Late the night before, I was a little nervous as Amtrak's web site showed the Coast Starlight as being some three hours late. While I worked on getting the last couple mailing lists operational (see "Dead Servers Aren't Much Fun" for details), Mike called Amtrak and asked what would happen if the connection were missed in Los Angeles with the Sunset Limited, the train that would take me east across the country to Jacksonville, FL
First, they explained that the train had had an electrical problem, making it slow. Then, after the necessary disclaimer "We build catch-up time into the schedules," the representative went on to mention that that is a guaranteed connection: the Sunset Limited could be held if the delay were short, or if it were long, a bus would pick us up at some intermediate location and take us out to meet where the train would be, and in any case we were all set.
So I went to bed. Silly, silly Lorrie.
The next morning, I awoke having had enough sleep for the first time in three days (again, see the last installment for more on that), and peered at the web page again.
The train was now five hours late for its projected arrival. Mike called again, and I poked the site looking for an alternate route to reach LA.
Amtrak said the same things. Mike also pointed out to me that it isn't much of an exercise in deliberate loss of control if I grab a different train, and anyway, they'd make the connection, so why worry?
I agreed, and quit looking -- however, it should be pointed out that if you ever are in a situation like that, you can train from Oakland to Bakersfield and bus into Los Angeles.
Actually, it was a kind of blessing that the train was so egregiously late; it gave me time to make sure my most popular mailing lists actually worked, as well as a little extra time with Laurel and Andy to make up for my poor showing the night before. Mike and I adjourned after giving them their anniversary present, had a bite of lunch, visited a bookstore for train reading material, and finally wandered into the station. The train, on its part, stopped in the train yards between the Emeryville and Oakland stations, presumably to swap out whatever was ailing it, and pulled into Oakland's Jack London Square Amtrak station about six hours behind schedule.
It was raining, as it had been the past few days. Here's a picture of the station:
(on a technical note, I cranked the image quality on the camera down a bit after this to save us all some bandwidth)
Mike and I took time to be Cute while waiting for the train. I'd never been on one of Amtrak's long-haul services before. I'm sorry I don't have a picture of the train; I forgot to take one.
Anyway, we had the necessary squishy good-bye, and with the help of a young red-haired attendant, I boarded and stowed my large rolling bag. Curiosity soon got the better of me, and I started poking around the available facilities. While I did get into first class and look at the sleeping compartments, I didn't take any pictures; you'll have to wait until I'm on a sleeper car leg myself for that, which will be soon enough. Eventually, I took my seat, but not before capturing a few shots of the cattle car side of life for my readers:
Here is my seat, where, well, I spent the vast majority of my time. Unlike a plane, the trains don't have in-flight magazines. I brought two books with me: Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man, which, as the Astute Reader will already have noticed, lends a phrase to title today's installment, and Jeanne Cavelos's Casting Shadows, a "Babylon 5" tie-in novel about the Technomages.
Another question I've been asked is, "Can you really sleep in those things?" Sure! There's a footrest that flips out, the chair reclines to a fairly decent angle, and pillows and some blankets are provided. I suspect someone smaller than myself would have an easier time of it, but even I could manage to sleep in these seats. I brought my own blanket and another pillow, though.
Amtrak's web site has an awful lot of pictures of their first class sightseeing cars with their wraparound windows. Here's the coach equivalent:
All those single and double seats you see revolve three hundred sixty degrees, so you can converse with someone across the aisle or watch an in-ride movie (that nights was Charlie's Angels). Downstairs in this car there's a snack bar that serves everything from soda to hamburgers, with some booth-style seating. There's also a real dining car, which we'll get to soon.
Here's another important part of the train:
The 'wheelchair accessible' ones, like the one shown here, are a little wider than their airplane-based counterparts. The normal ones are just like the ones on planes, though.
After passing through Fremont and some rather unsettling views of the salt evaporators, the train takes a westerly turn and rides a single-track segment through the tidal marshlands at the southern end of the bay, in Milpitas and Alviso. These lands are part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and as such they're protected. I'm unsure about the history of these cabins, though, which have definitely been abandoned (even by the homeless and the gangs... too hard to get here, I suspect) and are mostly reclaimed by the march.
Soon after the passage of the marshes, we stopped in San Jose. Several of the train's stops are long enough for people to get out, stretch their legs, and have a smoke, and San Jose is among them. I don't personally smoke, but I firmly believe in the philosophy of the ciggie break, so I could be found outside most of these times, along with that charming red-haired attendant who first helped me onboard.
Around Gilroy, about thirty miles south of San Jose, I started wandering into the snack bar, looking for conversation. And there, friends, was that red-haired guy. I liked his charm, his boyish good looks, so I've immortalized him here for you -- meet Charlie Shoemaker!
Poor Charlie had been on the job nonstop for four days with an increasingly sour load of passengers. Yet, he always maintained good humor in the face of, well, us.
He also begged that I take some pictures of his bottom. Friends, it's a nice enough butt and all, but I opted for the better part of valor in the name of whatever dignity we all had left by the end of the night. Sorry, guys! Please take, instead, a look at pictures of these Articles of Great Power Charlie wields as part of his job:
These are the keys an Amtrak attendant uses to do Stuff. The old- fashioned-looking key on the far left is the one he uses to open the cabinet where they keep the intercom as well as various door-opening buttons.
Even nowadays, when American railways aren't necessarily calibrated for to-the-minute accuracy, our attendant still carries a stylish pocketwatch. Apparently this trip was the death of it, though, as he says it's dying. I did take a picture of this, but I forgot to turn off the flash so all you see is a reflection. I didn't post it.
Great thanks to Charlie again for letting me pester him with questions and flashbulbs. I'm almost sorry I didn't take the butt pictures.
Shortly after I took the above pictures, they opened the dining car for dinner service. I decided sooner was better than later, so I wandered down. The lounge/café car and the dining car are in the center of the train, on the border of the sleeping car section. Food is brought up via dumbwaiter from below and served to passengers, who on the coach side sit in booths like this one:
You can see the hills near Gilroy rolling by in the background. I was impressed with the quality of food they served onboard; more like what you would expect from first/business class airline service. For entrée choices, there were New York Steak, a swordfish steak, or Duxelle en Croute: a chicken breast in puff pastry with mushroom-sherry sauce. All entrées came with a soup or salad, a choice of potato (or rice pilaf) and either mixed vegetables or snap peas with pearl onions.
I had the duxelle en croute with roasted potatoes (the rice is a goof) and the sugar snap peas. The red wine wasn't included; I bought it separately.
If you're travelling alone, the hostess will seat someone else with you, as there aren't many tables in the dining car. I sat withh a lovely lady from Bellingham, Washington, whose husband was a technical writer in town for a conference. She was on her way to Santa Barbara. Unfortunately, she had laryngitis. There was a stop in Salinas as we ate, and I had to explain why there was so much warehouse and related industry cheek-by-jowl with large fields of crops.
I had pie à la mode for dessert, then said farewell to my dining companion and trooped back to my seat to curl up with my books. By the time I finished both of them, we were even later than we were in Oakland. Near Salinas, we were informed that yes, there would be a bus in San Luis Obispo that would take those of us transferring to the Sunset Limited to Ontario to meet that train, already in progress. I wasn't particularly worried, and we rolled on into the night.
As we pulled out of Paso Robles, the stop before San Luis Obispo, Charlie was rather embarrassed to inform us that the bus wouldn't be able to make it from SLO to Ontario in time, so it had been cancelled. We would all proceed to LA, and depending on destination we would either be flown to El Paso (to meet the train already in progress), or put up in a hotel, fed and boarded at Amtrak's expense, until the next run of the Sunset Limited (which was to be Tuesday night).
I wasn't particularly worried, really, but I did have a couple plans to re-arrange! Of course...
This was exactly when the cell phone lost signal.
I crept into First Class Country to use the Railfone in their lounge car -- although I later learned there's another in Coach on the lower level of our lounge also. Things were additionally complicated by the fact we didn't have Gamlingan and Gefjon's number out at the ranch -- but I could have Mike act as my proctor and work something out once I let him know the score.
After an hour-long huddle spanning two states, four households, and burning up quite a few miles of wire, the New and Improved Plan was to try and get Amtrak to fly me to El Paso and catch a Sunset Limited heading west, get off in Deming, NM, and proceed as planned (just later that same day). All well and good... as soon as we got to Los Angeles.
I curled up in the reclined coach seat and caught what sleep I could. South of San Luis Obispo (another smoke break), the track and weather grew progressively worse: the train stopped at several points, one of which was because we had to push a tree out of the way that had fallen across the tracks.
The Coast Starlight had originally been due to arrive in Los Angeles at 9:15 PM on a Sunday night. It actually arrived, that trip, at about 7AM -- ten hours late. My connecting train was now somewhere in Arizona.
I was stuck in Los Angeles for forty-nine hours unless Amtrak could arrange a plane... and nobody in town knew I was coming.
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