Day 2: City of the Big Station

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I spent the night in peaceful comfort in a handicapped section on the lower level of the Capitol Limited. There were only three other people in a section made to hold around 20, so we had plenty of room. That was good, because I was a little too large for a single coach seat. I was able to grab a pair of adjacent seats, facing backwards as I always prefer to do. Contrary to Amtrak's advertising, there was only one outlet in the entire car, and, as the attendant explained, it was there so that she could vacuum the coach, not for the sake of laptops. Coach cars are indeed being refurbished with such outlets, but most of them still don't have them. Later on in my trip I heard many passengers complaining bitterly about this. I found myself too sleepy to use Plum (my notebook computer), so I did not mind. It's not as though Internet connectivity had been available.

Two of the other three ladies in the compartment were about my age and weight, and no doubt they had similar difficulty. The fourth passenger was a dear little old lady who brought me a cup of water so I could take my medicine in the morning. The water-tap was actually just outside our room, but I had not noticed it and I was trying to get up the spunk to go to the snack bar.

Going anywhere from that section was no easy task, as everything was upstairs from it. The Capitol Limited was a Superliner, which meant that all its cars were double-decker, and travel between cars could only be managed at the upstairs level. To reach the snack bar I would have had to go up the stairs, down the length of three or four cars, and then down another flight of stairs. And then it would have been all to do again to get back to my seat.

Eventually I did undertake a trip to the dining car for breakfast, which was only half as complicated as going to the snack bar. The second staircase was not needed, as the dining room was on the upper level. Somewhat to my surprise, I made it safely up the steep stairs, and I found my way to the dining car without difficulty. I even found my way back and made it safely down the stairs.

This litany of triumph was somewhat marred by the fact that, while eating, I knocked my orange juice over, and it went right onto the lapel of some poor fellow's double-breasted suit. I didn't know it, but that was the first of many dining room disasters.

Union Station in Chicago had a peculiar layout. It was divided into two concourses and a central section; the latter all that was actually used by Amtrak. One of the two Concourses had become a shopping mall; the other only had an entrance with an escalator leading down to the central section. The escalator had ads all along its length, a trick I had previously seen only in London on the Underground.

Since I would be boarding a sleeping car on the Southwest Chief, I was entitled to use the first-class lounge, which was much more comfortable than the regular seating. It was attractively furnished but horrendously crowded; four trains were leaving within a few minutes of ours in midafternoon. And the people with sleeper tickets on all of them were all in that room, using its resources.

The Internet link, its chief charm for me, lasted for several minutes and then went down. When I asked for help with reconnection, the clerks said that "when it went down like that you just had to wait for it to reset itself." It had still not reset itself when it was time for me to board my train, over two hours later.

The ice-water machine was broken, but I got two free Sierra Mists from their soda machine, and a free green apple of dubious quality, the last, no doubt, of a display of fruits. There were armchairs and sofas and little tables with office-type rolling chairs drawn up to them.

I snaffled one of the little tables and began working on Plum. Then, however, I unwisely decided to go get my first Sierra Mist while the getting was good. Since I had no one to save my seat, I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised to find that a haughty lady, very well-dressed, was heading for it as I headed back to it. She beat me to it by inches.

I tried to stammer out that I had just been sitting there, only moments before, but it didn't come out very coherently, and she ignored me. There were three office-chairs per small table, so I said, "Can we share it, then?" She looked aghast at the mere idea of sharing a table with a stout person in a neon-yellow track suit. She replied loftily, "I'm afraid not; my group has four people." As I stared at her in consternation, she added, "Go find a chair or a sofa or something."

"I need the table for my laptop," I blurted. "I was working on it." She ignored me.

I went away. After a few minutes' thought, I organized my thoughts, got up, walked back across the room to her. I couldn't help noticing there was only one other person at her table as yet, and they didn't seem to be making use of the table-top, either.

I said quietly, "I'm sorry, but I feel I must tell you; I did have that table first; I had only gotten up for a minute to go get this drink." I showed her the drink. Then I turned and left without waiting for an answer. She made no effort to follow me.

That time I had asked someone nearby to watch my new seat -- a nice sofa next to the Christmas tree -- but when I got back it was taken. The person I'd asked to watch it said, rather sheepishly, "I'm sorry; she slipped into it when my back was turned."

The interloper grasped the situation instantly. She was a gracious old lady. She immediately said, "Oh, have I taken your seat? Surely there's room for two of us?" with a rising inflection that made that a real question.

I assured, truthfully, that I was glad to have her company. It would have been terribly rude of me to ask her to move in any case, as she was 75 if she was a day, and more likely 80. She was waiting for the eastbound Capitol Limited, which would not go until 6:40 p.m., and she was therefore much interested in my account of flooding on the line.

I had struggled to carry and drag, respectively, my two carry-ons to the Metropolitan Lounge, so as soon as I had demonstrated my right to enter the lounge, I hurried over to the Baggage Holding Area. I took my laptop and a box with the medicines I needed to take that day in it out of the pizza bag, and stored both bags for the three-hour layover. Storage was free but I tipped the luggage clerk $2. He seemed surprised and very pleased, and he wished me a "super trip and a safe journey."

The actual Red Cap, when he came to take my bags and give me a ride to my sleeping car, was rather brusque. He carried only one bag, the heavier one, and told me curtly to bring the pizza bag and follow him. I did, with difficulty, as he was moving much faster than any of us could walk. On his contraption, I sat across from a pleasant man in a walker; his wife walked beside the contraption until the first two handicapped passengers had gotten out.

Unfortunately, the Red Cap parked us right next to a loudly pulsating engine while he helped the first two passengers board. To my alarm, he nearly gave one of them the pizza bag. Fortunately the passenger preferred his own red bag to mine, and told the Red Cap as much.

They had given each first-class passenger a pink lounge card upon our arrival at the lounge, with the number of our room and the number of our sleeping car upon it. Mine was 331, and by the older system of sleeping-car names, it was "New Jersey." The other sleeping car on our train was "Tennessee." Tennessee's door was broken and kept sticking halfway open, which was bad because we needed to use it to get anywhere else on the train. Most people could fit through it at half-mast, but I couldn't, even turning sideways. I tried.

The Red Cap had dumped my brown duffel unceremoniously on the luggage-storage shelf on the lower level of the sleeping-car, very haphazardly and catch-as-catch-can. With a Herculean effort, I not only got it out but got it up the stairs, which were every bit as steep and winding as the ones in coach. Unfortunately, there was nothing whatsoever to be done with it once I had it up there. The ceiling was unbearably low with the upper bunk lowered, and there was barely room for the pizza bag.

The sleeping-car attendant, who introduced himself as Michael, very kindly agreed to take the bag back down, and when I went down to check on later I found that he had put it in a fine place, easily accessible, on the second shelf. I stored my dirty laundry in it and kept the clean things loose in the room.

In day-mode, there were two seats, set just wide enough apart that two people could sit in them without getting their legs tangled. They had no contouring, unlike the coach seats, but they weren't bad. A little fold-up table, like an airline tray table, could be dropped down from the wall between them; I used it as a computer stand.

In night-mode, the two seats were pulled together and a new mattress was placed upon them and made up with sheets and a blanket. When it was down there was enough room for a person of average build to step into the roomette and turn to close the door. There was not quite enough room for me to do this; I had to climb into bed to close my door. The doors did not lock but did latch from the inside. We were warned not to leave "valuable electronic devices" in the room, so I carried Plum everywhere.

I found the roomette very comfortable for one. The chairs in the day-mode room were just enough larger than coach to let me fit into them properly; the bed in night-mode was large enough for me to lie down on (though not to roll over) because the extra mattress added to the two seats' padding raised the bed exactly to the level of the little shelf provided as a nightstand, which ran the length of the bed.

Heating, adjusted by a knob, came from the same source as in a car; hot air funnelled to window and baseboard while the train was in motion. "Air conditioning," as the roomette's labelling called it, consisted simply of a vent in the roof which could be opened to admit fresh air.

There was supposed to be a built-in radio, but Michael did not tell me how to use it and I never heard anyone else using theirs, so I suspect those units had been taken out, just as the ashtrays were covered over. I shall ask about it on my return trip.

The roomettes did have a power point each, originally intended to power an electric razor. I plugged Plum in every night.

I really enjoyed most aspects of train travel. The ride up until the Colorado state line was as smooth as a Buick on a good road. The ride from Colorado to Arizona was more like being in our Toyota on a good road. And the ride from Arizona to California was more like being in our Toyota on a poorly-paved road. I had to break out the painkillers.

But the fact that everything, including the commodes (four per car; three downstairs and one up) and the shower (one downstairs) and even the hallways in the cars, was just barely large enough for me meant that it was very easy for me to blunder into things. And since it is easy for me to blunder into things normally -- well, I did a lot of blundering on the train. So I am afraid that the train crew, and especially the dining car crew, may not have liked the fact that I was travelling by train at all.

No lunch was served on the Southwest Chief, as its 2:45 departure was deemed too late. The Metropolitan Lounge people warned me about that at check-in, so I went upstairs to the Union Station food court. I found a Pizza Hut express, where I bought a Personal Pan Pizza (cheese) and a bottle of Aquafina. Both were good, so after some thought I went back and bought another set for the road.

Dinner in the dining car featured a good New York Strip, frenched green beans, and rice. At least, those were my choices from the selections offered. I had a great time; my seatmate was a nice woman named Debbie who was, it turned out, about ten years older than I. When my attempt to drink milk sent me into a sudden, alarming paroxysm of coughs, she suggested coffee as a counteractant and passed some of hers over to me. It worked. We ended up going to the lounge car to talk after the meal, and we talked for several hours and exchanged e-addresses.

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Photos

Union Station Escalator
Christmas at Chicago's Union Station

Comments

[K. Freeman]

So fun to read
Meredith, you are just a marvelous writer & I am thoroughly enjoying this travel log!!