About ten years ago, I was heading West en route to Los Angeles aboard the Southwest Chief. We were stopped at a staton when I awoke on my first morning aboard and I raised up on an elbow and peered out the window of my roomette. We had just started moving and a few seconds…
I have written about this before in previous posts, but sharing meals with fellow travelers in an Amtrak dining car is one of the more enjoyable experiences that comes with any cross-country train ride. Here are just a few of the conversational experiences I’ve had with people who, by the luck of the draw, have…
I live in Hawaii. That means when I travel anywhere out of state, I‘m faced with at least a five-hour flight. Usually it’s to Los Angeles, which offers me a choice of three long-distance trains on which I can continue my journey: 1. The Coast Starlight goes north to San Francisco and from there on…
Around noon on the third day, the Indian Pacific arrived at the site where a flash flood had washed away a section of track causing a freight train to derail several days earlier. In fact, I learned some time later that our train had almost been cancelled because of the rail cars and their contents…