Trip Report: The Great "Rail" Journey of April 2008

by Ted & Sylvia Blishak

Day 12 of 26,  Friday, April 18, 2008

Kansas City stop

April 18.    After a second, less bumpy night, even though we are behind schedule a bit, we make a “smoking” stop in Kansas City.   Ted does a quick-step up the escalator to the station level, then along a 380 foot (as measured on Google Earth)  open walkway to the small Amtrak waiting room inside the vast Kansas City Union Station.   A few more steps brings him into the magnificently restored Grand Hall.   Wow!

We Americans sure did things in a grand way at the peak of the railway age.  When it was a real railway station, of course you did not have to walk out in the open for 380 feet to reach the tracks. There was a  waiting room extending from the Great Hall out over the multiple tracks.   We are indeed fortunate today that the people of Kansas City saved this historic building from destruction by the wrecking ball.

After quick stepping back to the Chief, we pull out of KC and head for the second of only two Amtrak stops in the State of Missouri, La Plata, our destination where we will spend six days.