The Eagle – Part I

(May 7th – 522pm, just outside Pontiac, IL)
So I was all ensconced in slumber at midnight last when the Lake Shore Limited stopped in Buffalo and about 14 Amish parents and kids all piled on to my car. They took a while to settle down but finally around 300am I guess I fell back to sleep. One thing about this travel mode is expect the unexpected. There was also a very inebriated woman walking thru the entire train earlier trying to pick fights. She wailed at me as I was typing away, headphones firmly in use, and I think I perturbed her more by ignoring her but she moved on. All in all the night was pretty good though for the first one.

The train constantly got up to speed (70-80mph) and its horn was steadily wailing its 19B’s at the many grade crossings. I noticed that around Cleveland, GFX locomotives disappeared and Norfolk Southern became the norm right into Chicago…. and there were many over 100 cars long. In NY and Indiana, HUCK made friends with a hawk, a turkey vulture and a woodpecker along the way.

The sun was out briefly at its rise as we passed thru Waterloo and Elkhart, Indiana and then the rains came. Gary, Indiana is a very dark steaming, smoking industrial steel city in the lower tip of Lake Michigan even without the rains. Regardless, because of track work and reduced speeds near Gary, we ended up getting into Chicago about 45 minutes late… pretty good against historical average I was told. Chicago’s skyline was completely in the low clouds and fog and the window soaked so not much in the way of imagery this time. I will be back a second time Sunday/Monday and then again a week later for 2 nights to catch some sights.

SEGMENT 2 – TEXAS EAGLE

So I am now on the Texas Eagle for the longest on-train segment: 3 nights to LAX. We will hit St. Louis around 800pm, travel overnight thru Missouri and Arkansas and see first light in Texarkana. I have a nice seat to myself again but the cafe car is now 3 cars away under the observation car deck, which is the norm for all these long trains. Ahead of the cafe/Obs car are the sleepers. The majority of coach seating on ViewLiners is on the top, with handicapped seating and 5 bathrooms on the lower level. So up top, the views are clean but going 70 has less effect up higher. The biggest observation is the smoothness of the double-decker Cruise Liners. On the Lake Shore, any switch traversed at 70mph was a loud rumble and pitch. You hardly feel it in the Cruise Liners and the long wails of the 19B whistle all night at grade crossings brings with it the effect of even greater speed.

The clientele that travels on trains is not the hoi polloi of modern jetset air travel. And there is even a clear difference of class from last nights BOS/NY to Chicago crew to the midwest Chicago/Texas minions (Very few seem to be going past Texas at this point). One step further, I expect the true train appreciation club to be aboard the Empire Builder, The SW Chief and definitely the Zephyr. On these first 2 legs though, many older people, families and sadly, many with not very good travel accoutrements and sorry bags and clothes. While I notice that 98% are good, positive and considerate people when they do reveal their demeanor, like anywhere though, there are some that are either plain stupid or just don’t realize they are not the only ones on the train. The same as anywhere else. If you can afford a $400 iPad, you can afford earbuds to watch lame, noisy videos and not drive the tinny screeching sound pollution into everyone’s inner ear. Bitch session over.

So now we steam South towards Springfield, Home of Lincoln and then St Louis by sunset. This is the first time I have grabbed the good camera for readiness. And while I type this on a non-WiFi train, I am tethered to my laptop via USB and using my phone data to be online.

In Carlinville IL, the dramatic clouds made for fun shuttering…

And then we crossed the Mississippi into St. Louis. The Arch, the “Gate Way to the West” used the sun to accent the end of the day… (In order of appearance)

Thru the night we went thru such places as Little Rock, Hope and Texarkana, AR/TX. At this time, we are sitting in a thunderstorm just north of Marshall, TX, waiting on freight traffic movement as I write, today at 1030am on the 8th of May.

Whoa, and suddenly I just realized I can walk back to the next car and see right out the back… later. Here’s the map of the current report:

UPDATE: So at 2:30pm local time (5/8), we are 30 miles east of Dallas, TX. We have stopped for freight traffic 3 times, a total computer reset of the train outside Marshall, an intense thunderstorm with rotation detected in Longview and finally a flash flood warning after Mineola. We are flying at 83mph finally but now we are 3:15 behind schedule and should have been in Cleburne, an hour south of Ft. Worth by now. The good news is, tracking the Sunset Limited, the train we connect with at midnight is 2:25 late out of NOLA. My weather and train knowledge has made me popular with the cafe crew and a very elder old RR man who got mad when I wanted a selfie.

Regardless of the lateness, I do not move from this car for the leg to LAX, it stays with me so it is impossible for me to miss it. I am firmly ensconced and the sky is clearing and red to the west. After we leave San Antonio late tonight, we follow much of the Rio Grande to El Paso, Texas, then into New Mexico, Arizona tomorrow and thru Death Valley overnight tomorrow. It’s just begun…