Day 2

Day 2: Aboard the Cardinal, #51, from Philadelphia 30th Street Station to Chicago Union Station.

Monday, June 13, 2016

I Woke up and decided that a poorly microwaved breakfast from the so-called diner was not in my future and decided I’d just grab lunch when I got to Chicago. I had some coffee and a couple of muffins to hold me over. A quick check of the Amtrak app showed that we were already 2 ½ hours behind schedule.  We had not made Crawfordsville, Indiana yet, and should have been well beyond that stop by this time. My GPS told me we were approaching Crawfordsville station. Suddenly, we were not approaching any more. We weren’t doing much of anything.  The crew on this leg was highly communicative and told us whenever there was a delay, just what the cause was.  In this case, a BNSF freight train had broken down just ahead of us and was blocking our path, since it was on a crossing track, and we couldn’t get into the station at Crawfordsville.  The good news was that a rescue locomotive was on its way to help and would arrive within 20 minutes. Half an hour later the locomotive arrived and hooked onto the 92 car train to move it off the main line. This took ANOTHER half hour. We are now 3 hours 15 minutes behind schedule when we finally made the station at Crawfordsville, Indiana.

Now, Amtrak builds “padding” into its schedules, meaning that whereas the schedule says it will be 45 minutes between 2 stations, it in fact takes only 30. We also gained an hour back as we crossed into Central Time before getting to Chicago, but this and no amount of padding would allow us to make our schedule. No amount of high-balling would get us to Chicago by 10:04. My 4 ½ hour layover was melting away before my very eyes. On the bright side, outside my window I got to watch a salt train unload its cargo and a front-end loader move the salt onto a conveyor to add it to the existing salt mountain, referred to as Mount Morton, the tallest salt mountain in Montgomery county, Indiana.  When they unload the salt it has a blue color added. This quickly washes away. I wonder why they do that.

We finally made it to Crawfordsville and had a few minutes to step off the train to stretch our legs (mine were already long enough, so I just walked the length of the platform).  At the back of the train I learned that we had added a private car, the Silver Foot, during the night at either Indianapolis or Cincinnati, no one seemed to know exactly where. Private cars are frequently referred to as ‘varnish’ by rail fans. This is because they are usually in excellent condition and highly polished and they make the train look nice. They also make a boat-load of money for Amtrak as they are billed by the mile for the service.  The rate STARTS at $2.75 per mile and goes up depending on other services they take from Amtrak. The people on the private car do NOT, however, have access to the train and its amenities, nor do the passengers of the train have access to the private car. 

Nothing further stood in our way for the rest of the trip, but by this time I was just ready to be in Chicago already. We finally pulled into the station at 1:45 pm and my layover had shrunk to about 45 minutes.  That’s assuming of course that they board the train at the time the train is due to leave, which they don’t. They board the train 45 minutes earlier than the scheduled departure time, so my layover ended up not even being long enough to find a seat in the lounge, let alone take any pictures at Union Station. But the glass being half full, I decided that at least I didn’t miss my connection, the closest connection on this whole journey, and for that I was happy. Many people on my arriving train had missed their connections and some were off to busses and others were off to hotels for the night, courtesy of Amtrak, even though it’s seldom Amtrak’s fault when a train runs late enough that people miss connections. It’s never happened to me, fingers crossed, but Amtrak is very good when it comes to accommodating passengers when this happens. I hope I never find out first-hand.

I found my roomette on the Southwest Chief and got settled in.  Armona, our Sleeping Car Attendant, introduced herself and showed me all the amenities… like I needed her to… and then the Dining Car Attendant came through for dinner reservations. I took an early seating as I am prone to do on these trips, but also because it was actually an hour later according to my stomach.  The Southwest Chief pulled out of Union Station precisely on time at 3:00 pm Central time.

The stretch of track between Chicago and Aurora, Illinois is called “The Racetrack” and for good reason.  Trains go 80mph along this stretch so individuals waiting on the platforms are well advised to stand behind the yellow line.

The call to dinner came at 5:30 and I made my way to the diner. My partners for dinner tonight, with apologies for forgetting their names, were heading home to Kansas City after visiting the east coast. Both were military and it was fascinating listening to their stories as we streaked across the plains while the sun made its way to the horizon. The fourth at my table was from Atlanta, but didn’t share where he was going or why. Oh well, not everyone enjoys the dining car experience like I do I guess.  Dinner was an Amtrak Signature Steak, medium-rare, with veggies and mashed potatoes.  Done to perfection as usual, it’s my favorite on-board meal. I’d have it for breakfast if that was a choice. I added a glass of red wine and made it a great dinner.

We crossed the Mississippi river using the longest swing-span bridge in North America and were delivered into the state of Iowa.

Each stop so far had added about 5 minutes to our time, sound familiar? By the time we made it to Fort Madison, Iowa, the only stop in Iowa, we were about ½ hour late. This being the first “fresh air” break I decided to de-train for a bit. As I am prone to do on these trips, I walked the length of the platform and found that the Silver Foot was again with us, and going all the way to Los Angeles, too. I determined to find out more about this vehicle if I could. 

Fresh Air was in quotes because the air is not fresh. The combination of the locomotive exhaust and the large number of people who still haven’t yet realized that smoking is going to kill them make for quite the gauntlet for a non-smoker like me to navigate. BUT, it’s outside and not moving and when you are on a train for the next 3 days, outside and not moving is a good thing.

After a bit and after the sun had set, we had a situation. The crew made the announcement that we had a switch ahead of us that was sticking and needed to be manually thrown and that the conductor “got to do it in the total darkness, thank you very much”. Our conductor on this route was a bit of a wise guy but it made his announcements more interesting. Every time he announced a station stop he threw in a little piece of trivia about the place we were stopping. He’d clearly been doing this route for some time to know the things he knew!  It took about 45 minutes for them to throw this switch, get the train across it, switch it back again, and get the conductor back on board. I just said “Good night, America,” and went to bed.

Continued on Day 3.