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Chicago to Albuquerque on the Southwest Chief


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#1 W951BER

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Posted 14 April 2016 - 10:02 PM

My wife and I boarded the Hiawatha (train route 334) in Milwaukee to Chicago at 11am on 4/6/16. We arrived in Chicago on time and checked into the Metropolitan Lounge at Union Station. We were greeted by friendly, capable staff, given our lounge passes, and checked our baggage while we strolled through the rest of the station. On the elevator to the food court level, we met an Amtrak employee.  I asked him what he did for Amtrak, and we enjoyed a brief conversation that lasted long after we all exited the elevator. This guy LOVES his job, and has been loving it for over two decades.  Current;y, he drives a truck in the station that delivers engineers and their replacements to and from their trains. What a great ambassador for the company!

 

After grabbing lunch, we took it back to the lounge to eat. Soft drinks, coffee, and chips were available free of charge. This summer, a new (additional) lounge will be finished. For $20/day, passengers will enjoy an experience more like first class airline passengers already do: free snacks and beverages, showers, and many different areas: quiet areas for napping or reading, play areas for children, and lots of "regular" areas for chatting up a storm. From what I understand, the existing lounge will still exist.

 

Shortly before our boarding time, we retrieved our (two) bags, and we walked a short distance to our train.

 

Our train.  WHAT a machine!

 

I've never seen such a behemoth. I felt like a kid, mouth agape, neck kinked upward, for the walk to our car, just looking at the sheer size of the cars.

 

On the Southwest Chief, the sleeper cars are toward the front of the consist (more on that item, later).

 

The 44 axle consist:

Engine 92

Engine 75

Baggage car 61057

Sleeper 39005 (our car)

Sleeper 32106

Dining car 32115

Superliner 38059

Superliner 33038

Superliner 34065

Superliner 34103

Superliner 34001

 

Engine 92 was built by GE in Erie, PA in June of 2001. The Model P42DC is a 4,250 HP Diesel Electric

 

"Krazy Tom" was our attendant.  He'll be retiring in October after 25 years of service. He showed us our room and returned, after we'd settled in, to show us the features of our room. Except for getting our bunks ready that night (and the next morning), we didn't see much of Tom.  Freda was the next person to stop by, to take our dinner reservation.  Once underway, Tom announced (on the PA) that there was WiFi in the car, and gave us the SSID and password for it. "It" was a Verizon mobile hotspot. The connection was very slow, but adequate for light-duty web surfing and email retrieval.  I used it mainly to run my "Find My Train" app on my phone, which was nice.

 

At dinner, we were steed with a younger couple (30s) from the Chicago area. They were on their way to Flagstaff, where they would rent a car and drive to a Taoist retreat they were attending, near Sedona.  We shared information and learned that we'd be on the same train, on our return to Chicago on the 12th of April! We told them that we'd expect a full report at dinner on the 12th.

 

The food was great. My wife and I ordered the Signature Steak (medium) and splurged on a half bottle of wine (Merlot). My steak was cooked perfectly; my wife's was cooked too long for medium, but she enjoyed it anyway.

For dessert, I had the (pre-packaged) strawberry cheesecake; that night, the chef prepared a special topping for it: an organic strawberry swirl topping.  A nice personalized touch. Keeping on the topic of food, I had french toast for breakfast, to which I added maple syrup that I had made myself, a year ago, from maple trees in my back yard. For lunch I had the pork shanks: the best I've ever had.

 

After our dinner, we retired to our bedroom. The room functioned as advertised. There was much more storage room than I had been led to believe. The room was a little warm, even when the temperature control setting was set to the coldest setting.  I adjusted by wearing a t-shirt.  I used the upper bunk. It was comfortable, but noisier than the lower bunk; above the upper bunk is the plastic ceiling, while the lower bunk has a ceiling of sound-absorbing carpet. Being positioned only about 12 axles away from the horn, it was difficult to fall asleep with the near-constant sounding of the horn. Speaking of sounding the horn, we counted 12 telephone poles between the sounding of the horn and the grade crossing about which the horn was being sounded. On the return trip, I wore ear plugs and enjoyed full night's sleep.

 

Breakfast and lunch were enjoyed with more travelers we did not know. It was fun to learn where and why they were traveling.

 

West of Lamy, NM, we were slowed to 10mph while we made our way through what looked like unstable ground.  Out our window we could see large boulders (some the size of small cars) with huge frost cracks, and the soft soil around them was being naturally eroded by rainwater. We saw numerous boulders laying just inches from the tracks, having fallen from heights approaching 25 feet above our car.  

 

We arrived in Albuquerque 15 minutes ahead of schedule.

 

The trip back was about the same, with a different crew. There were a few mild surprises with our room. The first was that our assigned room (E) was already occupied! Jesus, the never-seen attendant, told us to use room C instead. We think we know why. We're betting that the original occupants of room C found their carpeting wet and mildew-smelling, and demanded a different room.  This, I surmised, after picking up something I dropped on the floor, and found the carpet in front of the bathroom, the carpet in front of the cabin door, and another area of carpet, in-between the two, very damp. The patch by the bathroom  smelled of mildew. We took the bath towels, folded them, and placed them over the areas in an effort to dry them. The next morning, I took 6 towels from downstairs and replaced the water-blotted ones from our room.  To his credit, Jesus did offer us room A, which was vacant (and dry), but by that time mist of the moisture was wicked into the towels.  We didn't want to move.

 

Another finding was that the connecting pocket door to room B was not closed properly. It was a bit katywampus and so this left a a skinny wedge of space between the door and the jam. A tiny wedge at the top, growing to about 3/8 inch at the bottom (the floor). Enter the duct tape, to the rescue. We were glad we brought it. It turns out that our neighbors became our lunch table mates.  They were going back to NYC (via Chicago), from LA, where they had just met their son, an active-duty Marine, when he returned from 6 months deployment in the middle east. Great people, and veteran train travelers.

 

We arrived 22 minutes early into Chicago.

 

After a brief stop in the Metropolitan lounge, we hopped on the 5:08 Hiawatha back to Milwaukee.  We were told that, after 6/1/16, sleeper passengers arriving in Chicago, then taking a non-sleeper-fare ride, would not be permitted to use the Metropolitan lounge, though we'd be invited to go to the new deluxe lounge when that one opens (this summer), for a $20 fee.

 

The bottom line is that my wife and I are both interested in traveling by train again. We'll likely take the Empire Builder to Seattle, some time next year.

 

Thanks for your kind and courteous attention.

 

I'd like to post photos, but I can't figure out how to do so. Any advice is appreciated.



#2 KevinKorell

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Posted 15 April 2016 - 02:16 AM

W951BER (can I call you W951 for short?) This sounds like a great report! I enjoyed the reading very much. Our OTOL group did something similar back in the summer of 2012 as we travelled round trip between Chicago and Albuquerque.

If you are looking for help with photos, please contact me by e-mail offline (see my profile for address), and we can talk about what you have and the best way to get them up displayed with the report.


Kevin Korell


OTOL Board Leader


Lakewood, NJ





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