...When you hear the tootin' of the whistle....

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Stacy bless her took us down to the station to catch the 9.35 sleeper from Baltimore to Chicago, after our goodbyes (see you in OZ) we found our gate etc and then when it was time to board they announced it and sort of sang out All Aboard – magic!!! Couldn’t stop laughing there are some things about America you have just got to love. The train whistles regularly and the theme to Casey Jones just keeps playing in my head.

What a curious little sleeping compartment we have it even has a loo and a sink in it, which is good in some respects but rather disconcerting in others – I’m sure you can imagine!

Ainsley is our car attendant and a good lad, he is sorting me out for all the smoke stops! ( a tip will be going his way lol), he keeps coming along and saying 2 minutes miss get your cigarettes and lighter out and at the ready, even when they aren’t scheduled smoke stops he will let you off for a couple of mins and early the next morning as there wasn’t a stop he let me and this other bloke in the guard’s van and we had to hang out the window lol.

Howard is like a little kid on this train, he keeps grinning for no apparent reason and saying god I love this!! The scenery in some places was really beautiful, we also saw a lot of trees and cows though (Stacy was right!). Sleeping wasn’t to bad though once you got over the feeling you would roll out it was all good.

The food has been pretty decent too and the man who ran the dining car was hilarious, a really big fat black bloke – y’all commin to my dining car? Well y’all come in and sit right down – all said with the campist voice and mannerisms. He was lovely and really looked after us, but taken aback that Howard drank coffee – I thought all ya Brits drank tea!

Anyway we got to Chicago and had a 4 hour wait for the next leg onto Seattle but as we were sleeping car passengers we had our own private lounge where you could leave your bags, get free soft drinks and muffin ‘s (until they ran out – not down to me I hasten to add) and toilets with proper doors!!!! None of this gaps right round the door so people can see in rubbish for us oh no. What a treat to be sort of 1st class if only for a couple of hours. Anyhow we went out for a wander and saw the Willis Tower and got some lunch, went back and 'all aboarded' the Empire Builder train for our 2 days to Seattle.

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