Trip Report: November 27 - December 21, 2001
by Ted & Sylvia Blishak
28 DAYS ON THE RAILS
LOS ANGELES TO SAN ANTONIO
Thursday, November 29, 2001
We had been rocked to sleep immediately upon leaving LAUPT. I wake up at an unknown time in the wee hours to observe a blank blackness out the window to the west, with a line of distant lights. We must be on the shores of the Salton Sea. I wake up again as we slow to stop for a station, which must be Yuma. There is a faint gray light in the sky, therefore we must be behind schedule. I wake up again as the sun streams through the wide window, dress, and walk through four coaches and the Lounge Café car to put my name on the breakfast list. I wait in the lounge. Parallel Interstate 10 is bumper to bumper with long-haul trucks, with an occasional automobile and RV. Even one motorcycle. We must be really rolling, as we are actually passing the trucks at this point. We make a multiple stop at the new Maricopa Station, just south of Phoenix.
The Sunset Limited originally stopped in Phoenix, one of the ten largest cities in the country, I believe. Trackage changes by the Union Pacific eliminated this stop a few years ago, and there was barely a squawk from the city fathers. Amtrak instituted a connecting bus from Tucson to Phoenix, a fairly long ride, and a backhaul if you are traveling east on the Sunset. This fall Amtrak opened its long awaited Maricopa Station to better serve Phoenix passengers. The station structure is quite original, a former observation dome lounge car from the 1949 California Zephyr. However, the station is unmanned, without baggage service, and there is no bus connection to Phoenix, 28 miles to the north.
We are called to breakfast and are served by Mike Apperson, whom we first met as a sleeping car attendant on the Coast Starlight over fifteen years ago. Breakfast is very well prepared and served in generous portions. I have the three egg vegetable omelet with a side of crisp bacon and biscuits. Sylvia has the fruit plate with yogurt along with a side of bacon and grits. We share a table with an interesting young couple from San Francisco who are embarking on a four month journey throughout Mexico and Central America. They will be disembarking at Tucson to begin their trip across the border with the Copper Canyon train to Los Mochis.
When we return to Bedroom B in the 2230 car, it has just been made up by Brenda, and she is still polishing the stainless steel sink with a spray cleaner. Her water and ice supply have been well maintained
along with a supply of chocolate chip cookies, mint and CremeSaver candies, and mint chocolate squares. Brenda also stocks the downstairs shower room with disposable razors, toothbrushes and toothpaste, shampoos, conditioners, and body lotions. She is the most industrious car attendant that I have ever traveled with, and she maintains a friendly banter while she is doing it.
We have our own housekeeping to keep up with, arranging our luggage, setting up the laptop, phoning for messages, and downloading e-mail. We also have a stack of interesting magazines to peruse. Although the low desert here in southern Arizona can be haunting, with cactus, yucca, and impossibly rugged mountains rising from the flat landscape, the wilderness scene is often rudely interrupted by centers of civilization. Specialized junk yards abound. We pass one that contains hundreds of 1953 era Chevy pickups and one that has a line of 1959 Ford automobiles. One yard fills the horizon with thousands of junk cars, too far away to recognize. In the distance to the south an airfield is lined with row upon row of out of work jetliners, a collection which has been greatly expanded since the September 11th attack which resulted in massive cutbacks in airline service.
Entranced by the view, before we know it, the last call to lunch is heard. We swiftly navigate the five rolling carriages to the diner where we enjoy the chef's salad and a Texas pecan pie ala mode. We are joined by a young mother from Lancaster, California, with her precocious first grader son, Conner, who opens his mouth to reveal two missing front teeth and to announce, "I'm writing a novel." The subject? This, his first train ride. They are traveling to Austin, Texas, to visit family for two weeks.
Conner's mother, Lynn, tells us that she is amazed by the size of the spacious, deeply-reclining coach seats on Amtrak, and by the more-than adequate legroom, as she was expecting the same cramped seating that she had experienced in airplanes.
We make lengthy stops in Tucson and El Paso today, station platforms where we can stretch our legs. They are also locations where we have a Sprint PCS cell phone signal, so we can send and receive e-mail. The weather is turning cooler again as we climb up towards El Paso, the high point on this route. There are small patches of snow on the ground, and the distant mountains are dusted white.
The track east of El Paso is the worst we have experienced thus far on this journey. This poorly maintained Union Pacific (formerly Southern Pacific) roadbed is comparable to the nearly forgotten stretch of the former SP Coast Daylight route between San Jose to Santa Barbara, now traversed by Amtrak's Coast Starlight. One cannot stand up or walk without a firm grip on some part of the car, and it is difficult to keep ones fingers on the correct keys of the laptop. We are not concerned of course, because the Federal Railway Administration regulates track speed, and we trust them to assure us that this may be rough, but perfectly safe.
We are awaiting our call to 8:15pm dinner, and somewhere in our luggage is a half pint flask of Black Velvet rye. I must see if I can find it and pour it without being thrown to the floor. Ah, here it is! Ingestion of small amounts of this rather mild fluid is known to reduce pounding and lurching considerably and it works.
By the time we make our lengthy hike to the dining car, many of the coach passengers are asleep. This is the last sitting and we join Bonnie and Jon, an interesting and knowledgeable young couple who work for Amtrak at the reservation center in Riverside. They are going to New Orleans to pick up an antique car to return to California. I ask them if they are going to drive it. No, they say, it is a 1915 Ford Model T, and they are going to haul it on a trailer. We enjoy an excellent broiled to order steak followed by German chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream, and it is most satisfying.
By the time we return to our compartment, it is 10pm on my watch, but the dining car steward reminded us to set it one hour later to Central Standard Time, 11pm. We retire and don't awaken until our arrival into San Antonio at about 5am. I have time to shower and shave while the train is at rest, then the power goes off and the ground crew begins the interminable shuffling of equipment as the rear cars are pulled off and transferred to the rest of the Texas Eagle equipment waiting at the San Antonio station. One might think this would require about five minutes of work, but is seems to go on for about two hours. Eventually we pull out of San Antonio at 7:30am, about thirty minutes behind. We had been there about two and a half hours, most of the time spent moving back and forth in an operation which defies imagination.
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