Tomorrow morning I begin my trip to Kailua-Kona, Hawaiʻi for a week of meetings [itinerary].

I’ll start out on one of the Lincoln Service trains from St. Louis to Chicago where I’ll catch Amtrak’s California Zephyr all the way to Emeryville, a suburb of San Francisco.

I’m leaving a day early to give myself a buffer in case the Zephyr has any delays along the way, likely if there’s much snow on the ground.  If all goes as planned, I’ll spend two nights in the Bay Area.  The Hyatt House Emeryville is just across the tracks from the Amtrak station; and the Grand Hyatt at SFO is just a short AirTrain ride from there to the terminal.  I should have a whole day to get from Emeryville to the airport and so not be stressed at all.

The return trip will basically be the reverse of that, except I’ll spend only one night in the Bay Area and a second in Chicago.  The eastbound Zephyr will likely be late, and so the extra night will give me plenty of time to catch my preferred train for the last leg back to St. Louis.

I’ll have a decent camera with me this time, so maybe I’ll take some pretty pictures.  We’ll see whether I’m any good at it. 😎

[timetables for Chicago-St. Louis and Chicago-Emeryville]

I just found out that the ISO C committee will be meeting in Strasbourg, France in January.  I haven’t used good old C in ages, but I’m a member of the committee (actually INCITS PL22, an ANSI committee), and so I could attend; and it would give me an excuse to travel.

I could take Amtrak to Boston, fly Icelandair to Heathrow, then the Piccadilly Line to King’s Cross St. Pancras, Eurostar to Paris Gare du Nord, and a TGV from Gare de l’Est to Strasbourg.  I could mostly handle the 800m walk between the two Paris stations; but I see that there’s a stairway on the route that might be a bit of a challenge with two bags and a walker.  Does anybody know of a good way around that?

Katydid commented on my ethics post:

OT: Amtrak in upstate NY halted as tracks were washed out by “once-in-a-thousand-years” flood.

Yes, I’ve been reading about that on an e-mail list, [email protected].  That’s Metro North’s Hudson Line to Croton-Harmon and Poughkeepsie, so it’s a big problem for commuters; but it also shut down Amtrak’s Empire Service and the Lake Shore Limited which use that track.

I’m not sure exactly where the flooding happened, but I’ve ridden on that line numerous times on the Lake Shore, and there are places where the track runs right along the eastern bank of the Hudson.

Update:  some photos

There’s also flooding on CSX’s River Line on the western bank.

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[day 0]
[day 1]
[day 2]
[day 3]
[day 4]
[day 5]
[days 6 & 7]
[days 8 & 9]
[day 10]
[day 11]

2023-06-19 05:30−4:

There wouldn’t be enough time for breakfast in the hotel restaurant before I would want to check out, but there was a kind of coffee shop that opened at 05:30 where I got a Danish pastry to hold me over for a while.

06:00:

I checked out of the hotel and caught a taxi to South Station.

I had originally booked the accessible bedroom in the Lake Shore Limited’s Boston section; but because of track work, my reservation had been changed to a bus from Boston to Albany-Rensselaer where I would board 449.  Since I would rather ride a train than a bus, I changed my reservation several weeks ago to Northeast Corridor train 171 to New York and then the Ethan Allan Express train 291 to Rensselaer.

<aside>
The station is actually in Rensselaer, NY, just across the river from Albany.
</aside>

I arrived at South Station fairly early intending to head to the Metropolitan Lounge to let somebody know that I wouldn’t be on the bus to Rensselaer.  I was worried that my reservation from Rensselaer would be cancelled when I was a no-show for the bus.

The lounge hadn’t opened yet because nobody had showed up, so I went to the ticket counter to explain my concern, but the guy I talked to had no clue what I was talking about.  The Met. Lounge opened up a few minutes after that, so I went up there and the lounge attendant assured me that everything was OK with my reservation and that I wouldn’t be expected on the bus.  Since I had a same-day sleeper ticket on 449 out of Rensselaer, I was allowed to wait in the Met. Lounge, have a cup of coffee, and get caught up on the Internet.  I was hoping for another sweet roll or something, but Boston’s Met. Lounge doesn’t put out breakfast-style munchies, just chips and such.  That’s not up to the standards that I remember from earlier trips.

08:00:

About fifteen minutes before 171’s scheduled departure, I headed down to the train.  The biz.-class car was the first one I came to, so that would be the last car on the train.  The quiet car was right in front of that, then a bunch of coaches, and the café car all the way in front.  I wasn’t about to walk the whole train just to get to the café, so no breakfast for me except for the Danish I’d had back at the hotel.

08:15:

We departed right on time.  I had a seat on the fireman’s side, so I got to look at all the boats along the shore (when Amtrak’s Shore Line is actually running along the shore, mostly just in eastern Connecticut).

12:25:

The trip to New York City was uneventful, and we arrived a couple of minutes early.

I had the redcap take me to the baggage checking place where I checked one bag on train 49 all the way to St. Louis.  The baggage guy didn’t want to do that because Amtrak’s reservation system doesn’t recognize 49 as a connection to 449 even though it’s the same damn train departing Rensselaer.  The redcap was helpful to me in convincing the baggage guy that it would be OK.

Once I was rid of my larger bag, I had only my walker and the smaller bag that I’d have with me on the next train, and so I thanked and tipped the redcap.

I went to the Met. Lounge hoping that the attendant would be able to give me a coach seat on 49 which would give me more time in New York to compose this post, but she was a newbie and couldn’t be convinced that 49 and 449 were the same train, so I’m still on 291 from New York to Rensselaer.

The Met. Lounge in New York is fancier than the one in Boston, but none of the food looked appetizing.  I guess I’ll have a late lunch from the café on 291.

ca. 14:00:

Train 291 started boarding and I didn’t need redcap assistance to get me to the train, but I asked at the redcap counter for directions to the elevator down to the track 5 platform.  I’m glad I did because I never would have found it without knowing where to go from the start.  I boarded 291 with only about five minutes to spare.

291 has a café car like the ones I’m used to on the Chicago-St. Louis-Kansas City corridor trains:  a café counter in the middle, tables at the end of the car nearest the coaches, and very comfortable 2-1 biz.-class seating on the other side.  All the 1-up seats were taken by the time I boarded, but I wound up with two seats to myself for the whole trip to Rensselaer.

14:20:

We departed New York on-time.  The café didn’t open until 15:20, so there was no time for anything real to eat.  I just had a coke and a bag of pretzels.

16:45:

After another uneventful ride, we arrived in Albany-Rensselaer about four minutes early.  I made a beeline to the ticket counter where I was assured that I still had my accessible bedroom on 449 even though I wasn’t on the bus from Boston.

There’s a little coffee shop in the Rensselaer station where I had some mac and cheese and a hotdog…not much of a meal, but it was the best that they could do for me.

I’ll have about a two-hour wait for 449.

ca. 18:30:

Boarding 449 started.

It turned out that the 449 equipment had deadheaded from Sunnyside Yard in Queens today, so I probably could even have gotten in my room in New York; but there was no way I could have explained that to any of the ticket agents there.  (I find it a bit disconcerting that J. Random Passenger knows more about Amtrak operations than Amtrak employees do.  Oh, well…)

The 449 sleeper is all the way in the front of the train, so I had a bit of a hike.  As expected, I’m in a Viewliner I accessible bedroom; so I still have no idea what the Viewliner II arrangement is.

I elected not to have dinner from the “flexible dining menu”.  The café car is the next car back, but I didn’t really want anything from that either.

We were basically on-time all the way to Syracuse where I went to bed a little bit hungry, which is probably good for me once in a while.

2023-06-20, ca. 05:00:

I woke up for the stop in Cleveland where we were running about one hour late.

The TA hadn’t made any coffee and didn’t have any extra bottles of water out:  we were supposed to go to the café which was the next car back, so that was OK.  I also got a rather large blueberry muffin for breakfast which was just as good as anything that the TA would have brought me from the “dining car”.

<aside>
Dolly:  “The Americans have something they call muffins, but they’re just tea cakes with raisins!”
Miss Marple:  “The Americans certainly have a lot to answer for.”
— Agatha Christie, The Body in the Library
</aside>

10:42−5:

We stayed about one hour late for the rest of the trip; and thanks to schedule padding, we arrived in Chicago about half an hour late.  I had thought that they might have shortened the dwell time in Toledo, but that didn’t happen.  In any event, I had plenty of time to make the connection to the last train of my trip.

ca. 11:30:

I opted for a slice of pizza from Sbarro’s for lunch.

13:30:

The Texas Eagle started boarding, and we departed right on time.  We didn’t get delayed on the Canadian National tracks between Chicago and Joliet this time, and stayed basically on-time all the way to St. Louis.

For some reason, the café car didn’t open until 15:00, already twenty minutes passed Joliet.

I had popped for a roomette in the sleeper on train 21, so I’d be comfortable on my last leg of the trip, and I’d at least get one of the reheated meals in the “diner” for supper.  When the LSA showed up making dinner reservations, he apparently was a newbie as well, and my TA, who I guess was also qualified as an SA, had to help him with filling out the food ticket.  I opted for the baked ziti and meatballs.

<aside>
TA – train attendant, the crew who assist passengers in the sleepers and coaches.
SA – service attendant, the food service crew.
LSA – lead service attendant.
</aside>

After a while, the LSA showed up again to say that my dinner selection wouldn’t be available.  Since we had just started the trip, it’s not like they ran out; and I have no idea what their excuse was.  I decided on the short ribs and mashed potatoes which turned out to be not too bad.

18:54:

Nothing much out of the ordinary happened on this leg either; and thanks to schedule padding, after a brief stop to align a switch which hadn’t been set correctly to get us on the right track, we arrived in St. Louis about twenty minutes early.

It took about half an hour for the checked baggage to make it to the baggage claim area in the station, but I finally got my bag (the baggage guy in New York had done the right thing after all) and drove home on city streets rather than blast down I-55.

About all I could do when I got home was some minimal unpacking.  I listened to the Cardinals’ game on the radio (they lost again) and crawled into bed, which is why writing this report and posting it had to wait until the next morning.

I still owe the blog a report about how the meetings went in Varna.  2023-07-12:  I got sidetracked by the cancer business and don’t really remember much about the meeting.  I’ll try to do better after the next trip in November.

[day −1]
[day 0]
[day 1]

2023-06-09 07:00 UTC−4:

I was out like a light after posting my day 1 report and didn’t wake up until 06:00.

My room at the New Yorker Hotel is about as far away from the elevators as it gets, and there’s a maze of corridors to get to the room.  Fortunately, I was quickly able to train myself to run it. 😎  The room lacks a coffee maker, so the hotel is not up to three-star standards; but other than that, it’s OK.

09:00:

After cleaning myself up a bit, I got dressed and packed for the trip to Boston, checked out of the hotel, and took the short hike to the Moynihan Train Hall.  This is the first time I’ve been through it, and I was hoping that the redcap folks would let me store a couple of bags for a short time while I took a walk around.  Unfortunately, it was still over three hours until my train’s departure, and they didn’t even want to talk to me yet, so I spent my time sitting in the regular boarding lounge and watching the departure board. 😎  The seating isn’t very comfortable…the seats a soft enough, but there are no armrests.  I’ll have access to the Met. Lounge on my return, so maybe I can do a bit of exploring then.

ca. 12:00 (I don’t remember exactly when):

They started boarding 86 from the redcap lounge, and we were on the platform for a while waiting for the train to arrive.

I have seat 1A, the window seat in the first row on the fireman’s side*, in the business class car, which is the last car on the train.  There’s just enough room for my walker in front of me which I can use as a table for my computer.

We departed on time and, despite lots of slowdowns on Metro North and restricted (very slow) running behind a test train for a while, we were actually a few minutes early into New Haven.  Nothing else out of the ordinary happened with the train ride, and we arrived at Boston’s South Station just a couple of minutes late.

16:45:

There have been some big changes to South Station since the last time I was there.  The platforms are now almost all under cover because there’s a new building above them.  I’ll need to do some exploring there as well when I return.

I did remember how to get to the waiting taxis.  Unfortunately, it’s Friday rush hour, and the drive to Logan Airport took quite a while.

18:00:

Oops, I stupidly forgot to bring proof of my TSA precheck status, so I had to go through the regular line.  Fortunately, it didn’t take too long.  (I actually have Global Entry.  Maybe when I get back to Boston they’ll be able to look me up.  If not, my bad.)

19:00:

I’m now in the Air France lounge which passengers with Icelandair Saga Class tickets get to use.  I think I’ll make this the whole day 2 report and save a description of the Icelandair flights for day 3.

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*Back in the days of steam engines, there were two crew in the cab:  the driver of the train, called an “engineer” in the U.S., who sat on the right side (and still does) for a better view of trackside signals, and the “fireman” who would sit on the left side when he wasn’t shoveling coal.  “Engineer’s side” and “fireman’s side” are still used today to mean the right and left sides of the train, respectively.

[day −1]
[day 0]

2023-06-07 20:50 UTC−5 (still technically day 0)

I had left the Met. Lounge briefly and returned to find that they were already starting to board 48.  The lounge attendant said that a redcap was on the way and I should stand with several others also waiting for redcap assistance.  The redcap finally showed up around 21:10 with room for only four people to ride.  He could carry all the luggage, but two of the more capable of us had to walk behind.  I was glad I wasn’t one of the walkers because the train had been spotted all the way at the other side of the station on track 30.

The train departed promptly at 21:30.  We have three engine units one of which has a CPRail paint job, the Boston sleeper, the café car, two Boston coaches, three New York coaches, a Viewliner diner, two Viewliner I New York sleepers, a Viewliner baggage car, and a coach that, I guess, is deadheading.

Maybe the Boston sleeper is the Viewliner II on this trip…I don’t know for sure.  Both New York sleepers are definitely Viewliner Is.

2023-06-08 00:25 UTC−4 (now it’s day 1), we’re departing South Bend, already almost half an hour late at the first stop.

I woke up for both the Toledo and Cleveland stops.  There must be some schedule padding because we were out of Toledo right on time and arrived in Cleveland early and had a long stop waiting for the scheduled departure time.

The dining car folks don’t like making announcements on the PA, so around 06:40, I headed for the diner to find that they were already serving.  Don’t believe what I wrote in earlier posts about better dining on the Lake Shore Limited.  The car you’re riding in is a Viewliner diner; but the food is from the “flexible dining menu”, the same crap that I got on the Texas Eagle and would have gotten on the Capitol Limited had I taken that train eastbound out of Chicago.

A bit under half an hour east of Erie at 08:00, as we were passing a freight train, we had an emergency brake application.  I gathered from the radio traffic that one of the air hoses between two of the cars had parted* due to a defect that was reported to, but not fixed by, Chicago Mechanical.  (Folks who follow Amtrak will not be at all surprised by the condition of the trains that come out of Chicago.)

They needed a tripple spot at the Buffalo-Depew station, first for a crew change, then for the coaches, and finally for the sleepers and the baggage car.  After finishing the passenger work, they spent some time double-checking the air hose that had parted earlier; and we departed Depew just under one hour late.

At about 13:30, the conductor announced on the PA that we’ve got a stop signal, and we’ll be waiting on two westbound freights.  One of them passed right away, and the second showed up about eight minutes later.  We’re pulling again at 13:40.

An announcement at 14:10 said that the café car was closed.  Why would that be?  It turns out that this is a trip on which the Boston passengers get bustituted, and the Boston section deadheads to New York.

We made up almost all the late time on the CSX and arrived in Albany-Rensselaer only seven minutes late.

It turns out that the Boston section isn’t deadheading to New York after all.  Around 15:40 the head-end power (HEP, the electricity for the train) went off; and the Boston cars including the three engine units we started out with pulled forward and then shoved back to the yard.  They then added a dual-mode engine that can switch to straight electric for use from Croton-Harmon to Penn Station.

We got the HEP back at 16:04 and departed right on the advertised at 16:10.

We stopped shortly after leaving the station.  It turns out that we had to wait for another Amtrak train.  We’re pulling again at 16:22.

The ride on both the Amtrak Hudson Line and Metro North was very rough.  I don’t remember getting bounced around that much the previous times I’ve taken 49 westbound.  We finally arrived in Penn Station about 40 minutes late, give or take.

I got a redcap expecting only to be taken up the elevator and to the baggage claim area.  She actually walked me all the way to my hotel, which was just a block away.  I was embarrassed to give her only $3.00 for a tip because that’s all the cash I had.  I’d have been happy have given her a ten for her trouble.

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*The way that air brakes work on trains is that pressure in the brake line holds the brakes off, and brakes are applied by reducing the pressure.  If the pressure drops quickly, for example if the brake line parts somewhere, the brakes get applied as hard and as fast as possible from a special air tank on each car.  That’s an “emergency brake application”.

[day −1]

2023-06-07 07:15 UTC−5

I checked a bag to New York and got let in to the Met. Lounge.  22 isn’t in the station yet…it usually is by now.  Dixielandsoftware shows it in southern Missouri, but doesn’t have a “status file”.  Amtrak’s own status page shows the train as “on time”.  We’ll see…

Amtrak’s status got later and later, but not my much; and we finally departed at 08:50, just :55 late.  I have no clue what the problem was.

The consist is really strange, the Cross-Country Café right after the engine, then a coach-baggage, an accessible coach, a sleeper, and a third coach.

This is my first trip using software called Maptitude.  The idea is that, given a GPS receiver plugged into a USB port on my laptop, it displays my current location along with some other information like latitude/longitude/altitude and my current direction and speed.  I didn’t like it at first because starting the GPS tracking requires going through several submenus with names that are not all that helpful.  I had to fire up my Verizon hotspot and use their on-line help to find the magic incantation; and it was almost 9:30 before I got it set up correctly.

The café attendant came by in the sleeper taking orders for lunch.  He said he had some cheeseburgers available, so that’s what I picked.

Lunchtime was supposed to be 11:00, so at that time I walked through the two coaches to the “dining car”; but lunch wasn’t quite ready yet; and it was around 11:25 before I got served.  I was expecting the “angus burger” that they have in the real diners, but what I got was a cheeseburger that was basically what one gets in the café on corridor trains, and it was served on a paper plate that was basically the same size as the sandwich.  I probably should have picked the ziti and meatballs.

The trip was mostly uneventful this time, so there’s not much to report.  We stayed about an hour late, give or take, all the way to Joliet; but thanks to schedule padding, we departed Joliet only 0:22 late.

It’s possible to lose time on the Canadian National between Joliet and Chicago, but everything went smoothly this time.  We had about a ten-minute delay waiting for a couple of trains to clear the 21^st Street Bridge over the river; but we got on the bridge and entered Amtrak property at 14:10 and made our final stop at 14:16, just 0:32 late.  For Amtrak long-distance trains, that’s as close to on-time as makes no difference.

When we arrived, I had a layover of about 7:30 before the scheduled departure of the Lake Shore.  I checked in to the Met. Lounge, got caught up on my e-mail and FtB reading, and drafted and proofread this post up to this point.

At 18:00, I stopped by Sbarros and got a big slice of pizza for supper.  It was basically all dough, though, and I didn’t think it was any good at all.  I’ll have to rethink my choice of meals at Chicago Union Station for future trips.

I’ll make this the whole day 0 report.  Even though the Lake Shore will depart today, it’ll be late tonight, so I’ll save the whole trip to New York for day 1.

Time to get started on my Bernie Sanders book…

Tomorrow I’ll be on my way to Varna, Bulgaria for a meeting of the ISO standards committee for the C++ programming language.  This will be my first trip to Eastern Europe, and I’m looking forward to it.

[itinerary]

I’ve decided to start out on the Texas Eagle, even though that will give me an extremely long layover in Chicago, because I don’t think I can trust Lincoln Service train 318 to make the connection to the Lake Shore Limited.  Also, riding on the Eagle, I can check a bag all the way to New York; but the Lincoln Service trains don’t carry checked baggage.

I’ll have an accessible bedroom on the Lake Shore, likely my first ride in one of the newer Viewliner II cars.  Several years ago I had a Viewliner I accessible bedroom* which has a separate room for the sink, toilet and shower; but from the diagrams that I’ve found on the Web, it looks like the Viewliner IIs have all the plumbing out in the room.  We’ll see…

I’m going via New York eastbound, and spending the night there, because I can’t count on the Boston section of the Lake Shore arriving in time to catch my flight out of Logan.

I don’t like flying very much, not because I’m afraid of it — it’s just as safe as riding on a train, and very much safer than blasting down a highway; but I couldn’t find good train connections between Western and Eastern Europe; so I’ll be flying all the way east of North America.  (There’s an overnight train between Sofia and Varna which I would have liked to take, but even getting to Sofia by train was a problem.)

I like to fly Icelandair across the Pond for a couple of reasons:  I actually like getting off the plane and stretching my legs in Keflavík; and I’m fortunate to be able to afford Icelandair’s Saga class if I don’t try to afford other stuff that I don’t really want that much anyway.  Trans-Atlantic business class on other airlines would probably be out of my price range.  I like to fly out of Boston because that’s the shortest flight between the U.S. and Keflavík.

The trip home will be basically the reverse of the eastbound itinerary.  I had originally booked an accessible bedroom on the Boston section of the Lake Shore; but I got a robocall from Amtrak saying that there would be a schedule change.  It turns out that there’ll be trackwork going on that day, which is not unusual in the summer, so I’d be on a bus from Boston to the Albany-Rensselaer station and board my sleeper there.  I decided instead to get business class tickets on a Northeast Regional train 171 to New York, and then on the Ethan Allen Express train 291 to Rensselaer.  (I had trouble making that change initially, but it finally worked out.)  I’m hoping that, once I get to New York, I’ll be able to check a bag on the New York section of the Lake Shore all the way to St. Louis.

The only drawback is that I’ll miss a few baseball games.  (I’m not the sort of fan who knows all the players’ WARs and where they went to high school, but I enjoy watching the games.)

[Timetables for the Texas Eagle, Lake Shore Limited, and trains 86, 171, and 291]

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*I had booked a roomette from Boston to Chicago; but the Boston sleeper didn’t run on that day.  Passengers with sleeper tickets got special seating in the business class car and a complimentary meal in the dinette; and then in Albany-Rensselaer where the two sections of the train are combined, the plan was to move us to one of the New York sleepers.  When we got to Rensselaer, it turned out that they were one roomette short; and since I was a single guy traveling alone, and I was young and able in those days, I was, quite reasonably, the odd man out.  They put me in coach and refunded the sleeper fare.

I wasn’t happy about that, but there was no point in screaming at the ticket agents in Rensselaer…it wasn’t their doing, and indeed they probably found out about it shortly before I did.  I guess word about my behavior got passed along because the crew out of Rensselaer were unusually gracious to me. 😎

One of the accessible bedrooms was vacated in either Elyria or Sandusky, so during the stop in Toledo, one of the crew moved me from coach to that room; and I rode there for the last few hours of the trip at no additional charge.  I also got a free breakfast in the diner.