6.20.2008

A Night on the Southwest Chief

Yes dear reader the after weeks of anticipation the day is finally here, the posting of the play by play for my most recent Amtrak Trip from Albuquerque to Oakland! The trip consists of two legs, Albuquerque to Los Angeles on the Southwest Chief, then Los Angeles to Oakland on the Coast Starlight. Warning for future travelers - this trip does NOT work in reverse as the Coast Starlight arrives in Los Angeles about 10 hours before the Southwest Chief departs when going West to East.

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 dinner so I stayed in my roomette and watched the outskirts of the city roll by. Dinner was a very good trout, my companions were an elderly couple from Boston who had been on the train for days and an older gentleman from Sun City who was able to provided a lot of information about the area. The train rides alongside I-40 for a long ways, a highway my brother and I drove over 15 years ago on the way to San Diego. The dining car had run out of desert, which was a bit of a bummer but that's the way things roll the last day on the schedule.

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 own way. Dried up creeks, mesas, a stand of willows here and there where a stream passed through. There was quite a hubbub when we passed a dead cow with vultures at it. Many people pass the time like I do taking hundreds of pictures of red rocks. A number of freight trains were running on parallel and perpendicular tracks, some loaded with a hundred cars of coal. At 7:15 we pulled into Gallup, the only town of note for hundreds of miles, the Southwest Chief was running right on time. At around 8:45 or it might have been 7:45 I got confused with the time somehow the sun began to set. The desert sunset is beautiful, the color of the rocks deepen, silhouettes appear and the sun slowly sinks behind the horizon. A man and his son came to the observation car after dark looking for the International Space Station which was supposed to be visible in the Northeaster sky but none of us could spot it. I had AnneMarie make up my bed at 9:15, though it may have only been 8:15, and I crawled into my little bed. I had nearly forgotten how quiet, cozy and just absolutely peaceful it is lying in a superliner roomette hurtling along feet first at 80 miles per hour. It's truly one of my favorite things and I'm so glad I chose to take the train.

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 a few minutes the conductor MartiAnn bellowed All Aboard and we were on our way again.

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

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