It is Sunday morning, March 29, 1998 and I have finally arrived home from my 7 day Amtrak rail journey across the nation! The above photo was taken out the window of the Southwest Chief at about 2:30 PM Mountain Time on Friday, March 27, near Las Vegas, New Mexico (not the Las Vegas in Nevada with all the glitter). Bob Stone, our Chief Of Onboard Services, noticed these cows crossing the river as he happened to glance out the window and announced it over the P.A. system. Fortunately, because Bob was up in the Crew Coach near the front of the train and I was 6 cars back in the last Sleeper, I had plenty of time to swing my already running videocamera around to catch this scene. To me, it looked like a cattle drive scene from one of those old western movies where the cattle are being driven across the river. However, in this case, the cows were not being driven by anyone and were just crossing the river for their own reasons, probably to do some grazing on the other side!

This Amtrak rail journey extended from Friday, March 20 to Saturday, March 28, 1998. From time to time, I have been updating the above image LIVE along the way! The above image is also displayed on the TrainWeb Top Page.

I have traveled from Fullerton, California to Chicago, Illinois and then on to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I spent a night in a hotel there and then headed down to Newport News, Virginia. After another night in a hotel there, I headed north to Washington, DC. I got on the Capitol Limited and stayed on that train through Chicago and all the way back to Fullerton. The Capitol Limited layed over in Chicago for a few hours and its name was changed to the Southwest Chief.

Click on each of the items below for more details about my current rail journey:

• Three Rivers (Travelogue & Photos)
• Northeast Direct Twilight Shoreliner (Travelogue & Photos)
• Northeast Direct Old Dominion (Travelogue & Photos)
• Capitol Limited (Travelogue posted now, Photos later)
• Southwest Chief (Travelogue posted now, Photos later)
• Overview of my itinerary

If you are wondering technically how I have posted these photographs directly from the train, here is how it was done: I used a Sony Video8 Handycam set up on a tripod that I placed on a seat in my room in the Sleeping Car. The videocam was connected to a Snappy (the older model) and the Snappy was connected to the parallel port of my notebook computer. The videocam and my PC were powered by the AC outlet on the train, though my PC had its power backed up by its own battery. After capturing a still image from the videocamera using the Snappy, I then would connect to the internet using a cellular modem and phone and upload the photo! That is it!

Keep checking back to the TrainWeb "What's New" Page at http://trainweb.com/whatsnew.html or this page at http://trainweb.com/now.html for further updates. Although this rail travel journey is now completed, I will continue to add more photographs and some further descriptions over the next few days, especially to the last segment on the Amtrak Southwest Chief.