A Night on the Southwest Chief

My brother, who was dropping me off, and I arrived at the Albuquerque Amtrak Station about 4:30pm Sunday afternoon. After printing out my tickets from the QuickTrak kiosk we headed off to the bustling train platform. We met the car attendant AnneMarie outside the Superliner sleeper car. Albuquerque is a service stop so the air conditioning was off and most people had stepped out to the platform. I showed my brother to my roomette, which was on the upper level. He thought it looked quite cramped but I assured him it was plenty roomy for me. We then went to the dining car and checked on my dinner reservation which was for 5:45. With just a few minutes before our scheduled departure I walked back to the platform with my brother, hugged him goodbye and went to settle into my quarters. There really is plenty of room for just one person, my suitcase fits nicely on the shelf and the seats are fairly comfy. Out the window I could see a line of brightly painted trains with a red roadrunner logo which I later learned were the cars for the new light rail line between ABQ and Santa Fe.
We left ABQ at 4:55 just 10 minutes behind schedule. There wasn't much time before

After dinner I retired to the lounge car. The Southwest Chief was carrying a lot of people and AnneMarie told me it's usually fairly full. She has a few regulars who travel between Chicago and LA every six months or so. It's interesting to see a score of people content to look out the windows at red rock for hours at a time. The scenery though not spectacular was grand in it's


The ride through the night was fairly bumpy. I was awakened when the train came to a dead stop, the engines ceased their humming. I peeked out the window into the dead of night, the ramshackle sign on a boarded up train station said Needles. It was two am. We were on our way again in a few minutes and I slept soundly until the sun started peeping in at 5:00am. Because the Southwest Chief arrives in Los Angeles in the early morning breakfast is served from 5:00 to 6:00. I skipped breakfast, choosing instead to watch the sun come up over San Bernardino, back to civilization. At San Bernardino I stepped out into the sunshine, and relatively humid air. After

We rolled into Union Station, Los Angeles at 8:05, right on time.
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| 20:03
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