Amtrak Lake Shore Limited Rail Travelogue - Dan Chazin's Trip on the Amtrak Lake Shore Limited.
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Dan Chazin's Trip on the Amtrak Lake Shore Limited
Albany-Chicago
TrainWeb.com/travelogues/dchazin/1998g30a/1998g30a.html
It's 8:35 p.m. on Thursday, July 30, 1998, and I've just
arrived with four Boy Scouts at the Albany Amtrak station where
we will be boarding the Lake Shore Limited to Chicago, en route
to Ames, Iowa, where we will be attending the biennial National
Order of the Arrow Conference. We have spent two weeks at
Floodwood Mountain Scout Reservation near Saranac Lake, N.Y.,
where we went on canoeing and backpacking trips.
As we approached the station at 8:32 p.m., I noticed a train
coming into the station to the right. A glance at the train
indicated that it was the Boston section of the Lake Shore, due
to arrive at 8:44 p.m. The train was arriving 12 minutes early!
I pulled up to the entrance to the station, where we unloaded all
our baggage, and brought it into the station. Then I moved my
car to a parking space to the rear of the station parking lot,
since I would be leaving the car there for a full week.
After checking out the Boston section of the train, I went
back into the station and purchased an extra ticket for one Scout
who had decided to join our group after I had purchased the
original ticket for four of us. Then I went over to the
attendant for the coaches in the Boston section of the train and
explained that I was with a group of five who wished to be seated
together. She checked her seat roster and indicated that we
should sit in seats 41-42, 46 and 49-50. Although these were not
exactly adjacent, at least it permitted the four Scouts to sit
next to each other. I inquired whether she had checked the
manifest, since Carleton MacDonald had informed me that he had
inserted a notice in the manifest that our group had requested to
be seated together. She replied that she did not have a copy of
the manifest, and that the conductor had not shown her any
special seating requests. I thanked her for helping us out as
best as she could under the circumstances. (Subsequently, I
checked with the conductor, who confirmed that the request that
we be seated together did in fact appear on the manifest. Why it
was not communicated to the attendant is not clear to me.)
By now, the New York section of the train had arrived. The
New York section is pulled ahead of the station, and is then
backed up onto the Boston section. Since the power had been
taken off the train and the cars were therefore dark, boarding of
the train had not yet begun. So I walked back into the station
and made a few phone calls. Among the messages on my machine was
one from my good friend and fellow railfan George Friedman, who
was attending the ABA convention in Toronto, and was delighted to
find out that his hotel was right opposite Union Station! I also
spoke to my cousin Bertie about my Aunt Rhoda, who had just
undergone an operation in New York.
About 9:30 p.m., we moved our baggage out to the platform.
As we were doing so, the lights went back on, and boarding began.
We boarded our coach, but discovered that seats 41 and 42 were
already occupied by other people. I went back outside and
informed the attendant of this fact, and she eventually
reassigned two of the Scouts to seats 11 and 12, located towards
the front of the car. To do this, she asked a woman seating in
one of these seats to move back to the next seat behind, so that
our two Scouts could sit together. The car was almost completely
full, so not too much more could be expected.
I took seat 46, an aisle seat. Next to me was seated a
young man who had boarded the train in Springfield and was on the
way to visit his family in Buffalo. Fortunately, this seat was
right in back of a pair of seats next to an outlet. Anticipating
that this might occur, I had brought along an extension cord, and
I was able to plug it in and thereby obtain electric current for
my computer.
At 9:57 p.m., we pulled forward. After moving a short
distance, we stopped so that two RoadRailer cars could be added
to the rear of the train, and then we finally departed the Albany
station at 10:05 p.m.
As we left the station, a garbled announcement was made over
the loudspeaker that this is the last call for dinner in the
dining car. I was a little surprised to hear that dinner was
being served at this late an hour, and we had not planned on
eating dinner on the train. So instead we ate some snacks at our
seats.
After the conductor came by to collect our tickets, I walked
down through the New York section coaches to the lounge car. All
of the coaches were quite full, although there were some pairs of
empty seats, including eight seats that had been reserved for a
group. The lounge car was not at all full, although there was a
long line for service there. Then I returned to my seat and
began working on these memoirs.
We made a six-minute stop at Schenectady and left at 10:35
p.m., five minutes late. I noticed that our car did not reach
the platform in Schenectady; apparently, all passengers boarded
at more forward cars. Soon afterwards, I decided to take my new
laptop computer, which has operable batteries, down to the lounge
car to do some work. As I had expected, the rear portion of the
lounge car, where smoking was permitted, was quite full, but the
front portion, with the large tables, was mostly empty. I sat
down at a table near the conductors. One of the conductors, Bob,
noticing my Philmont cap, mentioned that he had read in an Essex
County newspaper two years ago about the death of a local Scout
leader in Philmont, and was quite astonished when I told him that
I had known the leader involved, whose name was George Berisso.
I purchased a jar of cranberry juice and used the time to write
up, at rather great length, the story of our recent backpacking
trip to the High Peaks area of the Adirondacks, with emphasis on
the performance of Dan, the staff member who had accompanied us.
I decided to step off the train when we stopped at Syracuse
at 12:38 a.m. This would be one of the last times that I would
be stopping at this station, since it is scheduled to be replaced
by a new station in a few months. About 30 or 40 people got off
the train here, and a similar number got on. Each person was
assigned a specific seat by the conductor before he or she
boarded the train, so the boarding process took some time, and I
had enough time to walk back into the station and step briefly
inside. Our stop here lasted for nine minutes, and when we
departed, we were nine minutes late.
I returned to the lounge car and continued working with the
computer. The last call for service was now made, so I got a cup
of tea. Then, about 1:30 a.m., the conductor announced that the
lounge car itself would now be closed until 3:00 a.m., and that
all passengers would have to return to their seats. I had never
seen that done before, but my batteries were beginning to run
low, so I would have had to return to my seat soon in any event
in order to recharge the computer. I returned to my seat and
finished the story of the backpacking trip, then fell asleep for
awhile.
Shortly before 3:00 a.m., the conductor came by to awaken
the young man sitting next to me, who would be getting off at
Buffalo. When we arrived at Buffalo at 3:09 a.m., I decided to
step off the train again. The way our train was spotted on the
platform, my coach -- where all of the passengers detrained --
was at the very rear of the platform, and everyone had to walk a
considerable distance up to the station. This was done so that
baggage could be unloaded from the baggage car in the front of
the train. I walked down to the station and back. Then, at 3:22
a.m., soon after I reboarded, the train was pulled forward so
that mail could be loaded into or unloaded from the mail car at
the rear of the train. This process took quite some time.
Finally, at 3:48 a.m., the train was backed up so that a few
additional passengers could board, and then we left at 3:50 a.m.,
14 minutes late.
When I returned to my seat after stepping off the train at
Buffalo, I found an elderly couple sitting in my seat and the
adjacent one which had been occupied by the man who had just
detrained. I mentioned that I had been sitting there, and they
replied that they had been instructed to sit there by the
conductor. So I went and told the conductor what happened. He
came back to the car and explained to the couple that the seat
check indicated that the seat had been reserved for me (even
though I, rather stupidly, had not left any of my belongings on
the seat when I got off the train). Next, he arranged for a
person sitting alone to move to a different seat so that this
couple could at least have two seats together. Then it became
apparent that this couple were the parents of a woman traveling
with her husband and two children who were sitting in the seats
opposite me, and in the seats behind them. They, of course, also
wanted to sit near each other so, once again, the conductor
arranged for some other people to move so that the six of them
could sit in adjacent seats. (Had it not been for the fact that
my computer was plugged into the electric outlet next to the seat
in front of me, I would gladly have moved myself to avoid all
these complications!) The seat next to me was now again vacant,
so the conductor assigned another man who had boarded in Buffalo
to sit there. He was going just to Cleveland, about a three-hour
ride.
Soon after we departed Buffalo, I decided to try to get some
sleep. I woke up a number of times, including during our station
stop at Erie, Pa., but I think that I did succeed in sleeping for
most of the three hours that we traveled from Buffalo to
Cleveland.
About 6:40 a.m., the conductor came by to awaken the man
next to me and announce that we would be stopping in Cleveland in
about ten minutes. The passengers detraining in Cleveland
started to congregate near the vestibules. We started slowing
down, then came to a stop in a freight yard. After several
minutes' delay, we began moving again, but once more very slowly.
We were getting nowhere fast. Finally, around 7:15 a.m., we
began speeding up again, and we pulled into the Cleveland station
at 7:24 a.m. Many of the passengers had been standing in the
aisle for over half an hour, waiting for the train to finally
pull into the station. I got off the train, and noticed that
about 25 passengers were waiting to board, including a large
Amish family and a handicapped passenger in a wheelchair who
required the assistance of a wheelchair lift. I knew that the
stop here ordinarily does not last that long, but I figured that
if a passenger would be boarding via a wheelchair lift, the stop
would last long enough for me to go into the station and make a
phone call. So I did so, on the way crossing the light rail
line, protected by bells and flashing lights (but no gates).
After making a quick phone call, I started walking back to the
train. As I was about to cross the light rail tracks, the lights
started flashing and the bells started ringing, and soon an
eastbound light rail train came by. I then crossed the tracks
and reboarded the train at the lounge car, in the front of the
train. We left Cleveland at 7:35 a.m., and were now 46 minutes
late. Most of this delay was, of course, caused by our being
held up by Conrail entering Cleveland.
Now, for the first time, I had two seats to myself, so I
moved to the window seat. Right after we left Elyria at 8:05
a.m., I walked down to the dining car for breakfast. (The Scouts
accompanying me got some food for breakfast in the lounge car.)
I was seated opposite a woman and her son from western New York
who had boarded the train in Erie, Pa., and were on their way to
visit her family in Milwaukee. I got the "American" breakfast,
which consisted of orange juice, a fresh fruit cup, a bagel with
cream cheese, a bowl of Special K cereal, and coffee. Our waiter
was Zane, whom I remembered from previous trips on the Lake Shore
as being friendly but a little slow. This time, though, service
was reasonably prompt. I finished breakfast about the time we
stopped in Sandusky at 8:43 a.m.
I returned to my seat and started reading my accumulated
Railroad List e-mail, which I had downloaded yesterday afternoon
at Floodwood. Now that I have a laptop equipped with a modem, I
can download hundreds of messages in a few minutes, store them on
my laptop, and then read them later wherever I happen to go.
There are several hundred messages that I have to go through, but
most of them are of little or no interest, so I can review them
very quickly.
Soon, we crossed the Maumee River, with its beautiful view
of the Toledo skyline, and I watched us pull around the sharp
bend into the Toledo station, where we arrived at 9:34 a.m.
Here, I got off the train, along with all four Scouts who
accompanied me, and I took a picture of the four of them. Then I
walked into the station and called my cousin Debbie in Chicago.
I noticed that the western end of the platform adjacent to the
station building has been converted to a loading area for express
cars, and two express cars were in the process of being loaded.
No express cars were added to our train, though. (I think that
it is the Capitol Limited that handles most or all of the express
shipments from Toledo.) I also walked to the back of the train
where I recorded the numbers of the two RoadRailer cars that had
been added to the train at Albany. (A glance at these cars
solved a mystery that had puzzled me since last night, when I
heard defect defectors announce that the train had 78 axles.
Normally, there are four axles per car or engine, but 78 is not
evenly divisible by four. The explanation is that adjacent
RoadRailers share a single pair of axles where two cars are
coupled together, but there must be a pair of axles in front and
back of each car. So the two RoadRailers together have three
pairs of axles. These six axles, together with the 72 axles for
the other 16 cars and two engines on the train, add up to 78.
Interestingly, this morning, one of the defect detectors
announced that we had only 77 axles. How this happened I do not
know.)
We spent 17 minutes in Toledo and left at 9:51 a.m., 49
minutes late. I continued reading my Railroad List e-mail at my
seat. I didn't pay too much attention to the scenery in this
area, since I had seen it all already many times, it is not
particularly exciting, and I had forgotten to bring along a Route
Guide or even a map of the area. Our next stop, at Bryan, lasted
for five minutes. Presumably, the length of this stop could be
explained by the difficulty in finding room for the boarding
passengers. A few minutes after we departed Bryan, the conductor
came by with a party of four passengers who could not find seats
together. He showed them two pairs of seats which would be
vacated at South Bend, Indiana, and suggested that they sit in
the lounge car until then.
We arrived at Waterloo, Indiana at 10:07 a.m. Eastern
Standard Time (equivalent to Central Daylight Time). Here we
made three stops, due to the short length of the platform, and
did not leave until 10:15 a.m. When we left Waterloo, a woman
who had boarded there sat down in the vacant seat next to me,
having been assigned by the conductor to that seat. I moved over
to the aisle seat so I could continue to get up without
disturbing her. She explained that she was enroute to
Minneapolis, where she would be picking up one of her daughters
and driving her back to her (that is, the mother's) home near
Fort Wayne. The daughter, she noted, was afraid to drive through
the Chicago area, so she, her mother, had to come and drive her
back to Indiana. (I didn't have the nerve to ask how old this
woman was, but she mentioned that she had 11 grandchildren and
three great-grandchildren, and appeared to be at least 70!) She
had decided to make this trip just yesterday, and had not had the
opportunity to buy a ticket (since there is no ticket agent in
Waterloo). As a result, she paid the conductor $44 in cash as
the fare to Chicago, and would be purchasing in Chicago a ticket
for the Chicago-Minneapolis portion of the trip. She also told
me that when she called Amtrak yesterday, there were no coach
seats left on the Empire Builder to Minneapolis, and that as a
result, she had to purchase a bedroom for this portion of the
trip. She mentioned that she had a winter home in Florida, and
that she would normally drive back and forth from Indiana to
Florida about three times a year!
About this time, I finished reading my e-mail messages, and
I decided to return to the lounge car, where I obtained a cup of
tea and a corn muffin and continued working on these memoirs.
The conductor indicated to me that we would be dropping off the
RoadRailers right outside of Union Station in Chicago, but that
we would not be backing into the station, so that we should be
arriving in Chicago about 1:00 p.m. We made rather brief stops
at Elkhart and South Bend, and when we left South Bend at 11:24
a.m., we were 51 minutes late.
At 11:30 a.m., an announcement was made that the lounge car
would be closing for service in ten minutes. But this
announcement only spurred many passengers to go down to the
lounge car to purchase some snacks for lunch, and when I returned
to my coach seat at about 11:55 a.m., there still was a long line
for service in the lounge car.
We left Hammond-Whiting at 12:27 p.m., still 51 minutes
late, but the conductor was correct in stating that there is
plenty of make-up time built into the schedule. Formerly, when
the train backed into the station, about 20 minutes was wasted by
this maneuver, but under the new procedure, the two RoadRailers
and the two mail cars at the back of the train were dropped
outside the station (a procedure that took only five minutes),
and then we pulled straight in to Track 24, coming to our final
stop at 1:04 p.m. Since we did not back into the station, it was
not even necessary to make a safety stop. We walked down the
platform into the station, made a few phone calls, and then went
to Wells Street, where we boarded the Ravenswood CTA train which
would take us near where my cousins Debbie and Aaron live.
This train trip was quite uneventful. Perhaps the most
remarkable part of the journey was the fact that we arrived at
our final destination only 19 minutes late! But our basically
on-time arrival was not indicative of today's general performance
of Amtrak. The arrivals board showed that the Texas Eagle was
not anticipated to arrive until 7:00 p.m. -- over five hours
late, and the Southwest Chief was not expected in until about
8:00 p.m. So it seems that Amtrak's on-time performance still
has a long way to go!
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