Waterloo, IN to Whitefish, MT on the Capitol Limited and Empire Builde

[D.P. Roberts]

WARNING: this is going to be a very long and very detailed report! TL;DR version: the train was frequently late, but we had a great time and were treated well by almost every Amtrak employee we encountered. I know I point out many many negatives throughout the report, but that's only because I wanted to explain absolutely everything that happened onboard. Overall we had an absolutely fabulous trip, and enjoyed it immensely. We took the train both ways on our trip; due to my extreme wordiness and lots of pictures, I'm probably going to break the report into multiple posts.

Day 1: Waterloo, Indiana to Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Train #29 was scheduled to arrive in Waterloo, Indiana early Thursday morning. Since we live 3 hours away, that would have meant leaving for the station in the middle of the night. We've done that before, and have regretted it, so this time we stayed in a hotel in nearby Fort Wayne on Wednesday night. We got to the hotel around 8:00, and went to bed early, knowing we had to be up by 5:30 or so to get to Waterloo in time to catch the train.

When our alarm went off the next morning, I quickly checked the Capitol Limited's status, and it was running about 30 minutes late. So, we snoozed a little longer, & made it to Waterloo with plenty of time to spare. I didn't catch our attendant's name, but he wasn't very helpful. When we dragged our luggage onboard, we found that the luggage space was already completely full. Unfortunately, several other passengers were also crowding the area as they attempted to shower or use the restrooms. So, we spent several minutes trying to rearrange the luggage area so our suitcases would fit, but our attendant just kept saying “I'm going to need to ask you to make your way upstairs to your roomette.” If he had a better solution than just leaving our suitcases in the middle of the aisle, I would gladly have listened to him.

After getting situated in our roomette, we headed down to the dining car for breakfast. We both had the Railroad French Toast. It tasted okay, but clearly had been sitting around for a while. I was rather disappointed, as I had been looking forward to enjoying the french toast throughout our trip. I really hoped that meals would improve on the EB.

We returned to our roomette, and soon arrived in Chicago, still 30 minutes late. Our plan for the morning was to check in at the Metropolitan Lounge to check our bags, walk through Union Station (I had been there before, but had never seen the Great Hall), then go to the Lincoln Park Zoo before retuning to catch the Empire Builder. When we checked into the Metropolitan Lounge it was already very crowded, and the attendants were busy wrangling people who clearly didn't understand how the lounge worked. For example, most of the sleeping car passengers just walked in without checking in at the desk, & many coach passengers were trying to get in as well (in one case, a large group was turned away because only one member in their party was in a sleeper, & they thought that this would entitle all members of their party access to the lounge). We finally got checked in, the late arrival & Lounge delays put us behind schedule, so we decided to head straight to the bus station & go to the zoo – I figured that I'd have plenty of time to see the Great Hall later.

On our last Chicago layover, we visited the Shedd Aquarium. This time, we headed for the Lincoln Park Zoo. It was a 20-30 minute bus ride, but well worth it. We were a little late getting back, and had to skip the Great Hall again, in favor of returning to the Lounge to prepare for EB boarding.

We were assigned to car 2730, the Portland sleeper. Since we were only going to Whitefish (a few stops east of Spokane), we could have chosen either the Seattle or Portland sleeper. I spent a long time trying to figure out which one would be preferable. The Seattle cars at the front of the train would have been closer to the diner, but they also would have been closer to the horn. The Portland sleeper, at the very end of the train, was a long walk to the lounge and a very long walk to the diner. However, from Minneapolis onward, we would be the last car on the train, with very little foot traffic through our car. The sound of the doors between cars constantly opening and closing can be really annoying at night, and I figured that the long walks to the diner would be a good chance to at least walk around a little on an otherwise sedentary day. So I went with the Portland sleeper.

Unlike other stations, you can only access the tracks at CUS when escorted by Amtrak personnel. And, since sleeper passengers are boarded first, you board ridiculously early & have nothing to look at out the window while waiting for the train to depart. So, once we were onboard, we took this time to examine our sleeping car & our roomette. We were in roomette #5, on the left side of the train. The car was oriented with the bedrooms at the back. I was a little disappointed in this – once the last coach car is taken off in Minneapolis, the passengers in the Portland sleeper have a nice view out the back window. I had been hoping that the roomettes would be at the back, giving me quick access to the “rainfan window” for pictures and such. Unfortunately, this was not the case, but we still took several trips down to the window throughout our trip in order to check on the view.

The car itself was a nicely refurbished Superliner I (car #32054, I think), with wood paneling on the walls & the granite-looking sinks in the bathrooms. It also had lights and lighting controls that I had not seen before – they were LED lights, with touch-sensitive controls on a metal panel. Our SCA, Jana, soon came by & introduced herself, & gave us a brief tour of the room & the car. She said that this particular car appeared to have run on the CL for quite some time, & had only recently been moved to the EB. Jana also told us about the drinks and ice she'd have available, which she kept well stocked throughout the trip. I'll write more about Jana later, but she did a fabulous job.

Our train departed on time, & we were soon outside of Chicago. By late afternoon I was getting a little hungry, and headed down to the cafe in the Sightseer Lounge. I got a bagel & cream cheese, & had planned on eating it in the SSL, but it was full. As I took my food back to our roomette, I noticed that all the passengers in coach were wearing headphones when they listened to music or watched movies. Unfortunately, this was not the case in our sleeper. One of the passengers downstairs was listening to loud rap music, another passenger nearby was watching movies on his laptop, and we heard all of it. I thought it was a little rude, but not quite loud enough to complain to the SCA or the offending passengers.

The dining car attendant soon came by to get reservations for dinner. The route guides had said that the best scenery on this portion of the route started soon after La Crosse, Wisconsin, so I asked for a 7:15 reservation, which meant that we'd be eating somewhere near La Crosse if the train was on time.

We made our way to the dining car & soon met our server. I didn't catch his name for the first day or so: he was rather short in stature but long in beard, and looked to me like an Eli. I later found out that his name was Tanner, but if I accidentally refer to him as Eli in this report, I apologize. Anyway, he was friendly, efficient, and quite knowledgeable about the train and the route. He informed us that we'd be crossing three rivers during this part of the trip – the Black River once, and the Mississippi River twice.

We were seated with a couple from the upper peninsula of Michigan who were also on their way to Glacier National Park. They had driven to Milwaukee to catch the EB; interestingly enough, they were going to be returning on the same train we'd be taking.

I ordered the braised short rib for dinner. This is one of the dishes created by the “Amtrak Culinary Advisory Team” and had been well reviewed by other AU members, with good reason – I absolutely loved it! The beef was fork-tender and delicious. The sauce was very good, and even the undoubtedly-reconstituted mashed potatoes were buttery and very tasty. Mrs. Roberts had the steak, and also enjoyed it.

Here's a photo of the beef short rib with mashed potatoes:

Here's a photo of the steak, also with mashed potatoes and a cup of mushroom sauce:

I went with another AU recommendation for dessert – the chocolate brownie, a la mode. The brownie was served warm, on a plate but still in its plastic tray, with a small container of the vanilla gelato / ice cream, which I just scooped out onto the browie & ate while it melted. It was fantastic! This meal of short rib & brownie was the best meal of the entire vacation. Our dining companions were excited to hear that you can order desserts a la mode, and also tried the brownie and ice cream.

During dinner, we noticed that the Mississippi was constantly on the right side of the train. Since our roomette was on the left, we decided to stop in the SSL instead of returning to our left-sided roomette. The SSL was very crowded, and we could only find seats on the left side, but we were able to turn them so we could see most of the river. As we enjoyed the scenery, the conductor called out over the intercom for any doctors or nurses to go to the last coach car for a passenger who was in distress. We never found out what happened to that poor person, but they did announce that an ambulance would be meeting our train once it arrived in Minneapolis. This made the third trip in a row for us where an ambulance met the train!

We arrived in Minneapolis basically on time. Jana made up our beds, and I volunteered to take the top bunk. It's cramped up there, but I slept okay. I find that if I just keep my eyes closed (rather than staring at the walls a few inches away) I can fall asleep a lot faster in that bunk.

 

[D.P. Roberts]

Day 2: Devil's Lake to Whitefish

I woke up around 6:30 am. The train was running about an hour late, and was somewhere near Devil's Lake, ND. I hung out in the lounge for a while until my wife woke up, and we made our way to the diner for breakfast. We were seated with an older couple from Parma, Ohio who were on their way to Skagway, Alaska to help their son run his businesses (he has several restaurants and gift shops for the cruise ship tourists). The gentleman was a retired engineer, and had started working for NASA in 1943. Doing the math, he must have been in his 90s. I hope I'm still as alert and mobile when I get to be that age! The tracks were rather rough at that point, and it was hard to watch the poor man try to get a sip of coffee without scalding himself! The westbound EB doesn't have french toast, so I opted for pancakes, while my wife had eggs and potatoes. The pancakes were small and only “okay”, and the potatoes Mrs. Roberts had were rather mushy and tasteless.

I thought that the scenery in eastern North Dakota was rather interesting. Much of the farmland there was flooded, and we saw lots of deer, ducks, and other wildlife. It's certainly better than the endless rows of corn in other places throughout the midwest. Western North Dakota was drier, and more like the farmland we see all the time in Ohio. I still never got tired of looking out the window – there were always farms, houses, abandoned cars, etc. passing by. I had heard all about the oil boom in North Dakota, and was afraid that we'd see nothing but oil rigs for miles on end. While we saw a few rigs and several trailer settlements for the oil workers, it wasn't too bad. We lost half an hour due to “malfunctioning signals” and other unexplained problems, and soon found ourselves about an hour behind schedule.

We noticed that the passengers in this car generally had their doors and curtains closed. On our previous trips aboard the Coast Starlight & Southwest Chief, doors and curtains were generally left open. This made it a lot easier to see the scenery on both sides. We surmised that the ocean scenery was so interesting on the CS that coast-side passengers probably felt bad about leaving their curtains closed. On the Southwest Chief, it was so hot that everyone left their doors open to get more air. On this train, it wasn't hot enough or scenic enough for people to open their doors. Unfortunately, the movie-watching guy sin the roomette nearby still had his door open...

Our room also started getting rather hot. Since we were on the south/left side, we were in the sun, and even with the doors open it really started getting warm, even with our air vent opened fully. Others must have complained to Jana, because she really cranked up the air conditioning in the car. The hallways ended up being freezing cold, but enough of that cold air made it into our room to make it bearable. The other downside to being on the left side was that most of the freight trains seemed to be on that side.

Lunched was soon announced; rather than taking reservations, passengers were asked to send one member of their party to the dining car to put their name on a list. On other trains, lunch and dinner were both by reservation – I'm not sure why the EB was different. Jana decided to help us all out by going from room to room & taking names for all of us. This is just one of the many little things she did that really made things run more smoothly & made the trip more enjoyable for everyone.

We were seated at lunch with yet another couple headed to Glacier. This couple was getting off at East Glacier on a package tour. They were in a roomette across from the gentleman who was watching the loud movies. They said he was a huge “Hopalong Cassidy” fan. They said he had a GPS & a scanner, had taken dozens of Amtrak trips, and knew everything there was to know about Amtrak travel. So, I'm beginning to wonder if he was an AU member. If so, whoever you are, BUY SOME HEADPHONES!

I tried my first EB shower late in the morning. I think that the “refurbished” showers with the glass doors are much better than the older ones with the shower curtains. We were given a small bag of “Beekind” shower amenities, which I did not like. Most hotels and such give you small bottles of shampoo, but the Beekind stuff has a tear-off top, much like the small bags of Paul Newman salad dressing. This is wasteful: no matter how long your hair is, you'll never use the whole pouch, and there's no way to save / reseal it. Secondly, since you use up your pouch for the first shower, there's nothing left for the next day. They really should switch to some kind of bottled shampoo, conditioner, and soap instead.

After showering, we headed to the dining car for lunch. We both had the Gruyere Grilled Cheese. This was another AU recommendation, and I can see how it could have been good. However, neither of our sandwiches were fully cooked. In fact, the sandwich served to Mrs. Roberts had cheese that was still cold. I don't mean “not melted”, I mean COLD. We asked our server (not Eli / Tanner this time) if it could be reheated. I think it's the first meal on Amtrak that we've ever sent back. It was returned to us a few minutes later, having simply been microwaved to melt the cheese. So, on the whole it was disappointing, but I can see how it could have been better. On the positive side, we had the brownie and ice cream for dessert again, and once again our dining companions tried it as well. We're winning converts!

Here's a photo of the cold Gruyere sandwich (post-microwave). Note that the cheese is finally a little melted, but the bread clearly isn't toasted.

As we started to pass through Montana, the farmland slowly turned into ranchland. Mrs. Roberts wasn't thrilled, but I found it enjoyable – it's prototypical “Western” scenery. An announcement was made about kids running through the dining car, & how it was unsafe during the dining service & disruptive as they tried to prepare for dinner. We had seen several groups of kids playing “hide and seek” on the train, so it was probably them. Kids, when given free reign on the train, will pretty much spend the entire time going from the lounge car to their seats & back again. I really wonder whether Amtrak ought to consider more kid-friendly activities onboard.

Havre, Montana, including the statue of James J. Hill, the Empire Builder who gave the name to this train:

They soon took reservations for dinner – wanted a later seating, and were offered 7:15 or 8:30. I'm not sure why there were such big gaps in the service. We heard that some tour groups may have booked entire seatings, but it seemed to happen on all of the legs of our trip. We took 7:15, just to make sure that we got dinner finished before we detrained in Whitefish. I also hoped that by taking the earlier seating, we were more likely to get the items we wanted at dinner. Unfortunately, they ran out of short rib by the time we got there. I ordered the steak instead, along with those buttery mashed potatoes. It was delicious – I'm not a steak eater, but I really like Amtrak steaks. They're very flavorful. I even liked the mushroom sauce, and I never eat mushrooms. Tragedy struck again with dessert, as they were out of the brownie. We also spent most of our dinner parked in front of the beautiful East Glacier Lodge.

After dinner, we stopped in the Lounge car. It was really hard to find seats, especially since several people hogged multiple seats with camera bags and other stuff. We (along with many others) just stood in the aisle for most of the trip through Glacier National Park. A Trails and Rails volunteer was narrating the trip through Glacier. We had already seen a pronghorn earlier in the evening, and I was hoping we'd see more wildlife as we passed through the park. The presentation was okay (the volunteer mostly just read from his notes), but the scenery was amazing. We were running about an hour late, and I was concerned that we'd pass through the most interesting scenery after dark, but we made it to Whitefish before the sun had fully set. I was concerned that the lateness was going to mess with our rental car reservation, but a representative from Budget was waiting for us at the Amtrak station. We were in our car and off to Whitefish within a few minutes.

Since this is a train trip report and not a vacation report, I'm not going to write about the 10 days or so we spent in Glacier and Whitefish. I'll just say that Glacier is an amazing and beautiful park. I still like Yellowstone better, mainly for the wildlife viewing & the many different types of scenery, but Glacier is a close second. This was our third trip to Glacier, and I look forward to going back again.

 

[D.P. Roberts]

I ran out of room for these photos in the last post. They were taken from the railfan window during the second day of our trip, mostly in Glacier National Park:

 

[D.P. Roberts]

Return trip

Day 1, Whitefish. Montana to Minot, North Dakota.

We woke up on Monday morning to find that the train was running late, and would be about an hour late into Whitefish. Just like our first trip, we just snoozed a while longer, & decided to get to the station early anyway. It was only a mile or so from where we were staying, but I was a bit worried about returning our rental car, since it had some scratches on it - in looking at our rental papers, it appears that the scratches may have been there before we rented the car & we just hadn't noticed them, but we wanted to be early just in case there was a hassle with it. When we got to the station there was no Budget guy, so we just dropped our keys in the return box.

The train soon arrived, running approximately 25 minutes late. We had said goodbye to my family earlier, but they decided to come down to the station to see us off anyway, and all my nephews and nieces were very excited to see the train arrive. We soon met our attendant, Charles, and asked him if the little kids could come look at our roomette. He said that was no problem, and even brought them some paper Amtrak hats and coloring books. This was but the first of many kind things that Charles would do for us throughout the trip.

We were assigned to Roomette #8. As we boarded, we saw that the roomettes were in the back, meaning that we were now on the left / north side of the train for the return trip. Hooray! This meant that we would have the best views and would be out of the sun (which, as you'll see later, was not a problem after all). We were hoping that we'd have a view out the railfan window at the back of the train, but a private varnish car, the Sierra Hotel, was hooked onto the back of the train. It stayed with us all the way to Chicago, so we never did get a view out of that back window. The car was another refurbished Superliner I (#32057, I think), but didn't seem to have all the refurbishments that our first car had. For example, no LED lighting, no wood paneling in the roomette, and carpet on the bottom of the upper bunk. Mrs. Roberts noticed that basically the car and the bedrooms had been refurbished, just not the roomettes. I didn't realize that the refurbishments had so many different levels.

Before the train departed, we soon ran into a very confused couple in the aisle. They had been directed to our sleeper by “a very mean Amtrak lady,” and were trying to find their roomette. I looked at their tickets, and saw that they were in one of the Seattle sleepers at the other end of the train. The mean Amtrak lady (I never found out who that was) had not only yelled at them, but had directed them to the wrong car and the opposite end of the train. They started forward, but I warned them that they would be much better off going back downstairs and outside, rather than trying to lug all their stuff through 8-10 cars that were still busy loading.

Charles soon came by to introduce himself. We have been on Superliners several times now, but he still showed us some things that we had never seen before. For example, the roomettes have doorbells – I never knew that! He also told us about all the snacks, drinks, books, magazines, and other stuff he had available in his roomette. I have never seen an attendant give out so much stuff! Here's a photo of all his swag:

The train soon departed, and we headed off to the diner for breakfast. We soon found ourselves seated with the couple we had just spoken to earlier, who had been directed to the wrong car! It was their first time in a sleeper – they had ridden from North Dakota to Whitefish previously in coach, but decided to spring for a sleeper for the return. The man said that they had been quoted $300 for the sleeper upgrade several days previously, but called again the day before they left and were quoted a price of only $100 or so. I didn't know that Amtrak still offered last-minute upgrades like that. As it turns out, the woman was from a small town in Indiana, just a few miles from where Mrs. Roberts grew up. All of us ordered the French Toast for breakfast. It was terrific – MUCH better than the French Toast we had on the Capitol Limited. It was toasty on the outside but still soft in the middle, and had a lot more flavor. Now THIS was the French Toast I had been looking forward to!

Since we were still in Glacier National Park, we stopped in the Sightseer Lounge on the way back from breakfast to listen to the park ranger. This volunteer was a lot better than the last one – he had notes but didn't even look at them, and had a lot to tell us about the wildlife and local history. There were no open seats available, but a nice couple offered to share their table with us. We saw a small herd of mountain goats grazing on the side of a mountain, but they were too far away to get a good picture.

The train must have been making up time as we made our way out of the mountains; by the time we reached Shelby we were barely late at all. I also saw a coyote trotting through the grass, and more pronghorn – these were two animals we never saw in Glacier.

Lunch was announced as first-come, first-served again. I read somewhere (in the Empire Builder magazine, I think) that lunch is always first-come, first-served on the EB. I know it was different from the other trains, I'm just not sure why. Anyway, when we went to the dining car for lunch, we ended up being seated with the same people from breakfast – we just kept running into them. I tried my first “Amburger” for lunch. The patty just didn't taste like a decent burger ought to taste – the processing & reheating had pretty much killed the flavor. However, at least the bun was toasted. I tried the mousse for dessert. As you can see from the pictures, it had several layers & varieties of chocolate. The first was more of a flavored whipped cream, the middle layer was more like white chocolate pudding, and the bottom was a thick & bitter ganache. It wasn't too bad, but it's no brownie and ice cream.

Chocolate Mousse:

Cheesecake with berry topping:

We returned to our car & spent the rest of the afternoon watching the scenery & the antics of the Amish kids in the nearby roomette. I don't know why, but there are always dozens of Amish people on trains in the midwest. Our roomette was surrounded by a large party of Amish people who took up half the roomettes in our car. One roomette had two kids in it who apparently fell asleep with the door locked, and the dad could not wake them up. He shouted and pounded on the door for several minutes before Charles showed up to help. Charles grabbed a crowbar, and was finally able to pry the door open – basically, he lifted the door up to make the latch pop. The kid must have been a heavy sleeper, or perhaps he was listening to something on headphones, but that would have been very un-Amish.

Dinner was by reservation, but once again the dining service would straddle a time change, so reservations were on Mountain time even as we crossed over to Central. We were seated with two young teenagers – as far as I can tell, they just wanted to have a meal separate from their parents, and with such a late seating time I think they hoped they would be by themselves (they had been seated across from each other when we arrived). Their parents even came over to check on them partway through the meal, which was a little weird. They didn't really want to talk to us, which was fine. Foodwise, I tried the eastbound “Amtrak Culinary Team” item, the braised turkey shank. It was very tasty – not quite as good as the short rib, but I still enjoyed it. The only thing I didn't like was that the sauce was very runny – I wished it had been a thicker gravy, which would have gone better with the mashed potatoes. Still, I would gladly order it again, and I think the Amtrak Culinary Team meals are definitely a step in the right direction. Mrs. Roberts tried the chicken, which she said was good but was rather difficult to eat with only a butter knife. I had the mousse again for dessert.

Here's the turkey shank:

Here's the chicken dinner:

Since dining reservation times were very spread out, we had gone for 8:30 pm. By the time we finished dinner, and with the switch to Central time, it was after 10:30 by the time we finished dinner. We were right at Minot, running about an hour late, as we left the dining car – since we had such a long walk and the train was rather crowded with detraining and entraining passengers, we just exited at the first coach and walked back to our sleeper. The door was open but we didn't see Charles, so we just headed up to our roomette. The bed wasn't made yet, but we figured he was busy with other passengers, and we weren't in any hurry to go to bed. So, we just hung out for a while & read. Another hour or so later, we still hadn't seen Charles, & made several trips downstairs & back looking for him. We never bothered hitting the Attendant button in our room – that seems to only go off in the attendant's roomette, and we knew he wasn't there, to there didn't seem to be any point in buzzing him. At midnight we just gave up & made up the beds ourselves. After seeing it done many times we didn't think it would be hard, and it wasn't. Mrs. Roberts got the upper bunk this time since I had slept in it on the way out. I enjoyed having the wider lower bunk, but on the whole I found it wasn't a lot different than the upper bunk. I normally enjoy looking out the window from the lower bunk, but it was dark and rainy, & I couldn't see anything out the windows. Plus, Mrs. Roberts tends to move a lot in her sleep, and kept rattling the safety net, which kept waking me up. The next time we're in a sleeper I think I'll just volunteer to take the upper bunk each night.

 

[D.P. Roberts]

Once again, I had too many photos. Here are some of the Sierra Hotel on the back of our train, as well as some of the Milwaukee Railroad cars that were parked in St. Paul.

 

[D.P. Roberts]

Return Trip, Day 2: Staples, MN to Waterloo, IN

When I woke up the next morning, the storms had stopped. It was about 6:00 am, so it had been a short night, but somebody was talking really loudly just a few roomettes away, which had woken me up. From what I could tell, someone had a visitor in the sleeper, and the visitor had been talking loudly while the sleeper person had been whispering, but apparently his friend wasn't getting the message that it was still ridiculously early. I staggered down to the bathroom in my pajamas, glaring at that loud-talkers. By the time I got back to our roomette, I think they realized how loud they were being, & moved off to another car. I started to go back to sleep, and around 7:00 they started making announcements regarding breakfast. At 7:30 the conductor got on the intercom to explain to us that we were about to stop at Staples, Minnesota - about 4 hours late. She said that the thunderstorms last night had led to some slow orders, and that lightning had struck some signals, causing them to be reset, which took even more time. She made no mention of construction across North Dakota. So, even though we were an hour late through North Dakota in one direction and four hours late in the other, neither delay was apparently due to construction.

We soon headed to breakfast. We both had the French Toast again, and it was just as good this time. The EB's French Toast is clearly leagues ahead of the boring stuff on the CL.

We soon stopped in St. Paul, and watched them add the St. Paul coach car, which was complicated by the Sierra Hotel private car on the back. It was also really neat to see the Milwaukee Railroad private cars that were parked at the station. I even got to peer in some of the windows. I think a trip in private varnish would be interesting, but not really worth the money. From my admittedly brief look in through the windows of the Sierra Hotel car, it looked to me like the Amtrak cars were in better shape. Charles brought some USA today papers onboard; I hadn't seen the score of the Indians game from the night before, so I had been eagerly awaiting some news. However, the USA today didn't have any scores – apparently, 7:00 games on the east coast are too late to make it into the paper. What's the point of having a Sports section with no sports scores in it? I even tried to see if St. Paul had wifi in the station, to no avail. This was somewhat surprising, as St. Paul even has a small Metropolitan Lounge. I really think Amtrak should have wifi available in its major stations. Waiting passengers and those onboard would really appreciate this.

We soon started traveling along the Mississippi River, and saw several bald eagles. We were still several hours late: dining car attendant Timmy announced that we'd have an extended lunch since we were going to get into Chicago too late for dinner for most of us. By the time we got to the dining car they were out of the chicken special, so I tried a burger again. This time, the bun wasn't even toasted. Several of our dining companions tried the burger too – some of them got toasted buns, and some didn't. It looks like maybe one of the cooks bothered to toast the buns, and another didn't, or perhaps they just toasted the buns when they had time. Mrs. Roberts enjoyed her chicken salad, which appeared to be topped with the corn medley that was on my turkey dinner from the night before. This seems like a pretty good idea – if Amtrak is limted in what they can prepare onboard, at least figure out how to make certain things really well, and use them in a variety of different dishes. I tried the cheesecake for dessert, which was pretty good – at least it was served on a plate, out of its plastic container.

Amburger, with bacon:

Salad with chicken:

By the time we entered Wisconsin we were still running over three and a half hours late. The conductor announced that we would get more information about connecting trains after we left Milwaukee. Mrs. Roberts and I had really enjoyed the trip, but we were both ready to get off the train. Neither one of us got bored on the first day, but by the middle of the second day we were ready to get off the train. This happened on the way out too – I'm not sure whether we both just start looking forward to our arrival station, or whether 48 hours on a train is just our limit.

The conductor finally got on the intercom to tell us about missed connections. Most of them appeared to be buses – especially those who missed trains like the Cardinal, which doesn't have many other options. At least with our connection, we still had a chance to make the LSL, and we wouldn't have minded staying overnight to take the next day's Capitol Limited. In fact, we had kind of planned on that – knowing that the EB missed the connection to the CL about half the time, we factored in an extra day of travel when we made our reservations. We figured that at worst, we'd be put up in a hotel overnight, with meals and such provided by Amtrak. We planned on spending the day visiting museums and seeing downtown Chicago before catching the next day's CL. Not a bad way to spend the day, right? However, the conductor announced a bus for us too! I was shocked. In all my research on the EB-CL connection, I had always heard about overnight stays or being moved to the LSL, & had never heard about that particular connection leading to a bus.

Mrs. Roberts and I were rather upset about this. We're both VERY prone to motion sickness, which is one of the many reasons why we ride trains. Neither one of us would do well on a bus. As we finally approached Chicago, I really hoped that we'd get some sympathy from an Amtrak agent who would find SOMETHING else for us – the LSL, a hotel overnight, a rental car, or something other than a bus.

After arriving in Chicago, almost everybody headed towards Passenger Services. Based on what I've seen when planes miss their connections, I pictured mad fights to be first in line, screaming passengers, and frazzled employees. Instead, there was a person waiting out in front of the desk directing people to a specific Amtrak employee for each missed train. Those employees gathered up those who were heading for buses and walked them to their destinations. Those of us who still wanted to speak to Passenger Services had a very short wait, as even there they were trying to “triage” people who only had simple questions. I was soon at the front of the line. The agent looked up my ticket, and told me that I had already been booked on that day's Lake Shore Limited, and we had a roomette to boot! I was very surprised, and very happy. Amtrak had already fixed everything for us, even before we showed up! Fixing a major problem like this before we even brought it to their attention is something I've never experienced when traveling before, and earned Amtrak lots of points in my book.

We headed over to the ticket window to get our new tickets for the LSL, and headed to the Metropolitan Lounge to wait. It was almost 8:00 at this point, and the attendant announced that the LSL would be boarding for the wine and cheese tasting at 8:30. She also said that if you didn't want to go do the reception you could board at 8:45 instead. We're not wine drinkers and hadn't had dinner, so we headed upstairs to try and find some food. Unfortunately, most of the food court stands had closed. We split some chinese food, and headed back to the lounge. We were the only sleeping car passengers who hadn't boarded at 8:30, so the attendant had walk us to our train by ourselves. I thought she would be sort of miffed about having to give us special treatment, but she was very friendly and seemed genuinely happy to help us. I plan on writing to Amtrak to tell them about the great employees we encountered on our trip, and I wish I had gotten her name.

We soon found our sleeper and our attendant, who went by the name of J. He was a little confused to see us; our last-minute connection meant that we weren't on his original passenger list. However, he adapted quickly, and showed us to our room. We had never been in a Viewliner sleeper before, and it was quite different from the Superliners we're used to. Primarily, my first impression was of a lot more plastic and a lot less metal. The hallways seemed a lot longer, and a lot more crowded – Superliners have a lot more “passing space” around corners and such. Secondly, there's no luggage storing space on a Viewliner, so we had to lug our suitcases to our room (our station isn't staffed, so we couldn't have checked them). I knew there was a storage compartment at the top of the roomette, but I didn't think our suitcases would fit up there. It was a little difficult to lift the suitcases above my head, around the upper bunk, and into the compartment, but they both fit – barely. I heard Jay down the hall talking to people whose suitcases were clearly too large to fit, & hadn't bothered checking them. I don't know how he resolved that situation.

The Viewliner has several other things going for it. First of all, it's taller, and has a second row of windows. I took the upper bunk, and had plenty of room & lots of windows. We were only going to Waterloo, but then had a three hour drive after that. Knowing we were going to get home at four or five in the morning, I really wanted to get some sleep on the train. However, I was still hungry, so I headed down to the lounge for a microwaved pizza. We both then tried to sleep for a while, and neither of us really succeeded. We alternated using the Viewliner toilet, and both agreed that having a toilet in the room is extremely weird. We both agreed that we're not traveling by Viewliner (on purpose, at least) until they make new cars with an actual bathroom down the hall.

We had never had to detrain in the middle of the night before, and we weren't sure what to expect. We set an alarm in case we fell asleep, but woke up with plenty of time to spare. The train had gotten a little late during our brief nap, and J walked by to check on us 10-15 minutes before we got to Waterloo anyway. We stumbled off the train at around one in the morning, made it to our car (which was still there after almost 2 weeks at the station), and made the three hour drive home.

It was a long but wonderful trip – our first time taking Amtrak both ways across the country. We both loved the train, the scenery was beatiful (at least in parts), and the employees were outstanding. We weren't always on time, but I'd highly recommend Amtrak travel and the Empire Builder to anyone.

Here's a sign I didn't notice until the last day. Apparently, you can't open the door unless you're listening to "Messiah":

 

[amtkstn]

Great trip report. You can never take enough pictures. I ha

Be been getting off a train at 3am and driving thee hours home for a number of years.

 

[Bob Dylan]

Great Trip Report and Pics, glad it went well, thanks for sharing! :hi: When's the Next Trip? :giggle:

 

[AlanB]

DP,

If you ever find yourself on a Viewliner again and in a Roomette; know that the upper bunk in the room has 3 positions. Fully up, fully down, and a near mid-but slightly higher than mid point stop. Grab the silver handle on the bottom of the bunk and gently start to lower it. Once it starts moving release the handle and continue pulling down until you hear & feel it lock into place. Now place your luggage on the upper bunk with your feet firmly planted on the floor.

Then step up onto the toilet, preferably with the lid down :lol: , and you can more or less slide the luggage right into the cubbyhole with minimal lifting on your part.

 

[bobnjulie]

Great trip report! I'm inspired and hope mine will come close! Is there such a thing a too many pictures? I don't think so! Jealous of all the swag. Thanks for the tip AlanB about the Viewliner since we'll be in one in under 60 days... but who's counting

 

[D.P. Roberts]

Alan, thanks for the tip. I hadn't been planning on riding in a Viewliner, so I had no idea what to expect. I'll definitely remember that for next time.

 

[AlanB]

For that matter, one could even lower the bed to the lowest position, the normal sleeping level. Then it would be even easier to put the bags up on the bed. Then push the bed back up to the mid-point to facilitate sliding your suitcases into the cubby.

And you are more than welcome.

 

[shelzp]

Great reporting!!!

 

[BOS-T-Time]

Hello,

Thank you so much for writing this report, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and I second/third/fifth/tenth that you can NEVER have enough pics!!

BOS-T-Time