West Coast Trip 2007

I have probably never before been quite as prepared for a trip as I managed to get for this one. I was even ready to leave the house before Terry! Well, except that neither one of us had managed to get a wink of sleep since getting up Wednesday morning…

We left the house about 3:15 a.m. to drive to San Antonio to catch the Sunset Limited Amtrak train. We arrived at the train station around 4:45 a.m.

Terry left to park the car in a city lot a few blocks away, at which point, one of the few other waiting passengers let me know the train was going to be delayed -- from a scheduled departure at 5:40 a.m. to the train not even expected to arrive at the station until maybe 8:30a.m.!

The reason? As we heard it at the time, a car had pulled into the path of the train at a crossing, and the train had not been able to prevent colliding with the car -- and there was a fatality. Later in the morning, another waiting passenger said a man had taken his 2 daughters and put the three of them in the path of the train! Suicide, plus killing his children! My, my, that had people talking for quite a while. “How horrifying! How could he do that to his children? And his action inconvenienced hundreds of people waiting for the train and those working on the train!”

Come to find out, hours after hearing this version of the story, the ‘real’ story was that three teenagers had pulled out of traffic waiting at a train crossing, pulled around the gate, and had tried to outrace the train…and they lost. Guess they’d never seen one of those shows on trains explaining how it takes about a mile for the train to stop -- after the engineer sees the obstruction! Even though the engineer did all he could to stop the train, he smashed into their car, which apparently exploded on impact, was dragged 2000 feet, got caught under the engine and burned, and of course, all three kids lost their lives in that single impetuous act.

Back at the station, 8:30 came and went. Then we were told it would be 9:30 when the train would arrive. 9:30 came and went. Then 10:00; then 10:30. Finally, around 11:00 a.m., our train arrived, with a badly scorched, but apparently still functional engine.

Here's a link to the horrific story of the poor teens who tried to beat the train: teens killed.

***

This is the first time I have traveled in a sleeper car in America…well, it’s actually more appropriately called a ‘roommette.’ And it’s great! Though the room is not much larger than a closet (and smaller than most 21st C. walk-in closets), it’s so well-designed and engineered that it works great for two compatible folks. We have comfy seats facing each other, which fold down to make up one of the two beds. The other one is parked above the window in an unobtrusive way, and folds down for either daytime or nighttime sleeping.

The door slides shut and is lockable from the inside, and has a curtain that velcroes together with another curtain on a hallway side window for complete privacy. The room is also equipped with a mirror, folding coat hooks, a couple of hangers on a rod/handle, a couple of shelves that also serve as steps up to the upper berth, a deep well of narrow storage, more storage under each seat, a small fold-out table-top, washcloths, A/C, a 120v plug, room and reading lights, and a little trash bin.

There are also double-size and larger sleepers available, but the cost is a lot more. As of this writing, the small roomette is only slightly more expensive than flying, and if you consider that they feed you three full good meals a day, plus the cost of a hotel room, then really, it’s a great bargain.

Of course, traveling by train is not for folks who are in a huge hurry; though over the last several years, I discovered that flying, while usually faster than a train, is no longer quite the time-saver it used to be, since you have to get to the airport so early to be searched. Airplanes are also frequently delayed - I‘ve been delayed by as much as 27 hours due to bad weather and missed connections. If you happen to be flying standby, flying can take days longer, in those instances when you can’t make it onto the flight you wanted. Often, when we flew standby, whatever money we saved by using buddy passes was offset or even exceeded by extra days of hotel and food costs.

When you add to that how tiny the airplane seats have become, the lack of any amenities, such as food or drinks, the limitations on what and how much of what you are allowed to bring with you, and the rudeness of having to be treated like a potential terrorist every time you fly, traveling by train really starts looking more attractive. And, if you care about the carbon footprint of your mode of travel, then a train is by far the more environmental choice (about 10 times more efficient).

[Here's a great story about traveling by rail in Canada; it sums up a lot of ideas about today's modes of travel pretty well: New Era for Train Travel?]

On a train, you see the land you’re traveling across -- the mountains, deserts, farms, small American towns, and parts of the larger cities….up close and (almost) personal. Traveling by train is actually ‘traveling,’ while flying is more like a very expensive way of getting people from one place to another, with not much of anything but unpleasantness in-between.

On the train, we sometimes share dinner tables with fellow travelers, and everyone we’ve met so far has an interesting story to tell. Some have a lot of interesting stories!

Several people we’ve talked to on this train have just traveled through New Orleans and other parts of the south that had been devastated by Hurricane Katrina 2 years ago. They said that much of the area is still in complete ruins.

One guy went to work in Biloxi, where the money the government has taken from us to use for the post-hurricane rebuilding is being used to build new Casinos, while the people are still living in trailers and have begun to rebuild their houses themselves without the government aid that was promised. Meanwhile, a few blocks away, graveyards that were torn up by the hurricane are still in complete disarray, with the crypts that were broken open and strewn around by the storm still left in the shambles they were in two years ago. This man was so upset seeing the destroyed graveyard every day through the windows of the Casino he was working in, that he quit that job.