Playing Games with the Computer.
The westbound Lake Shore Limited starts out as two sections–one coming from New York’s Penn Station, the other from South Station in Boston. Both offer interesting rides on their way to combining into one long train in Albany, New York.
There is a Viewliner sleeping car on the Boston section, but when the two sections are joined in Albany, passengers in that car find themselves having to walk through no fewer than six coaches to get to the dining car. And, of course, you have to navigate the same six cars again on your way back to your sleeper after dinner. That’s a helluva long way on a moving train.
This time, I figured I’d outsmart ’em. I booked a Business Class seat in the Boston Section to Albany and then, in a separate transaction made a day later, I reserved a roomette from Albany to Chicago in a sleeping car on the New York section. There’s almost an hour’s wait in Albany–plenty of time for me to get off the Boston section and find the right sleeper on the section that came up on the New York train. Not only that: I save nine dollars over what it would have cost if I had booked a roomette all the way from Boston to Chicago. Ha! The Little Guy outsmarts the system!
Well, not really. My sleeper was the next-to-last car on the New York section which was hooked onto the rear of the Boston section and that meant when we finally go to Chicago I had to walk the entire length of a very long train to get into the station. See? That’s how we train travel enthusiast entertain ourselves. Fascinating, isn’t it!
This morning (Saturday), I’m on Amtrak’s train, the Carl Sandburg from Chicago to Galesburg, Illinois, to spend several hours with my brother, Pete, and his wife, Lynn. Then, after lunch and later in the afternoon, I’ll get aboard the California Zephyr for the two night ride to Davis, California. The narrative shall resume from there.