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California Zephyr from emy to Chicago.


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#1 steve4031

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Posted 06 January 2017 - 09:51 PM

My father and I are taking 6 from emy-chi departing 1/5/17. In 1974 my family took the San Francisco Zephyr from gbb to Oakland. I was 8 and this was when I caught the railfan bug. It included my first dome car and first open Dutch door experience. I loved so much I bugged my dad to do it again in 1977. So we did a USA rail pass. Both trips were huge events and I could tell you day by day details for both trips.

It is fun to share this trip with my dad who is 91. Now I know the ropes. We boarded in emy and the sca remembered me from previous trips. At lunch the server remembered me and another sca remembered me. Dad and I have been treated like royalty.

We departed on time with immaculatly clean windows on our lower level roomettes in the 631 car. The ride along the bay and across the Sacramento valley was California sunny and mild. After lunch we enjoyed a snowy ride over Donner pass. Look carefully through my photos link and you'll see that we over took a UP plow train that was plowing the adjacent track near norden.

Here are day 1 photos. https://goo.gl/photo...6bhVnpr7Qx29T49.

We are about to enter moffat tunnel. I'll post more in a while.

#2 steve4031

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Posted 07 January 2017 - 12:10 AM

The train ran a little late over Donner pass. Then we lost about 45 minutes at Reno because of a frozen switch. The train pulled through the station and then used another switch to get to the track closest to the station and we backed in. We departed Reno 90 minutes late. We look st more time over night. I slep through the drama. We arrived slc 2 hours 45 minutes late. I showered and discovered that the drain was frozen. I notified the sca and he told me tempetures dropped to below 0 with 70 below 0 windchill at elko.

I was hardly upset about the delay because now we would have a daylight ride over soldier summit. Here are the pictures. https://goo.gl/photo...eXQqpycFwcmymP8

We lost more time stopped near Helper, and for a broken rail at Cisco siding. This put us about 3:45 off the advertised. We were still able to get a great view of Glenwood Canyon. Some more photos. https://goo.gl/photo...1D8v62LHSkS5aY9




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