27 replies to this topic

[AlanB]

One thing that I forgot to add to the above, while Matt's BNSF gets low marks for derailing a freight train in front of me; they definitely excelled at keeping us on time the whole rest of the time. We were basically on time from Chicago to ABQ, never more than 1 hour down at any point I believe. And one of the conductors mentioned in his announcement about the derailment before we got to ABQ, that we would probably hit lots of freight interference out of Gallup. Well despite seeing a few dozen freights sitting on the tracks out of ABQ and on the other side of the derailment heading towards ABQ, we didn't hit any interference upon our departure from Gallup. If we slowed for freight interference, it was in the middle of the night when I was sleeping. BNSF did a great job to keep us from loosing anymore time out of Gallup, than we had already lost with the bussing. Kudos’ to the dispatcher(s) who somehow managed to park those trains out of our way.

[AlanB]

Morning arrived for us, with our arrival into Victorville. We were awoken by an announcement just about 7:00 AM from the crew, reminding people that the train is non-smoking. We had had a similar announcement on the first day, as apparently there was at least one passenger who didn’t believe that the rules applied to him or her. I don’t think that they ever caught the person who was sneaking into the toilets to smoke. So with that announcement we got dressed and headed for the dining car and breakfast. I of course had my usual, RR French Toast with turkey sausage, while my mother had the quiche. Both were quite good once again, making me once again lament the missed dinner from the night before. The service was a bit slow however, but that was understandable, since they had abandoned the SDS reservation system in an effort to serve as many people as possible, prior to closing the diner to ready it for our arrival. They in fact filled the dining car up and started a waiting list. By about 7:45 or so, he announced that he had enough names to carry them right through 8:30 and that he would stop taking names within the next 10 minutes. So if you wanted breakfast in the dining car, you needed to hurry down and get your name on that list or it would be off to the café car for you. While eating our breakfast we were slipping through the Cajon pass, one of the highest points on our journey, and starting our long weaving way down the mountains into San Bernardino. We probably passed at least a dozen freight trains busy climbing their way up the mountains on that same winding ROW. But once again BNSF dispatchers had our track completely clear for us. San Bernardino came and went without much fuss, other than a fair amount of people detraining. We continued to drop off more passengers at the other stops along the way to LAUS. Just before we got to LAUS, I gave Carol a nice tip for all of her hard work the day before. In fact I felt so bad for her on Friday that I had actually made up our beds out of Winslow, just to lighten her load a bit. It seems that the attendant for that car on train #4 didn’t quite understand how things were supposed to work with the transfer. So Carol went nuts trying to find pillow cases, I think that she barely managed to scrounge up enough for everyone in the car. She had no juice, no bottled water, no bar soap for the shower (she had to resort to putting a bottle of hand soap in the shower). I don’t know if the other attendant took this stuff with her or just what happened, but poor Carol was going nuts trying to take care of her charges. And all of that was on top of helping people to move in the first place and needing to pack/unpack all of her own stuff as well as move it. I thought that Carol had done a good job the first day and night out of Chicago, but she really outdid herself and earned her pay that second night. In any event, thanks to some padding into LAX, we only ended up being 52 minutes behind schedule, which is not bad considering our little detour in New Mexico. We arrived on track #12, detrained, thanked Carol once again (she looked exhausted, like she needed to sleep for two days just to catch up), and then rolled our suitcases into the station proper. We secured a couple of seats in the waiting room and then I left my mom guarding the luggage while I went off to buy us tickets to Rancho Cucamonga on the Metrolink San Bernardino line. A wait of about an hour and a half occurred, before they called our next train for boarding. It was an uneventful ride out to Rancho, where a few of my mom’s friends met us at the station. Not having enough room in the car for 5 people, my mom stayed at the station with two of her friends to chat for a bit, while the area hostess and another friend drove me over to my hotel the Hilton Ontario Airport. Her friends then drove back and picked up the rest of the gang and proceeded to the house where they were all staying. They were headed off to an Andrea Bocelli concert. I would camp out at the hotel for the next two days and try to get in a bit of train riding in LA. We’ll cover that in the next installment.

[AlanB]

Come Sunday morning I walked over to the Rancho Cucamonga Metrolink station and caught a 10:24 train into LAX. After a quick pit stop, I purchased an all day pass for $3 from one of the TVM’s in the station. I then rode the new Gold Line in its entirety and returned to LAUS a little over an hour later. The Gold Line seems to give you a little bit of everything from street running, to brand new concret flyovers, to running down the middle of a major freeway. Upon my return to LAX, I was off to explore the Red line next. I had toyed with the idea of trying to ride both the Blue line and the Green line, but decided to pass on those as I didn’t want to take the later train back to my hotel. So it was to be the Red line and only the Red line for my other LA Metro transport. The first train at the station was the shorter line to Wilshire and Western. After changing ends at Wilshire and Western, I rode back two stops to Wilshire/Vermont. I decided that some lunch might be in order at this point, so I headed upstairs in search of something. A walk around the block quickly revealed that I had chosen the wrong place to find something to eat, as there were no places that I could see to grab a quick bite to eat. So back downstairs into the Metro I went. This time as luck would have it, a Red line train to North Hollywood was just pulling in. So I quickly jumped on it, so that I could complete my riding of all of the Red line. Once again upon reaching North Hollywood, I headed back upstairs in search of something to eat. Again, I was to return to the Metro disappointed as there was nothing but a Denny’s in the area and I didn’t have enough time for that. So walking back to the Metro station, I grabbed a hot dog from a little street cart vendor right by the station. Finding a spot in the shade, I sat down and had my quasi lunch. Ten minutes later, I was back in the Metro and boarding a train to return to Union Station. After a wait of 20 minutes or so, I was onboard the 3:55 San Bernardino Metrolink train. A little more than an hour later, I had detrained at Rancho Cucamonga and was starting the long walk back to my hotel. With that, I concluded my rail activities for the next few days. Come Monday morning, I caught the hotel’s shuttle to the Ontario Airport where I rented a car for a few days. I won’t bore your with a detailed account, but after picking up my mom, we headed for Lake Havasu City in Arizona for two and a half days to visit my uncle, mom’s brother. I didn’t get to ride any trains, but I did get to see some along the highways, as well as some HO trains in my uncle’s garage. Being a railfan himself, my uncle and I also talked about trains during our visit. But that was the extent of anything train orientated during this portion of my trip.

[AlanB]

My mom and I returned to the LA area on Wednesday afternoon, checked into the same Hilton hotel and returned the rental car. This was a good thing in part for me, as my cell phone connection just didn’t see to work too well from my uncle’s place. In fact, I had better luck on the train most of the time than I did at his house. So returning to the hotel, meant playing catch up with things. Thursday morning saw us catching an early morning Metrolink commuter train, the 6:53 AM out of Rancho Cucamonga to LAX. After hanging out at the station for a few minutes, we boarded a Southbound Surfliner, train #566 departing at 8:30 AM. Our business class car was right behind the engine. In addition to free coffee and juice, a selection of muffins and pastries was also available in the BC car. Thanks to some heavy ridership, in particular out of Irvine, and an intermittent door problem, we were about 7 minutes late into San Diego. At one point we had been down almost 15 minutes, thanks to two unscheduled stops to try and find the open door that kept showing up. They finally did isolate and lock out the offending door, just south of Solana Beach. As we pulled into the station, I could see HaRRy Sutton (RailHaRRy) sitting one platform over, awaiting our arrival. HaRRy had graciously agreed to be our host and tour guide in San Diego for a few hours. After a quick visit inside the station, where I exchanged our tickets for train #589 the 5:50PM departure to the 4:00 PM, train #785. When I had first booked the later train, I thought that I had more time for connecting between the Surfliner and the last San Bernardino Metrolink train. I was uncomfortable with only a ten minute window between the two trains, and considering that both of our Surfliner’s that day were late, I think that I made the right choice. After finishing the ticket exchange, it was back out to the tracks to buy a ticket for the San Diego Trolley. HaRRy led us onto a Blue line trolley north to Old Town transit center. There we switched to a Green line trolley and rode that almost to the end of the line getting off at Gillespie Field. Our plan was to switch at Gillespie Field for an inbound Orange line trolley. However, so engrossed in railfan talk, neither HaRRy nor I were paying much attention to the signs. Assuming that we wanted to ride inbound, we crossed over to the inbound platform. However since Orange line trains terminate at this station, while Green line trains go on one more stop to Santee Town Center, we were standing on the wrong platform. We assumed that the Orange line train, just like the Green line train we had arrived on, would go past the station. Instead the next Orange line train turned on the outbound platform and of course left us standing on the inbound platform. It seems only Green line trains serve that inbound platform. So after crossing back over to the outbound platform, waiting another 15 minutes and watching another Green line train come and go first, we finally boarded an inbound Orange line train. We rode that back to America Plaza basically completing a loop of the downtown area, before detraining. We all then jumped into HaRRy’s car and headed off for lunch at a place that HaRRy knew on the bay. After all were sated, it was back to HaRRy’s private transportation company for a quick drive back to the San Diego station. This left us with about 15 minutes to kill prior to catching our northbound train back to LAX. As luck would have it though, we had more time to kill, since the southbound train that would turn as our northbound was running late. The southbound arrived at 4:05, already past our departure time. Once they detrained everyone from 774, they started boarding for our northbound train. Having cheated by avoiding the line that Amtrak prefers people to wait in, we were amongst the first to board the train, once again in the business class car. We finally started rolling north at 4:18, almost 20 minutes late. We would never recover that time, and in fact would loose even more due to meets and a red signal at Oceanside. Again the train was quite full, in part thanks to a Padre’s afternoon game in San Diego. We finally coasted to a stop in LAX at 7:22, 33 minutes late, and far too late to make the 7:00 PM San Bernardino train that I had hoped for. So we killed some time in the waiting room at LAUS, and then boarded the 8:00 PM San Bernardino train instead. Thanks to a timely pickup by the Hilton’s shuttle van, we were back at the hotel by 9:30 PM and our day was over. Both this section, as well as the prior section of this ongoing trip report was posted from the train we’re riding today out of LAX, since I’m still playing catch-up on my reporting. In the next report, I’ll of course cover where we are as of today.

[AlanB]

Once again we woke early at our hotel, but unlike yesterday, this time we were checking out of the hotel. We again used the hotel’s shuttle to get us and our luggage to the Rancho Cucamonga Metrolink station. We caught a slightly later train today, later by 20 minutes. This put us into LAX at 8:20, although we were a few minutes late due to congestion at the station. Once again down into the tunnel and into the station where we parked ourselves and our luggage in the main waiting room. Shortly after arrival, I proceeded up to the information desk to checkin for our next train. It continues to amaze me that some big-wig at Amtrak in conjunction with the Dept. of Homeland security continues to think that he’s done his job and made trains safer by requiring photo Id’s for Amtrak travel. First, I’d defy any Amtrak conductor, none of whom have received any special training, to tell me that my license is valid or phony. This is especially true when there are over 50 different licensees; some states have more than one. Second, there is no way that some guest services personnel at a desk is going to know if my license is valid. Third, one of the highjacker’s who flew into the WTC had a valid New Jersey driver’s license. So having a photo ID proves nothing. Finally I’m annoyed by Amtrak’s inconsistent enforcement of this policy. The official policy is, random ID checks based upon the last digit of your ticket number. Yesterday’s number at least here in California was supposed to be 5. The conductor going down on the Surfliner to San Diego was checking ID’s for those whose ticket # ended in a 5. On the way home, the conductor couldn’t be bothered with it. My ticket ended in a 5, and he never asked me for ID. Now this morning, the clerk at the desk was checking everyone’s ID. That’s not random and I suspect that the ACLU may want to talk to him. I had left my mom with the luggage, so he told me to bring her by with her ID. However, since he stamped both of our tickets “Id checked”, I ignored his advice and never sent her up to the counter as I saw no reason to waste her time on a useless endeavor. And now that I’ve ranted enough, back to our story. They were supposed to have started the boarding process at 9:00 AM for our 9:30 AM departure time. I’m not sure if it was due to laziness or the late arrival of northbound Surfliner #763, which of course is a continuing train and therefore needed to board ahead of us. But in any event, they didn’t start boarding us until almost 9:15 AM, and of course they boarded the sleeping car passengers first, followed by the coach pax. This resulted in our departure being delayed by six minutes. That of course meant that we had missed our window, so we sat on the track at the platform for another 8 minutes, until we could get a lineup to leave the station. So already we’re off to a bad start, instead of a 45 minute early departure, we were only a half an hour ahead of schedule now. This schedule change while temporary is supposed to be do to track work, but when you’ve blown 1/3 of that time just getting out of the gate, it’s not a good thing. The second problem was far more major IMHO, no Pacific Parlour car. Even worse, no Sightseer lounge substituting for the Parlour car. Our attendant did at least have a selection of pastries available in room #10, something normally available in the Parlour car, but somehow that didn’t ease the pain of no Parlour car. With that, it’s time for me to call it a night (Friday night seems like a good name for it. ) I’ll pick this up tomorrow morning hopefully.

[AlanB]

After our late start, we moved along pretty well on Metrolink’s tracks, however when we got to the end of their tracks, UP wasn’t quite ready for us. So we sat for 3 minutes at that point till they could take us. From there and on up the coast, UP kept us moving right along through their territory. We did have one quick slow to a crawl at MP 83.3, because they were worried about a spring switch not working properly, but otherwise things went well on this part of UP’s tracks. It was interesting to note that two different UP dispatcher’s at either end of the UP stretch commented that we were running early again. Both times the engineer had to tell them that this would be schedule for the next two months or so. I found it odd that Amtrak is leaving 45 minutes earlier from LAX at UP’s request, yet none of the dispatchers seem to have gotten that memo. Or at least they failed to read it. Our first major problem, which totally killed the extra half an hour that we had been carrying, was thanks to Caltrain. They weren’t ready for us just past the Salinas stop. We got to their junction at 6:15 or so, and there we sat waiting for a commuter train that was scheduled to arrive at 6:47 PM. This delay put us out of San Jose almost perfectly on the original schedule printed in the timetable. Caltrain again dropped us in the dumper just past San Jose, where we lost another 15 minutes or so, again waiting for one of the commuter trains. We then made an unscheduled stop in Hayward, but I never heard why we stopped there. So by the time we cleared Emeryville, we were now almost a half an hour behind the normal schedule and of course even further behind the temporary schedule. Just after Martinez we had our attendant put our beds down for the night and settled in for the evening. Come morning, we woke around 6:15 or so to find ourselves running through the mountains in northern California. After quickly dressing, we headed for breakfast in the diner. While eating we spent a good portion of time following a small river/stream, winding our way up into the mountains. We also made a stop in Dunsmuir while at breakfast. I’m not sure what time we were supposed to reach here under the revised schedule, but under the normal schedule we were 2 hours and 14 minutes late at this point. So somewhere in the night, we had lost almost another two hours. I’m guessing that it was more do to slow orders, as opposed to waiting for freight trains, as I’ll often wake up when the train stops and I didn’t wake up much at all during the night. So far today, UP has done rather well at keeping its freights out of our way. We did get put into the siding once at Grass Lake to wait for a freight, but that only cost us about 10 minutes or so. There was one other occasion where we slowed for a freight and our conductor even made an announcement that we would have to stop for a freight, but thankfully the both the freight train and signal cleared, just before we would have needed to stop. So other than a bit of slow rolling, we squeaked through that meet. We also stopped to take on a new conductor at a rural RR crossing near MP 394. I think that’s near the small town or Worden, but I’m not positive. Perhaps someone else knows just where MP 394 is. We picked up our new conductor at 9:55 AM, after a 3 minute stop, and just in the nick of time as our conductor expired at 10:13 AM. So thanks to some slow orders, a 10 MPH, a 20, and 2 – 30’s, plus those extra stops, we left Klamath Falls just shy of three hours late. We’re still chugging northbound, albeit a bit slowly as I write this. The dining car, just like the train, seems to be running behind. Both last night for dinner, and now for lunch, they are running behind on seating people at their reserved times. The attendant blames people for taking to long at the tables, but frankly that doesn’t wash with me. The first lunch seating was at 11:45 AM and by 12:15 PM, Gus was already making announcements about the diner running behind. There is no way that those initial tables could be expected to be done eating in time for a 12:15 PM seating. So I’m not sure what the crew is doing, but somehow they aren’t handling the load properly. They may be a bit busier here, by comparison to the SW Chief, but frankly I don’t think that they are that much busier, so I don’t know why they keep falling behind. The service in the car has been a bit slow IMHO, but the food quality is still excellent IMHO. So I don’t know if the food quality for SDS is just getting better, or if the crews are getting better at preparing the food, or what. I do know that Amtrak continues to make changes to the SDS idea, but regardless of what the reasons are; IMHO SDS is not a disaster. It is a shame that we have lost the old way of doing things, as thanks to the staggered seating Amtrak now gets less passengers into the dining car and therefore sells less food than they used to. So despite cutting the costs of running the dining car, the net result may not be what Amtrak intended, since they are also taking in less revenue. Hopefully some middle ground could be found, so that the crew could be increased enough to one again utilize the full capacity of the dining car, while perhaps keeping the current meal service in an effort to hold down costs. And that wraps up this section of my report. I probably won’t post another update or any pictures, until we reach our hotel for the night in Portland.

[AlanB]

Well sadly I didn’t get a chance to update everyone from Portland, since thanks to UP, we were late into Portland. So by the time I caught up on my moderating duties, emails, and such, it was time for bed. Where UP really killed us, and it was totally unnecessary was during our decent down from the mountains into Eugene. The first time that UP cost us time was at a meet with a freight train. Now I do understand that that is their business, but here’s the problem. The freight was too long for the siding, so it remained on the main and we pulled into the siding. Almost as soon as we had cleared the switch behind us, the freight started moving forward so as to clear the switch ahead of us and back onto the main. All of this worked perfectly and was well choreographed. The problem was that after the freight cleared the switch, the UP dispatcher didn’t seem inclined to bother lining the switch and setting up the signal for us. So for close to 20 minutes after the freight had cleared the switch, we sat there for no reason. The engineer tried to wake up the UP dispatcher both by cell phone and by radio, but nothing seemed to work. Finally as I mentioned above, 20 minutes later without a word from the dispatcher the signal suddenly cleared and we were able to proceed. Our second run in with I assume the same dispatcher, occurred a few more miles away still going down the mountain. This time we just sat at a red signal, with nary a freight train in sight. Again it took repeated phone calls and radio calls, before the signal mysteriously cleared itself about 10 minutes later, without any answer or reason from the dispatcher. We had a few other slowdowns for meets after that, but thankfully no more stops either for meets or for mysteriously red lights. Even so, we had no hope of regaining any of our lost time. This of course meant that where they could, the conductors were trying to hurry up whenever possible at the remaining station stops. Consequently, despite two warnings prior to reaching Eugene not to stray far from the train (it’s a smoking stop), not 5 minutes after we left Eugene the station master was on the radio telling our conductor that we’d left someone behind. They made arrangements to collect the unfortunate’s things and turn them in at Seattle, his ultimate destination. I have no idea what arrangements, if any were made to get this individual to Seattle though. After all we were too late into Eugene for him to have caught the last Thruway connection to Portland. So I’m guessing he spent the night in Eugene or had to rent a car on his own. We finally made it to Portland 4 hours and 8 minutes off the advertised, at 7:48 PM. In checking with Amtrak, I learned that the train finally made it to Seattle at 12:12 AM, three hours and 42 minutes late. I’m so glad that I had elected not to go all the way to Seattle, as I would not have wanted to go looking for my hotel at that hour. As it was, we walked the 15 blocks or so to our hotel and were fast asleep by 11:00 PM, after I did some online work.

[AlanB]

Having run ourselves ragged with early morning risings for the last three days, we slept in a bit Sunday morning. Consequently I never got to ride the lightrail in Portland, since we were too late on Saturday night to go riding like I had planned. Oh well, it gives me an excuse to return sometime in the future. After catching breakfast in the hotel, we walked back to the train station. I did get to see a lightrail train go by as we were walking, but that is as close as I got to one. After checking in to get our seat assignments, with no ID check here (once again no consistency in Amtrak policy on this matter), we sat down to wait for boarding, which was to start in about 10 minutes. Silly me however, I forgot all about the Metropolitan Lounge until we started walking out. Had I remembered it, we could have used the lounge to relax in for a bit. Again, there’s always next time. Business Class of course boards first, before coach, so we were sent out through one set of doors, while the coach passengers waited in a rather long line at yet another door. I’ve never quite understood the logic of standing in line for 30 minutes to be the first to board the train, when you already have an assigned seat. In any event, we left PDX right on time at 12:30 PM. This was the one train that had bothered me during the booking process, since it only gives a 45 minute window to connect with the Empire Builder out of Seattle. You might ask, “Why didn’t I take train #500 earlier that morning?” I wanted to and in fact requested that train during the booking process. However, I was told that Amtrak considers train #506 to be the connecting train. So if I wanted the earlier train, I would either have to pay for it with more points or buy the tickets separately from my main reservation with AGR. So I choose to take 506. You may also ask, “Why didn’t I just take the EB straight out of PDX?” Yet another fair question. Answer, because the sleeper was sold out and because it gave me an excuse to ride my first Talgo train ever. I had been reassured by someone on the Coast Starlight that I’d be ok with this connection, and of course it is Amtrak’s guaranteed connection. But that didn’t help my heart as we got later and later at each subsequent station. At Kelso, I saw both the conductor and the engineer walk towards the rear of the train. Never did find out why or hear anything on my scanner about that, but it delayed us at least 5 minutes there. We lost still more time in a meet with the southbound Coast Starlight. Once again at Olympia the engineer walked towards the rear of the train. I couldn’t tell how far, since we were in the first car, but it’s never a good thing when your engineer isn’t in the cab. Then for the coup-de-tat, bridge #14 had opened for a boat and had trouble closing. This cost us another 12 minutes, before the bridge tender locked things by hand and issued the necessary paperwork for both us and southbound sister train #507 to pass the red signals and cross the bridge. While we were waiting for the bridge, the engineer took a call from Seattle asking that the conductor encourage anyone on our train heading for Edmonds to detrain and ride the EB to Edwards, as they had oversold the train out of Seattle. The oversell was due to the Mariners game that was expected to end prior to the departure of northbound Cascades train #516. This of course started to reassure me that we would make the connection, but I wasn’t 100% certain about what I had heard on the radio. So when one of the conductors came through to tell those detraining in Tacoma that their stop was coming up, I took the opportunity to mention to him our little dilemma. He assured me that we would make it in time and if not, that they would hold the EB for connecting passengers. He also told me that the EB would be on the other side of the platform that we would arrive on, making it a simple cross platform transfer. By the time we reached Tacoma we were 41 minutes late. Our conductor did indeed make an announcement about the oversold #516 prior to our arrival; however she misunderstood the message and encouraged all people traveling to Everett to switch over to the EB. As an after thought, she also encouraged those traveling to Edmonds to do the same. The later was what she was supposed to have encouraged, not the former. We finally did arrive in Seattle, with just minutes to spare at 4:36, 36 minutes late on a window of 45 minutes. We detrained and quickly crossed the platform, walked about two cars forward to reach our sleeper and boarded it. As it was, the EB would still leave 2 minutes late because of the late running Talgo, but that’s another chapter.

[AlanB]

Sorry that updates have taken so long, but I've not been as fortunate with getting cell phone signals on the EB as I was on the SW Chief. The last two installments were written a while back, but I only managed to get them posted at Minneapolis. Hopefully I can get caught up in CUS later today.

[AlanB]

As I mentioned in our last episode, thanks to the late arrival of Cascades #506 and several connecting passengers, train #8 the eastbound Empire Builder left 2 minutes late at 4:47 PM. For this leg, as well as our next, we’re back in a roomette. Our home this time would room #14 on the lower level of the 30 car. This would be the only leg where we didn’t have to walk through another sleeper to reach the dining car. Our ride up the shoreline was largely uneventful, although I did manage to catch yet another glimpse of a Sounder train; my first had come just a bit earlier when we had waited on one for a few minutes just out of the Tukwila station. Of course technically, my first real sighting of a Sounder train came a few years ago when I saw one and later rode on one being leased by VRE. Shortly after making our stop in Edmonds, we made a right hand turn starting our eastbound journey and headed into a tunnel taking us off the shoreline. Shortly on the heals of that, was the Everett station, which is where I saw the Sounder sitting on the adjacent track. After Everett the first few miles seemed rather flat, but then we started our long climb up into the mountains to reach Steven’s Pass in the Cascade Mountains. To save climbing all the way up to the top of the pass, we pass through the 7.79 Cascade Tunnel, which according to the onboard guide is the longest tunnel in the US. It was completed in 1929 and sits 4,061 feet above sea level. Had we gone through Steven’s Pass proper, we would have needed to climb yet another 500 feet higher. The tunnel eliminated the need to climb those extra feet. The train also follows the Skykomish River for much of the 65 miles from Everett to the top of the mountains. Hopefully time will permit my posting some photos from the Metropolitan Lounge in Chicago later today. We took dinner at the 6:30 seating and for the first time on our trip, tried the old style of dining car food and service. The service was just fine and with one exception, all in the dining car were very nice, polite, and pleasant. One waitress, while always polite to the patrons in the car, seemed a bit gruff when she was in the service area. At time she even was telling the LSA what to do. I’m not quite sure why he didn’t tell her to stop it, since he seemed perfectly capable of doing his job and running the crew. Perhaps he just felt that it was easier to not fight with her. She wasn’t unpleasant like I said and was very efficient; I just got the impression that she was a know-it-all who thought that she should be in charge. We were only served by her once. Most of the time we were served by Clasina (I hope that I spelled that correctly), whom I thought was doing a very nice job considering that she had just rotated back to dining car service from sleeper service and she was on her 8th day of work in a row. Jason the LSA/dining car steward quickly came to know his regulars and was always wonderfully polite and pleasant. He kept all passengers informed of dining car hours, when there was a waiting list, calling those on the list to the diner, and generally keeping the show running smoothly. I probably should have tried the Salmon shank that they had as a special the first night out as a comparison, but instead I opted for the turkey medallions. They were a bit dry, but otherwise ok. Everything else was just perfect on the plate. My mom opted for the steak and was quite pleased with her choice. We both had ice cream for desert. By the way, I forgot to mention that the Coast Starlight also had ice cream. Both only had vanilla, which was fine by me as I’m not a chocolate fan. Shortly after dinner we reached Wenatchee, just as the sun was setting. We then continued on through the night to our next stop at Ephrata. Shortly after Ephrata, we turned in for the night. I did wake up for our stop at Spokane, but didn’t get up to look out or note the times.