Trip Report: September 22 to October 19, 2003
by Ted & Sylvia Blishak
Fall Colors Coast to Coast - by Land and Sea
CALIFORNIA ZEPHYR #5
Friday, October 17, 2003, Westbound from Chicago
The Metropolitan Lounge, always crowded in Chicago, was bursting at the seams today, with luggage behind the check in desk and spilling into the hallway. We and our regular readers already know that our valuable luggage can be checked at room 341, just around the corner. We pickup our checked bags and leave them in the lounge, then unburdened, we get a light lunch at the Food Emporium in the upper level of the station.
We have time to walk around near the station, and observe that a new Hyatt is under construction just a couple of blocks away, which will be a great convenience for Amtrak passengers stopping overnight here.
At 2pm passengers for the Empire Builder are boarded, and a few minutes later, we have redcap assistance to board the California Zephyr. Although it seems to be confusing, soon everyone is settled into the proper accommodation, and the train is on the way.
Our car attendant, Reginald, ("You can call me, Reggie," he says.) welcomes us aboard and assures us that all of our needs will be taken care of for the next two days. We set up our work stations as we are speeding along the smooth triple track speedway west from Chicago. Jimmy, the dining car steward arrives to take our dinner reservation request.
There is a new menu today, one which we have never seen. The steak is a T-bone, a new dessert is a rich chocolate cake, and looking ahead, we see that lunch tomorrow will include the option of Jambalaya.
Now, it's not quite 10pm, we have been traveling for less than eight hours and we are already nearly 500 miles from Chicago, nearing Omaha, Nebraska, averaging 59 mph, including station stops. I have made three first class Amtrak bookings for a customer in California and sent his itineraries to him by e-mail while speeding across Illinois. We had a cocktail hour on the sofa in what Reggie calls our "condo", the Family Bedroom in the 531 car, right next to the diner. We have had an early 530pm dinner, T-bone steak done to order, a bottle of Merlot, and a slice of monstrous fine chocolate cake. Linda Tucker, our attractive waitress, is the best we have had on our entire Amtrak trip. We will be asking for her table for the rest of our meals.
We have taken our showers and are relaxing in our pajamas. While Ted is writing these notes on his laptop, Sylvia is writing about New Orleans on her laptop, as we charge along the rails of the former Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad, now the Burlington Northern Santa Fe. The engineer is doing the driving, quite a different experience compared with driving the Interstate truckways.
Nearly seventy years ago, the original stainless-steel Burlington Zephyr excited Americans nationwide with a dawn-to-dusk demonstration sprint from Denver to the Chicago Exposition. A fictional Hollywood film, the original "Silver Streak", was made with footage from this first Zephyr journey. A vital serum was needed to save a child's life. Would it get there in time? It was rushed from Chicago to a little girl taken ill with Rocky Mountain spotted fever. She was saved, in the nick of time, thanks to this modern, high speed train.
Ted and Sylvia both remember trips along these rails on the 1950s California Zephyr and Ted once sped across the snow-covered plains on the Denver Zephyr of the 1960s, his fastest train trip ever until he rode Amtrak's Metroliner in 1972. (He rode the TGV Atlantique at 186 mph in 1985 and has never been the same again.)
Today's California Zephyr has three sleepers, a diner, a lounge café, and three coaches. This Superliner I equipment was introduced in 1979 and is beginning to show its age. Although our sleeper has fresh upholstery, Standard Room 14 is missing its upper berth, which is taking some juggling on the part of Reggie, as he moves a single passenger into Room 14 when a couple boards in Denver, ticketed for that room.
TRAVEL TIP: KNOCK BEFORE OPENING! The restrooms on Superliners are in excellent repair and kept quite clean, in our experience. However, the locks on the doors are dicey. Yellow "occupied" indicator lights are supposed to go on over the doors when they are locked, but don't always work. There is also an "open/closed" legend on the door handle that should dial the proper situation, but the letters have worn off and are hard to read. Coupling this with the fact that one can lock a door without it being latched, it is not uncommon to open the door and find the cubicle occupied by a passenger who may shout or scream. So, to avoid that unsettling "eek!":
1. Open the door slightly and knock to avoid alarming a fellow traveler.
2. When in a public restroom yourself, triple-check to make sure your locked door is also latched.
The dining car floor heating is stuck on, and the steward claims he has no control over it, so it is fighting the air conditioning, such as it is. Since we began carrying our Radio Shack thermometers, we have never measured an interior temperature lower than 72 F. The usual temperatures run from 74 to 78 F, fluctuating with the sun load and the outdoor temperature. There is no individual control in the sleeping car rooms, and since we humans have such a narrow comfort zone, which differs with the individual, some riders are too hot, some too cold, and some are comfortable.
The original streamlined, Budd-built VistaDome California Zephyr, introduced in 1949, was retired in 1970 in a somewhat threadbare condition after only 21 years of service. Our Pullman-built Superliner I CZ has been rolling now for 24 years. Amtrak's new no-nonsense president, David Gunn, has set as his first priority getting the old, broken-down equipment working, in spite of our Congress' reluctance to provide adequate funding. Billions to rebuild Iraq (including their railroads!!) but peanuts for Amtrak, is the agenda this year in Washington.
We arrive into Denver at 8am, only 15 minutes behind schedule, 1038 miles from Chicago, averaging 56 mph from start to stop. The day is cool, sunny, and clear. We walk up and down the platform during this service stop, enjoying the cool, fresh mile-high air, watching two workman squeegee the windows. At 830am, we begin our climb up the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. At 1020am we are stopped outside the east portal of the Moffett Tunnel. The temperature in our room has dropped to 71 F. It must be cold outside at 10,000 feet in elevation!
Sylvia orders a delicious lunch menu item we haven't seen before, Jambalaya on brown rice. We are seated with a couple returning to Salt Lake City. Like us, the lady has renounced flying. "If Amtrak doesn't go there, I don't go!" she exclaims.
Her husband admits he once pressured her to give air travel another chance, and she reluctantly agreed. On a Delta flight from Salt Lake to Atlanta, on a beautifully clear day, everything went smoothly for awhile. Then suddenly the plane hit a clear air pocket. "A cup of coffee on my tray rose to the ceiling, and my first thought was that I'd be in trouble when it came back down," he said. "We learned later, from the pilot, that we'd dropped 5300 feet."
"Was everybody screaming?" Sylvia asked.
"Yes, we all freaked out and I forgot about the coffee, until it eventually landed on my lap," he said. "When things calmed down a bit, somebody asked a flight attendant for a glass of water. She stayed strapped into her seat, and told the passenger he was welcome to get it herself, but she planned to stay right where she was until the flight was over."
There are many kayackers and rafters on the Colorado River today, and as sunset nears, we see them pulling their craft ashore to prepare for an overnight campout. There are still some yellow aspens glowing in the waning sun. We are looking forward to one last dinner in the diner as our four week journey approaches its happy end.
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