I’m starting to think about my November trip to Kailua-Kona on the leeward side of the Big Island. I can’t take Amtrak to Hawaii, of course; but I can ride the train to the west coast and fly from there.

[edited 2023-02-20]

There are five options that I can think of, and I’m strongly gravitating toward my current fantasy.

[another edit on 2023-02-21]

Thanks to commenter, sjdorst, and several folks on the [email protected] list, I’ve found out what the Emery Go-Round is and how it connects the Amtrak station to BART; so I now plan to use that westbound; and if the Zephyr is late enough that I’d miss the last Emery Go-Round bus of the day, I’d still have the taxi as Plan B so it wouldn’t mess up the whole trip.

Eastbound, it doesn’t really work because of the time of day and reduced service on Sundays, so I’m still stuck with a taxi fare of (probably) $120 to $150.

I’ve also decided to spend the night eastbound at the Hyatt House across the tracks from EMY.  It could be close to midnight, or maybe even after, by the time that I can even claim my checked bag and get a taxi; but my body clock will still be on UTC-10, so when I get to the hotel, I’ll probably still have enough presence of mind to get undressed and crawl into bed, and I’ll have more time for a leisurly breakfast in the morning.

I’ll still let it stew for a few weeks just in case I think of anything else I should consider.

I hope this is of interest to folks who might want to plan a trip involving Amtrak and I’m not just boring people with my personal problems.  If there are folks who do find it interesting, all my current travel plans, both actual and tentative, can be found here.

day −1
day 0
days 1 and 2
day 3
general remarks about the C++ meetings
days 4 to 6
days 7 and 8
day 9
days 10 and 11

2023-02-14, 06:30:

The Holiday Inn didn’t give me my wakeup call; and when I went to the restaurant for breakfast, I found that they had no printed menu.  Instead, one has to scan a QR code with a cell phone.  A woman came by with a tablet and starting punching stuff in, I guess to get me a menu.  After about three minutes of that, I just got up and left.

I went back to my room and dealt with several days of e-mail messages and did some moderation on the blog, then I checked out.  I decided that I didn’t feel quite up to the walk back to Union Station, so the hotel clerk called me a taxi.

08:30:

After checking in at the Metropolitan Lounge, I went to Sbarro’s which was open for breakfast.  I had scrambled eggs, sausage, potatoes and a really big Sbarro’s breadstick.  Everything was much better than what I could have gotten at McDonald’s just across the hall; but I didn’t finish the potatoes…that was too much.

Back to the Met. Lounge to try to catch up on my FtB reading.  I made it through everything except Pharyngula and stderr, then it was back to Sbarro’s for a really big slice of pizza.

12:00:

So here I sit in the Met. Lounge waiting for them to call train 21, the Texas Eagle.  That’ll probably happen about an hour from now, or maybe a little later.

As I said in the previous post, I switched today’s ticket from train 319 to train 21, principally for checked baggage service; but it’ll also be comfortable to ride in the sleeper.  I have room 13, a roomette on the lower level of the double-decker Superliner cars.

13:20:

They called boarding for train 21, and I decided to avail myself of redcap service.

We departed right on time…actually a couple of minutes early by my watch.  I guess it’s OK to do that at big stations once the boarding gates have been closed and there’s no possibility of any passengers arriving at the last minute.

Once we left Amtrak property, we were on Canadian National track; and it’s typical for there to be lots of delays.  As expected, we got several red signals due to freight trains crossing in front of us.

The TA came by for dinner reservations.  I was surprised to see the “traditional dining” menu like we had on the Builder, and I was hoping that the Eagle was getting with the program.  No such luck…that was a mistake.  He came back with the “contemporary dining” menu (the microwaved stuff), and I ordered the baked ziti and meatballs for the entree and the vanilla pudding for dessert.

14:38:  that last stop waiting for freight trains was a really long one.  We’re just now pulling again and we’re only a little way past Summit.  We should be departing Joliet about now.

We mostly maintained track speed all the way to Joliet except for one slowdown, but that was just to get some instructions from the dispatcher.  It sounded like permission to pass a red flag or red signal, but they didn’t go through the whole track warrant business.  Maybe it was something else, or maybe the CN’s rules are more lax in this area.

We stayed about twenty minutes late all the way to just outside of Springfield where we had to stop and wait for train 318 to depart the station.  Amtrak’s status page says that 318 was indeed delayed, but that it had arrived at 17:11 which is just when we stopped to wait for it; so this might not take too long.

17:20:  here we go.

My 17:30 dinner reservation was called shortly thereafter.  Yes, the Texas Eagle does indeed still have a “cross country café” rather than a proper diner.  The baked ziti and the vanilla pudding were OK but nothing to write home (or blog) about.  It also came with a salad, and for dressing I had my choice of ranch and ranch.  I passed.

We actually arrived in Springfield at 17:25, and it’s raining pretty hard.  Amazingly, we departed at 17:27…only two minutes of dwell time.  I guess the passengers didn’t feel the need to dawdle in the rain.

17:56:  we hand another stop due to freight trains in the way, but we’re moving again.  We departed Carlinville at 18:11, now :33 late.

This train has no sightseer lounge with a café in the lower level, so they’re using for a “café car” the end of the “cross country café” closest to the coaches.  We have only one SA (I guess somebody called out), so the “café car”, the only food source for passengers in the coaches, is closed while serving passengers in the sleeper.  It seems to me that that just shouldn’t happen.

We stayed about half an hour late through Alton, then thanks to schedule padding, we arrived in St. Louis at 19:19, just six minutes late.

It took ten or fifteen minutes after the checked baggage arrived in the baggage room for the station agent to finally deign to open up and give passengers their bags.

My car was right where I left it in the long term parking (no surprise), and since it had been raining earlier and the streets were wet, and I hadn’t driven a car in a couple of weeks, I decided to drive home on city streets instead of tooling down the interstate highway.

All in all, this was a very pleasant trip for me, although I’m glad I didn’t have a coach ticket on the Eagle.  Yeah, we were hours late into Seattle, but I had planned for that so it didn’t mess up the whole trip.

My next trip will be early in April when I’ll take a round trip ride on the Texas Eagle to Forth Worth.  I’ll be attending the Southwestern Rail Converence 2023 in Hurst, TX, about a ten or fifteen minute taxi ride from the Forth Worth station.  What would folks like to read about?  More geeky train stuff?  More personal impressions?  Please do give this newbie blogger a hint about anything he’s doing wrong. 😎

day −1
day 0
days 1 and 2
day 3
general remarks about the meetings
days 4 to 6
days 7 and 8
day 9

2023-02-12 00:37-8:00

I stayed up to watch the switching moves in Spokane (because I’m a grain geek).

Train 8 from Seattle arrived first, and 28 from Portland pulled in behind it.  After detraining the passengers bound for Spokane, 8 pulled forward and switched to another track where it was out of the way; then 28’s engine pulled ahead out of the way.  8 shoved back and tied on to 28, and 28’s engine shoved back and tied on to the combined train.  We now have Siemens 313 in the lead and GE 77 second.

Once we had the full train put together, they boarded the passengers getting on in Spokane.

We got under way at 01:24, only nine minutes late which, on Amtrak, approaches zero. 😎

06:30-7:00:

We’re on mountain time now.

Amazingly, we stayed on time all day, even waiting for departure times at several stations.  The only operational thing that surprised me is that we didn’t make the usual fuel stop in the yard just east of Havre.

The fellow who shared my table for supper in the diner was another programmer.  We had fun commiserating about the sorry state of code these days. 😎

ca. 21:00-6:00:  We arrived in Minot almost an hour early, so we’ll be here for a while.  The engines were refueled from a fuel truck, so I guess that’s the new thing rather than making the fuel stop in Havre eastbound.

2023-02-13:

We departed St. Paul on time at 08:50, but then we were stopped for a while because of a freight train in the way.  Me’re moving again at 09:05.

We stayed between ten and twenty minutes late all the way through La Crosse; but that can change on the SOO Line through Wisconsin to Milwaukee.  We’ll see…

Nope, no problems there.  We departed Milwaukee at 15:12, only seven minutes late.  We might even be early into Chicago thanks to schedule padding.

16:02:  oops, I knew it couldn’t last…emergency brake application…the conductor made an announcement on the PA saying that “a brake hose came apart” and he would have to “put it together again”.  Let’s hope that’s all it is.

16:10:  that wasn’t bad…we’re pulling again.

I heard on my scanner the engineer informing the dispatcher that “everything’s independent”.  I’m guessing that that means that they’re using the independent brakes, air brakes that apply only the engine’s brakes, to pressurize the regular train line, the brakes on all the cars.  I suppose that’s OK as a temporary fix since we’re less than one hour from our final stop.

<aside>
For non-train geeks, the way air brakes on trains work is that air pressure in the brake line holds the brakes off, and brakes are applied by reducing the pressure.  That’s why anything that dumps the brake line quickly, like parting of the line for any reason, applies all the train’s brakes as hard as possible.  That’s the “emergency brake application”, and it can cause a derailment because of later cars that haven’t had their brakes applied yet ramming into earlier cars that have.  (The “signal” that applies the brakes is an air pressure wave that travels through the brake line somewhat slower than the speed of sound, and freight trains can be miles long these days.)  That’s usually not a problem for passenger trains which, aside from being much shorter, have couplers that don’t give as much; but conductors still have to walk the train to look for any problems that might have been caused.
</aside>

We made our final stop in Chicago at 16:53, only eight minutes late.  For some reason, they spotted the engines four or five car lengths north of the entrance to the north boarding lounge, so even folks in the Seattle sleeper, the first revenue car on the train, still had an extra city block to walk.  It seems to me that there was no reason for that.

This was a most enjoyable trip on the Empire Builder, in large part because of the crew who had been working together for over a decade and liked each other, and also liked their jobs.  A happy crew makes for happy passengers.  I hope I left big tips all around.

On arrival in Chicago, I made a bee line to the Amtrak ticket counter and changed tomorrow’s final leg to St. Louis from business class on train 319, one of the “Lincoln Service” corridor trains, to a roomette on train 21, the Texas Eagle, and then promptly checked the bag that I had just claimed off train 8.  (The corridor trains have no checked baggage service.)  This old back will no doubt appreciate my not having to deal with it until I get home.

My back also appreciated taking a taxi to my hotel rather than walking the three blocks to the Holiday Inn just south of the station.  The taxi fare was just about five bucks, so I gave the driver another fiver as a tip for getting stuck with my short fare.  I’ll probably do the three block walk tomorrow morning since I’ll be rested and ready to go.

This hotel has been completely renovated, and the restaurant won’t be ready for supper until next month, so I just had some junk food.  I didn’t want to go out anywhere for supper.  Instead, I wanted to get to my room so that I could get these blog posts back in sync. 😎  I was assured that the restaurant will be open for breakfast in the morning.

I’ve also added a link to the group photo that I mentioned in the days 7 and 8 post.  These are most of the folks with whom I have the pleasure of being associated in my small way.

day −1
day 0

2023-02-03 07:00-7:00

I had the scrambled eggs and pork sausage for breakfast.  That was good.

08:58:  we had an emergency brake application due to low air pressure again.  It seems to be a problem with the air hose on the lead engine.  Moving again at 09:20.

10:04:  now 4:30 late departing Grand Forks.

10:11:  emergency application again.  The engineer was complaining about the Siemens engine in the lead (#304).  She said that she seems to have problems with that one every time.

This time the conductor reporting seeing deer remains under the engine.  He guessed that we had hit a deer and that knocked apart the air hoses between the first two units.  We’re now 4:44 late departing Devils Lake.

I had the Angus burger for lunch at noon.  That met expectations.

At Minot, the conductor announced that they we’re now having problems the “the third engine” (that would be the GE #44) which was “making a strange noise”.  It turns out that we’re going to have to set out the third unit.

16:32:  we finally departed Minot with just the two Siemens units, now 6:41 late.  I guess that BNSF’s rule about the Builder having at least three working engine units only applies at departure from the initial terminal…or something.

Sorry for all the geeky stuff so far.  I’ll try to include more about the travel experience later.  This newbie blogger is still getting the hang of it.

Marcus Ranum had mentioned that he’d like to see photos along the way, but I was too discombulated to pack a proper camera.  Imagine vast expanses of pure white snow.

There’s a reason they call North Dakota “big sky country.”  I remember a PA announcement by the café attendant on my first trip on the Builder:  “Ladies and gentlemen, if you look out the train on the right side, you’ll see a house…”  That was the whole announcement. 😎

22:23:  we made the usual fuel stop just east of Havre, Montana, then pulled into the station at 22:44.  Havre is a crew change stop where we get new engineers and conductors who work, not particular trains, but particular sections of track; so there’s usually a long dwell time.  We departed Havre at 22:51, now 6:36 late.

2023-02-04 07:00-8:00

I had the “railroad french toast” with a side of pork sausage for breakfast.  That was quite good.  I guess my first experience with Amtrak’s “new” food service on the western long-distance trains was an outlier; but it’s still not up to the standards that I remember from only about a decade ago.

08:57:  We stayed just under 7 hours late all the way to Spokane, Washington.  This is the first time I’ve seen the Spokane station in daylight since the Builder usually does its work here around midnight westbound and in the wee hours of the morning eastbound.

Spokane is where the train splits into the Seattle and Portland sections.  They set out the Siemens 302 which will eventually pull train 27, the last four cars on the combined train, to Portland, Oregon.  Train 7 now has just the Siemens 304; but it has only five cars to pull, the baggage car, the crew sleeper, the regular sleeper, the diner, and the only coach.

They were able to shorten the usual dwell time in Spokane a bit, and we departed at 09:17, now 5:53 late.

12:00:  they served us lunch in the diner because of the train’s lateness.  I had the Angus burger again.

They still allow only sleeper passengers in the diner, but train 7 between Spokane and Seattle uses the half of the diner nearer the coach as what they call a “mini café” which has a variety of plastic-wrapped stuff that folks can eat.  That’s probably minimally acceptable for breakfast since they’ll have a variety of cereals and breakfast pastries.  I gather that they had only breakfast stuff available for lunch, which is not normally served on this train.

15:43:  we stayed just under six hours late to Everett, Washington, where we head south along Puget Sound.  Since my room is on the fireman’s side, I didn’t get to see much of the Sound; but I got to see all the homes up on the bluff just east of the tracks.  I always marvel at the designs:  lots of balconies, lots of windows, small bits jutting out here and there.  They must be “interesting” to live in.

In Seattle, we enter a long tunnel that eventually discharges the train into King Street Station where we made our final stop at 16:35, just 5:06 late thanks to about half an hour of padding in the schedule.

I’m using a walker this trip because my old back doesn’t want me to remain vertical for more than a few minutes without something to lean on.  It’s one that I bought for my mother years ago; and it has four wheels and a seat to sit on.  I was hoping that the seat would hold my two bags, one with most of the clothes that I’ll need, and a large laptop case with room for another change of clothes; but they didn’t quite fit, at least not in a way that wasn’t awkward, so I checked the larger bag in Chicago.

After claiming my checked bag, I walked half a block to the Embassy Suites where I’ll spend my first night.  Its advantage is proximity to the train station; its disadvantage is that it seems to have been designed by marketeers instead of by hospitality folks.  For example, my room has a very attractive desk where I can work on my laptop, but nowhere nearby to plug it in.  Fortunately, I have my power strip with a nice long extension cord which I used on the train.

After getting my day zero post more or less in order, I went for supper.  I didn’t want a big meal, so I had just the grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup.  Taking their cue from the hotel, the restaurant gave me a sandwich that was more pretentious than tasty.  The soup was quite good.

After supper, I finished proofreading and posting the day zero post; and that was about all I was good for that day.  I went to bed around 20:00 or so and had a good night’s sleep.

day minus one

2023-02-02 06:37-6:00

Well, that was a revolting development; and it was totally my fault.  I got up too late because I had forgotten how long it takes
to pack, the result being that I was effectively a newbie who missed the time when they shut down boarding for train 302 by a couple of minutes.

I switched the first leg of my trip to train 22, the Texas Eagle, which, for some reason, is starting out in St. Louis today, so it’ll depart on time.  The bad news is that I’ll have only about an hour and a quarter to make my connection in Chicago. If the train loses time on the way, which can happen just south of Joliet and between Joliet and Chicago, I could miss the Empire Builder as well.  I can still hope for the best, though.

I popped for a roomette on 22, so I’ll be comfortable on the train.

So here I sit in the first class lounge wondering what to do with myself.  They’ll probably start boarding in about 40 minites.

08:03:
We’re pulling only 8 minutes late.

The map and GPS location on the little screen on my cell phone really isn’t very good at all.  I really need to get a new GPS receiver that I can plug into my laptop.

10:00:
They served an early lunch because of the scheduled arrival time in Chicago, but that was fine with me because I had had an early breakfast.  I had the meatballs and baked ziti which I guess could be called food.  I wish they’d restore a proper diner on the Texas Eagle, but the chances of that are probably nill.

We were as close to on time as makes no difference almost all the way into Chicago.  There was a danger of having to wait a while for cross traffic just south of Joliet, but that didn’t happen today.

The Joliet station now has an island platform…that’s new since the last time I was on a train that stopped there.

We’re on Canadian National tracks from Joliet to Chicago, and there’s always the danger of getting stopped there.  We did have some cross traffic to wait for at 13:00, but that lasted only about five minutes.

One thing I noticed is that UP’s trackside detectors don’t go through the whole spiel any more if there’s nothing to report.  CN’s detectors do.

We crossed the bridge onto amtrak property at 13:22 and made our final stop at 13:32.  I’ll definitely make my connection to the Empire Builder.

15:00:
Just five minutes before my next train’s scheduled departure, we were advised that boarding would be delayed one hour due to mechanical issues (I’m guessing the Siemens engines).  We’ll see how long the delay really is.

We started boarding around 16:00.  This train has three engine units, two Siemens Chargers, numbers 302 and 304, and one General Electric Genesis unit, number 44.  The Seattle section has a baggage car, a crew sleeper with several roomettes sold as revenue space, one regular sleeper, a diner, and just one coach.  The Portland section has an accessible coach, a coach-bag, a “cross country café” instead of the usual Sightseer Lounge, and the Portland sleeper.

I’m in room C in the Seattle sleeper, and the bedrooms are on the fireman’s side (the left side of the train), so I’ll have the sun in my eyes and have to close the curtains during parts of the day depending on the time of day and our actual direction of travel at the moment.

We finally got out from under the station at 16:48, so we’re on our way, but METRA and CP/Soo Line are treating us very badly, crossing us over between tracks and giving us lots of stop and restricting signals.

17:43:
We’re already 2:14 minutes late at the first stop of Glenview, IL.

18:05:
We’re stopped again due to “low MR pressure.”  (“MR” is “main reservoir”, an air tank for the brakes.)  That caused an emergency brake application, so the conductor needs to walk the train because such a brake application can cause a derailment…not expected for shorter passenger trains, but they have to make sure.

18:22:
We started moving but almost immediately got another emergency application, and the conductor needed to walk the train again.

18:28:
Moving again.

It’s time for my dinner reservation.  The Empire Builder has a proper diner, and I was looking forward to it.  Unfortunately, I was underwhelmed.  It’s a lot better than the “cross-country café” on the Texas Eagle, but it’s not nearly up to the standards of the diners that Amtrak ran a decade or so ago.

I had the flatiron steak with mashed potatoes and a mix of green and wax beans.  The steak was OK, but everything else was cold by the time I got it.  Also, the beans were cooked in that style where, I guess, the chef lays on hands and intones the magic word, “steam.”  I grew up with what I’ve learned is German style cooking, and I really don’t like tough vegetables.

We didn’t lose any additional time into St. Paul.

---

As I said here, I’m now in my Seattle hotel and I’m a little wiped out from the trip, so this is about all I can accomplish tonight.  I should be able to get in sync with the reports for days 1 through 3 tomorrow.

Planning to do a post every day while on the train turned out to be a bad idea.  I can hardly even type, let alone craft prose that I’d want to read myself, with the train bounding around as it is.  I now hope to be able to produce a report for three days, or maybe three reports, when I get to the hotel in Seattle on Saturday.