Trip Report: October 5 through 14, 2002
by Ted & Sylvia Blishak
THREE WEEKS BY LAND AND BY SEA
SEATTLE TO CHICAGO
ON THE
EMPIRE BUILDER
October 13-14, 2002
After our busy day of travel from Vancouver to Seattle, we slept like the proverbial logs, not even noticing our merging of trains in Spokane. We arose for the last call to breakfast at West Glacier to find ourselves running on schedule.
There is a light dusting of snow on the ground as we climb up and over Marias Pass to East Glacier. The sun is blazing on fall color. The diner is warm and cozy. It just doesn't get much better than this. Our dining car crew of three servers does an amazing job of seating and serving our trainload of hungry passengers. The meal service of course consists of the standardized nationwide menu which is the final legacy of the George Warrington administration, and it is served on plastic dinnerware and cutlery. But nobody seems to mind, this seems to be something that just happens on Amtrak periodically. Most of the passengers we talked to are just relieved that we still have any trains at all in America.
There is a buzz on board about our Congress now talking about eliminating several trains, such as the Texas Eagle and the Kentucky Cardinal. We spoke with several people who had just ridden the Eagle, or were ticketed to return on the Eagle, as well as a passenger from Louisville, who could use the Kentucky Cardinal to get back home. He was so nervous about these threats from Congress, that he bought a ticket on Southwest Airlines from Chicago to Louisville.
The Northern Plains of Montana and North Dakota offer a marvelous opportunity to get caught up on your reading, writing, or sleeping. This is how we spend our Sunday, with breaks for libations, meals, and walks along the cold windy platforms of Havre and Minot. Havre, as always, is swarming with border patrol officers on the platform as well as on the train. They don't say anything, and I don't have the nerve to ask them what they are looking for. Today for lunch we have the clam chowder and the cobbler with ice cream. For dinner we have the filet mignon and the cobbler with ice cream. For lunch on Monday, Columbus Day, we have the clam chowder and the cobbler with ice cream. For dinner Monday evening on the Capitol Limited we will probably order the filet mignon and the cobbler with ice cream. Having a nationwide standard menu makes your choices easy.
Arrival in St. Paul is early by twenty minutes, so we have extra time to exercise along the cold and windy platform. We examine the private car Caritas on a siding and sidewalk superintend the Amtrak work crew of five burly hardhats as they attach more material handling cars to the rear of our train. I didn't ask them why it takes so many people for this job, as only one man actually did all the visible work. Perhaps it is union rules, although when I was in the steelworkers union in the fifties in Ambridge, I never had anybody around watching me work or giving me moral support while I worked. Could this possibly be a clue to the decline of American productivity and heavy industry?
Monday is again sunny and bright as we proceed across the mighty Mississippi River and speed through Wisconsin towards our destination, the Windy City. At La Crosse there is a fire truck and ambulance waiting for us.
A passenger has taken ill and is carried off the train to a waiting gurney. We can find out no further details. The BNSF and the SOO Line seem to have a policy of moving Amtrak on time. On only one occasion in the Northern Plains were we put into a siding, and there only a few minutes. And once, south of Milwaukee, we stopped for a few minutes. Other than these two incidents, it is fast rolling on these two lines -- so different from our experience out west with the Union Pacific. Another difference is the relatively smooth tracks that we have experienced since we left the rocking and rolling of the UP's Coast Starlight route. (With the exception of the BNSF line between Seattle and Vancouver BC, which was never intended to run European Talgo trains on.)
