of the low light.

Stats (courtesy of my GPS):

Moving Average: 45 MPH

Overall Average: 40.5 MPH

8h30 moving time and 54 minutes (and counting) stopped.

Meals:

Lunch: Cheeseburger (her), Chicken Sandwich (me). Both delicious, the server was attentive and friendly.

Dinner: Braised Beef (her), Chicken breast w/ Pecan glaze and wild rice. Again, both delicious and the same great service.

 

[Ryan]

First cut at pictures from the first leg from the Met Lounge in CHI.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rstavely/sets...57623766066795/

A trip up the Willis Tower, a belly full of Giordano's, the Empire Builder to look forward to. What's not to love?

The rest of the run into Chicago was uneventful, with an on time arrival. We grew 2 cars in length while parked at Indy, from the inside they looked like Horizon coaches, I didn't make it back to check them out when we detrained.

I'm also about 60 pages into "Waiting On A Train", which is a great read (and an even better one from a train). So far everyone's advice has been spot on, thanks!!!

 

[GG-1]

Aloha

Nice Pictures, hope shortly you add comments, some were not obvious as where and what they were. That glass box sure give an interesting view.

Mahalo

 

[Ryan]

I'm going to start working on that slowly - wanted to get the heavy lifting of uploading done while I had the free Wifi in the lounge.

 

[sunchaser]

Congratulations! I hope you two have a wonderful honeymoon & great life together!!

 

[Ryan]

40 more pictures added to the above link, with some labels. Some of them I'm going to have to pull the GPS and compare timestamps to figure out where the heck they are. Wishing that I had a GP-1 to attach to my camera to geotag everything.

My favorite:



There's a short stretch of I-5 just north of Portland that the Cascades run down the middle of - through sheer awesome timing, the train rolled out into that section about 1/2 mile in front of us. Like any good railfan, I mashed the accelerator, yelled for Amy to grab my camera from the back seat and get to work! We quickly caught up, and were suitably rewarded...

Nothing really exciting to report, other than an on-time trip on the EB. Delicious steak for two nights, met some real nice folks, and Glacier National Park was incredible - I think that I've even gotten Amy to buy off on a 24 hours layover at Essex the next time through...

 

[had8ley]

First, the reason for the trip:
We're starting on 51, we rolled out one minute early by my watch. Waiting in the Club Acela was nice, but I was a bit surprised on the prohibition on outside food and drink - it would be nice to be able to get a meal and enjoy it in peace if you were to have a longer wait.

Congratulations to the both of you. may you enjoy many happy years. I'm so happy I stopped counting :lol: :lol: :lol:

BTW, Amtrak had gotten hit with an FDA order concerning rats in train cars and refrigeration in lounge cars some years back; I think they're still reeling from the Federal scolding so that may be why outside goodies are no-nos

 

[Bob Dylan]

First, the reason for the trip:
We're starting on 51, we rolled out one minute early by my watch. Waiting in the Club Acela was nice, but I was a bit surprised on the prohibition on outside food and drink - it would be nice to be able to get a meal and enjoy it in peace if you were to have a longer wait.

Congratulations to the both of you. may you enjoy many happy years. I'm so happy I stopped counting :lol: :lol: :lol:

BTW, Amtrak had gotten hit with an FDA order concerning rats in train cars and refrigeration in lounge cars some years back; I think they're still reeling from the Federal scolding so that may be why outside goodies are no-nos

Was that OBS or pax Jay? :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[had8ley]

First, the reason for the trip:
We're starting on 51, we rolled out one minute early by my watch. Waiting in the Club Acela was nice, but I was a bit surprised on the prohibition on outside food and drink - it would be nice to be able to get a meal and enjoy it in peace if you were to have a longer wait.

Congratulations to the both of you. may you enjoy many happy years. I'm so happy I stopped counting :lol: :lol: :lol:

BTW, Amtrak had gotten hit with an FDA order concerning rats in train cars and refrigeration in lounge cars some years back; I think they're still reeling from the Federal scolding so that may be why outside goodies are no-nos

Was that OBS or pax Jay? :lol: :lol: :lol:

Amtrak used to give out "Snax Pax" as part of the sleeper package. People would half eat the cheese crackers, beef jerky and other food stuffs and deposit them on the sleeper floors. Eventually the rodents got wise and found an unending food supply. As far as the lounge cars go they were finding spoiled food (I'm told there was a LOT of out of date products) in addition to improper temperatures with which to maintain the food in the fridges. So Jim this looks like a 50/50 proposition.

 

[Ryan]

I'll fill in the blanks when I write up my full trip report, but a quick update from the SB Coast Starlight...

Got underway about 20 minutes late this morning from SEA, there was an unspecified problem with the train in the yard that prevented them from bringing it up on time. We made up the 20 minutes before getting to PDX, where we made our first service stop. Just north of Oregon City we tripped a defect detector, after walking the train nothing was found and we proceeded south to make an unscheduled stop at Oregon City to put off a passenger that was supposed to depart in PDX but didn't for some reason (as a crewmember said on the radio, "it's an easy stop to miss, we were only sitting there for 25 minutes!").

I'm assuming that the lady is likely on her own to find her way back up to Portland, I would hope that Amtrak wouldn't pick up the tab for a cab ride back to the city?

 

[the_traveler]

I'm assuming that the lady is likely on her own to find her way back up to Portland, I would hope that Amtrak wouldn't pick up the tab for a cab ride back to the city?

There are a few Cascade runs that come from Eugene snd Salem that make a stop in Oregon City headed back to PDX.

 

[Ryan]

So we're 4 hours down on the Chief because of high winds, facing a 3h20 min layover in Chicago to the Capital Limited.

Option 1: Late trains just get later, and we're hosed.

Option 2: We've got 24 hours to make up time, we'll make the connection.

Discuss!!!

 

[Bob Dylan]

So we're 4 hours down on the Chief because of high winds, facing a 3h20 min layover in Chicago to the Capital Limited.
Option 1: Late trains just get later, and we're hosed.

Option 2: We've got 24 hours to make up time, we'll make the connection.

Discuss!!!

Now showing 4 Hours down in Raton,NM! I saw on trainorders that High Winds were affecting Western trains, probably gonna be hard to make up 4 HRS to CHI, perhaps theyll hold the CL for awhile or use the LSL as a clean up train? As you know, if this doesnt work out probably get a nice hotel/cash for taxi/meals etc. in CHI, catch the next days CL! Its still showing rooms available for Sat and Sunday, not sure if yall are on an AGR award or paid but if you have your trip interrupted probably can get a voucher or partial refund from AGR! Gives yall more time on the train for the honeymoon ! The people in CHI are experts helping with arrangements, they get lots of experience! Hope the diner has enough food so yall dont get "Amstew!" :lol:

 

[AlanB]

So we're 4 hours down on the Chief because of high winds, facing a 3h20 min layover in Chicago to the Capital Limited.
Option 1: Late trains just get later, and we're hosed.

Option 2: We've got 24 hours to make up time, we'll make the connection.

Discuss!!!

Now showing 4 Hours down in Raton,NM! I saw on trainorders that High Winds were affecting Western trains, probably gonna be hard to make up 4 HRS to CHI, perhaps theyll hold the CL for awhile or use the LSL as a clean up train? As you know, if this doesnt work out probably get a nice hotel/cash for taxi/meals etc. in CHI, catch the next days CL! Its still showing rooms available for Sat and Sunday, not sure if yall are on an AGR award or paid but if you have your trip interrupted probably can get a voucher or partial refund from AGR! Gives yall more time on the train for the honeymoon ! The people in CHI are experts helping with arrangements, they get lots of experience! Hope the diner has enough food so yall dont get "Amstew!" :lol:

They don't need to make up 4 hours to make the connection, a hour will do, and that may well be possible on BNSF. Remember that there is a 3 hour 20 minute connection window, so all they really need to make up is 30 to 40 minutes and Amtrak will hold the Capitol for them. But an hour would give them a more relaxed connection and avoid delaying the Cap.

And the padding into Chicago is about an hour and a half anyhow, so as long as BNSF can keep them from losing anymore time, it should be very easy to make up the needed hour for the connection.

 

[Bob Dylan]

Well as usual Alan is correct! Since so many of our delays down this way are the UP back-of-the-hand to Amtrak, :angry: we forget that BNSF usually treats Amtrak really well! I see as of 1:15AM CDT that they have made up an hour so if everything goes well crossing the praries of Kansas, quick service in KCY, maybe they can make their connection! :unsure: With the weekend coming up and the increasing pasenger loads on the LD trains I know Amtrak will do all they can to make connections including holding the CL if necessary! Wish BNSF ran all the Amtrak routes, the OTP would really be spot on as compared to the bad old UP who must have learned to hate passenger trains from one of their acquisitions, the SP!

 

[AlanB]

I hate to disapoint you Jim, but believe it or not of late UP is doing just as good as BNSF, if not even better. Here's the stats from Feb 2010.

BNSF:

Empire Builder - 83.9%

Southwest Chief - 91.1%

Up:

Sunset - 83.3%

Eagle - 80.4%

Starlight - 94.6%

Here's the worst performer, a combined BNSF-UP run:

Zephyr - 50.0%

Now, in all fairness, I will say that Amtrak trains on UP have far more recovery time built into their runs by comparison to BNSF, which with the lighter freight traffic is no doubt helping UP out considerably. Here's the breakdowns on recovery minutes per 100 miles of running.

BNSF:

Empire Builder - 9.3

Southwest Chief - 8.9

Up:

Sunset - 15.4

Eagle - 20.8

Starlight - 18.4

Combined:

Zephyr - 12.3

 

[Ryan]

I wrote this up this morning and then couldn't post because I lost service:

Just woke up in Hutchison, KS - by my "I just woke up" math, we're 3h37 down (time table says 2:21, we departed at 5:57), so we're slowly chipping away at it. I noticed when I downloaded the timetable that 4 has a hew schedule starting on 5/10 that departs 10 minutes later and gets into CHI 10 minutes earlier, so they're taking some of the padding out, but we're going to need it on this trip!!!
The winds were fearsome in AZ - I'll write it all up when we get home, but we went past a 13 mile backup on the interstate, had to stop and pick up 3 dead on the law BNSF crews outside Winslow and drop them at their crew base there, then add in the wind warnings for us and a dark signal and we had to be sent a relief crew about 40 min outside ABQ. I know that some on here say "Why can't they do better about going dead on the law?", and this crew was on the ball! Lots of conversation between the engineer and the conductor about thier hours, and it sounds like the conductor was in constant phone contact with ABQ and the relief crew once they hit the road. We stopped to pick up the crew about 30 minutes before the old crew died, so kudos to them for being proactive and not causing any further delays.

Now we're in KCY, we got in 3h10 down and are leaving 3h05 behind. Hopefully with a little bit of padding at the end we'll have a leisurely stroll from one train to the next. The conductor just announced that we'll be in at 7PM and "may make up some time", so we'll see.

 

[Bob Dylan]

Sounds like they are going to make it IF there are no long switching/backing etc. moves in CHI! Guess the CL will be held if it's that close, it's always good when you have a scanner and OBS that keep you informed! (Julie and agents should have such good info! ) And I'm SHOCKED!SHOCKED! to see UP actually dispatching Amtrak trains in a timely manner! (Guess the slowdown in freight hasnt turned around that much yet! OR: UP had someone in a position of power lay down the law to the dispatchers to actually follow the law, perhaps Joe Boardman may even be actually doing something in WAS besides making speeches and riding Beech Grove! ) Be that it may, hope this keeps up, currently weather and vehicle/pedestrian hits train delays seem to be the prevailing reasons for delays/cancellations! trainorders had a post that #27 hit and sent a fisherman to that great boat in the sky yesterday on the way to PDX! I hope they make their connection, sounds promising as of now! (11:05 AM CDT)