OK, time to get my butt in gear. Made it through the first chunk of pictures. 61 pictures from WAS to CHI on the Cardinal here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rstavely/sets...57623985957659/
I know that I've said it here a few times already, but I LOVED THE CARDINAL. Hate to see such a great train get a bad rap.
So, the first day of married life started out hectic. We started the day in our hotel in Annapolis, where the wedding was the day before. We had to get up, load the truck with all the junk that seemed to get stashed in our room, leave the tux at the front desk for my best man to come by and get later to return for me, then it was back to the house. Drop old bags, pick up new ones and say goodbye to the kid for 2 weeks (harder than I thought). My sister and her husband live about 10 blocks from Union Station, and were nice enough to make the 30 minute drive out into the suburbs to get Amy and I and haul us to the train station. We arrive comfortably on time around 10:00 for the 11:15 departure (I was an absolute nut over getting to the station and leaving plenty of time for Mr. Murphy to screw things up and still make the train safely. Print tickets, check. The poor lady in font of us in the baggage line tried to check her bag to somewhere in WV, only to discover that the Cardinal did not (yet!) have baggage service - if only she had waited a few weeks). The baggage clerk was only mildly confused by my tickets from WAS-CIN, CIN-CHI, CHI-PDX and took the trouble to make sure that I knew that my bags weren't going to be on the same train as me but would make it to CHI before I did and be checked all the way through to PDX.
I've been in the Club Acela at WAS a handful of times for MARC Rider's Advisory Council meetings, but it was "special" to check into the lounge with first class tickets on an outbound train. We waited a bit, put tags on our backpacks and tied shut the pocket that the CHI-PDX tickets were stashed in (the only thing that scared me more than being late and missing a train was losing a ticket). At the appointed hour, we were walked out to the train and directed to the sleeper on the rear. The lady in front of us seemed a little put off that the car attendant wasn't waiting for us at the door - I helped her get her bag up the stairs and we found our room without issue. Shortly after the attendant appeared, apologized for just coming up to speed and told us that he literally had one foot in the door at the crew base in New York and was told to turn around and get down to the Cardinal. Overall though, he did a fine job - got us some bottled water, put the bed down when we needed (a skill a quickly acquired on my own) and back up when we were at breakfast.
Got the Mobile Command Post (GPS, laptop, jailbroken-tethered iPhone) set up and we departed on time. Not too much to report about the actual trip other than the pictures that I linked. Having the scanner was great, we lost a little bit of time when we came off the Buckingham Branch onto CSX, it seemed like the dispatcher had no idea that were were going to be showing up. Being 40 minutes down meant that it was a little too dark to get decent New River Gorge pictures, but left enough light to enjoy it by. The upper windows in the Viewliner were well used for this stretch. The LSA in the lounge/diner was extremely friendly, the food was tasty and hot, I really couldn't find much to complain about at all.
We arrived in CHI more or less on time - from the GPS, we travelled 913 miles at an overall speed of 38 MPH (23h52 min, 3h06 of which we were stopped for).
Not a bad start to the trip. My goal for the weekend is to process the Chicago and EB pictures and post a brief report this weekend - we'll see if I succeed.
