Northbound 22 from Fort Worth to St. Louis
So with this being my first trip with Amtrak I was eager to begin my journey. With it being the Christmas season I was expecting the same delays as usual however some of my previous posts about this subject on this forum, members indicated that during the holiday season that Amtrak tends to run faster and on time. Well they were correct about that. The Eagle arrived and departed on-time and the train's arrival brought us into St. Louis a full 90 minutes EARLY! More about that later though.
So I boarded in mid-afternoon and got accustomed to my sleeper car. I had upgraded to a full bedroom (with in-room toilet/shower). I have to say I was very surprised to see the size of a roomette; frankly it's much smaller than I thought after looking at the diagrams. At first I had thought that one of these was my bedroom but I quickly realized I was on the wrong side of the car and found my room without a problem. The attendant promptly introduced himself and let me know to call upon him if I had any questions. My initial impressions of the bedroom was about on par with what I had expected, and in fact I had a bit more room to store my belongings than I had planned. I took about an hour to just sit back and relax and familiarize myself with my room a bit. Everything seemed to be working ok and I took the time to get my gps unit out to set it up for offroad travel. It worked just fine and the detailed maps in my gps even displayed the tracks. I noticed I had to keep the gps near the window or otherwise I couldn't get a signal closer to the middle of the car.
I got up a little later and explored the train some, first heading downstairs and checking out the public restrooms/showers. I have to say that during the whole trip the public ones were still clean and well-maintained. If I had to book a roomette I wouldn't have any problems with using the public facilities. The public luggage rack downstairs was used by a lot of people but there was always room for a few more pieces just in case. I then checked out the rooms downstairs briefly, remembering that each sleeper car had 1 family bedroom and 1 handicapped bedroom. I then walked through the diner and stopped in the lounge car for a bit. After a few moments I headed back to my room and waited for dinner.
Dinner was where I had one of my first learning experiences with the food. I ordered the flat-iron steak which was sub-par in my opinion. I made a mental note to never order this item again. It was undercooked and the flavor wasn't necessarily bad but it wasn't good either, not to mention the texture of the meat wasn't what I would consider decent. I was glad I brought along some snacks but I ate the potato that came with it and ordered an ice cream for dessert and that was ok for me for the night. I remembered hearing at least two other people ordering the angus burger and thought that must indicate something; I made a note to order that on the return trip.
So for my first question...
Throughout the trip I noticed that dinner reservations were held by those who had upgraded to full bedrooms, which is understandable, but if you book a roomette, do you get your meals included in the ticket price also? It seemed like at every meal they would only take, at most, 3 rounds of reservations and with 2 sleeper car it didn't seem to get around to everyone. I also found that for the simple reheating the crew has to do for a meal that could they not accomodate more people? I know that practically everyone in coach on that trip had to rely on the cafe for food.
I decided to turn in early that night for bed and a couple of the items that people listed here came in very handy, the duct tape especially. I set things up and turned out my lights as we pulled into either Marshall or Texarkana...can't remember. I do remember that our train was there for almost 30 minutes and seemed like they were doing some sort of maintenance. The car lost power twice and only the small emergency lights were on. Here was another lesson learned for me - I brought along my alarm clock just for keeping time and to wake me up for breakfast. Well when power went out, it did too. I should have brought a 9V battery to keep its memory. So if you are relying on one of those, remember a battery, or if you have a cell phone with an alarm that might work better.
I figured I'd get a quick shower before climbing into bed. Apparently the car or room I was in may have been an old one because there was no push button for the water, just a knob that turned the water on and simultaneously acted as the temperature control. There was no cutoff after a couple minutes, so I had unlimited water essentially. The only problem with this was the temperature "control" didn't work it seems as there was either cold or really hot, so I had to set the dial so low to get a decent temperature that the flow rate was incredibly low- maybe 0.5 gpm at the most. I thought about trying the public shower, but figured I'd go ahead and finish here.
So later after getting in bed, it was also getting rather warm in my room; second lesson learned was to pack a small oscillating fan with a clip-on base. Thankfully though after fumbling with the vent I managed to open it up a bit more to get some more air in, but I think the crew also turned down the master temperature control while we were in station because the air was gradually getting cooler so that helped to make sleep come a little easier.
Little rattles throughout the night would occasionally wake me up so I had to get out of bed each time to apply duct tape. Overall I'd say I got maybe 6 hours of sleep. The mattress cushion they provide isn't exactly the most comfortable so I had to switch positions a lot, but 6 hours of sleep is better than nothing.
I woke up in time to get first seating at breakfest and tried the french toast; I figured there probably wasn't much they could do to screw that up and it turned out to be pretty good. That would hold me over for a couple hours, but just 30 minutes after finishing breakfast we had arrived in St. Louis. We ended up arriving pretty early so I guess the conductor must have been booking it during the night and/or only spending just a few minutes at the smaller stations. I recall that before I went to sleep I checked my gps again and the train was already at its speed limit.
The new St. Louis station was quite nice and well-organized. But like a couple others have complained I wish they had some sort of status display and also some automatic doors. There is also hardly any short-term parking; it's in this cramped lot that's almost always full. There's also no room at all for people who just want to take 5 minutes to drop someone off or pick them up; taxis take up most of the curb and the close parking spots are either for the handicapped or some city employees.
One last thing about the trip north was that I noticed the rails throughout Texas seemed pretty smooth and easy to ride but when I woke up already in Missouri the ride was rougher presumably either because the line there was older or hadn't been maintained as well.
So I will take a few moments to write up part 2 of my trip, the southbound return trip on 21
So with this being my first trip with Amtrak I was eager to begin my journey. With it being the Christmas season I was expecting the same delays as usual however some of my previous posts about this subject on this forum, members indicated that during the holiday season that Amtrak tends to run faster and on time. Well they were correct about that. The Eagle arrived and departed on-time and the train's arrival brought us into St. Louis a full 90 minutes EARLY! More about that later though.
So I boarded in mid-afternoon and got accustomed to my sleeper car. I had upgraded to a full bedroom (with in-room toilet/shower). I have to say I was very surprised to see the size of a roomette; frankly it's much smaller than I thought after looking at the diagrams. At first I had thought that one of these was my bedroom but I quickly realized I was on the wrong side of the car and found my room without a problem. The attendant promptly introduced himself and let me know to call upon him if I had any questions. My initial impressions of the bedroom was about on par with what I had expected, and in fact I had a bit more room to store my belongings than I had planned. I took about an hour to just sit back and relax and familiarize myself with my room a bit. Everything seemed to be working ok and I took the time to get my gps unit out to set it up for offroad travel. It worked just fine and the detailed maps in my gps even displayed the tracks. I noticed I had to keep the gps near the window or otherwise I couldn't get a signal closer to the middle of the car.
I got up a little later and explored the train some, first heading downstairs and checking out the public restrooms/showers. I have to say that during the whole trip the public ones were still clean and well-maintained. If I had to book a roomette I wouldn't have any problems with using the public facilities. The public luggage rack downstairs was used by a lot of people but there was always room for a few more pieces just in case. I then checked out the rooms downstairs briefly, remembering that each sleeper car had 1 family bedroom and 1 handicapped bedroom. I then walked through the diner and stopped in the lounge car for a bit. After a few moments I headed back to my room and waited for dinner.
Dinner was where I had one of my first learning experiences with the food. I ordered the flat-iron steak which was sub-par in my opinion. I made a mental note to never order this item again. It was undercooked and the flavor wasn't necessarily bad but it wasn't good either, not to mention the texture of the meat wasn't what I would consider decent. I was glad I brought along some snacks but I ate the potato that came with it and ordered an ice cream for dessert and that was ok for me for the night. I remembered hearing at least two other people ordering the angus burger and thought that must indicate something; I made a note to order that on the return trip.
So for my first question...
Throughout the trip I noticed that dinner reservations were held by those who had upgraded to full bedrooms, which is understandable, but if you book a roomette, do you get your meals included in the ticket price also? It seemed like at every meal they would only take, at most, 3 rounds of reservations and with 2 sleeper car it didn't seem to get around to everyone. I also found that for the simple reheating the crew has to do for a meal that could they not accomodate more people? I know that practically everyone in coach on that trip had to rely on the cafe for food.
I decided to turn in early that night for bed and a couple of the items that people listed here came in very handy, the duct tape especially. I set things up and turned out my lights as we pulled into either Marshall or Texarkana...can't remember. I do remember that our train was there for almost 30 minutes and seemed like they were doing some sort of maintenance. The car lost power twice and only the small emergency lights were on. Here was another lesson learned for me - I brought along my alarm clock just for keeping time and to wake me up for breakfast. Well when power went out, it did too. I should have brought a 9V battery to keep its memory. So if you are relying on one of those, remember a battery, or if you have a cell phone with an alarm that might work better.
I figured I'd get a quick shower before climbing into bed. Apparently the car or room I was in may have been an old one because there was no push button for the water, just a knob that turned the water on and simultaneously acted as the temperature control. There was no cutoff after a couple minutes, so I had unlimited water essentially. The only problem with this was the temperature "control" didn't work it seems as there was either cold or really hot, so I had to set the dial so low to get a decent temperature that the flow rate was incredibly low- maybe 0.5 gpm at the most. I thought about trying the public shower, but figured I'd go ahead and finish here.
So later after getting in bed, it was also getting rather warm in my room; second lesson learned was to pack a small oscillating fan with a clip-on base. Thankfully though after fumbling with the vent I managed to open it up a bit more to get some more air in, but I think the crew also turned down the master temperature control while we were in station because the air was gradually getting cooler so that helped to make sleep come a little easier.
Little rattles throughout the night would occasionally wake me up so I had to get out of bed each time to apply duct tape. Overall I'd say I got maybe 6 hours of sleep. The mattress cushion they provide isn't exactly the most comfortable so I had to switch positions a lot, but 6 hours of sleep is better than nothing.
I woke up in time to get first seating at breakfest and tried the french toast; I figured there probably wasn't much they could do to screw that up and it turned out to be pretty good. That would hold me over for a couple hours, but just 30 minutes after finishing breakfast we had arrived in St. Louis. We ended up arriving pretty early so I guess the conductor must have been booking it during the night and/or only spending just a few minutes at the smaller stations. I recall that before I went to sleep I checked my gps again and the train was already at its speed limit.
The new St. Louis station was quite nice and well-organized. But like a couple others have complained I wish they had some sort of status display and also some automatic doors. There is also hardly any short-term parking; it's in this cramped lot that's almost always full. There's also no room at all for people who just want to take 5 minutes to drop someone off or pick them up; taxis take up most of the curb and the close parking spots are either for the handicapped or some city employees.
One last thing about the trip north was that I noticed the rails throughout Texas seemed pretty smooth and easy to ride but when I woke up already in Missouri the ride was rougher presumably either because the line there was older or hadn't been maintained as well.
So I will take a few moments to write up part 2 of my trip, the southbound return trip on 21