At the beginning of April, I had a meeting in Seattle, Washington. As the cost of Amtrak was less than flying and I had the time, I took Amtrak from Lamy, New Mexico, to Seattle and back. I had already reserved a sleeper on #14 the Starlight from Los Angles to Seattle before leaving.

On April 2nd, I boarded #3 on the westbound Southwest Chief in Lamy in coach a few minutes late. I tried to see if I could upgrade to a sleeper berth but the crew told me that I had to do that in Albuquerque. When we got into Albuquerque, I checked with the station agent and he told me to wait until the train was moving and check with the new crew. After leaving Albuquerque, I asked the conductor, and was told that we’d be filling the sleepers in Gallup and Flagstaff. Having dinner in the diner showed me that the food was getting tastier. I had the chicken and, as usual, it was good. One person at my table had the flatiron steak. In the past, it was a thin piece of meat but now it’s a nice thick piece of meat.

We stopped in Gallup while I was having dinner. The Gallup police were there to meet the train. Apparently, a coach passenger was found in the sleepers and was removed. Back in the coach, I tried to get some sleep, but two women behind me decided that they needed to talk until after 2 a.m. The woman sitting next to me went to the lounge car to sleep. I woke up the next morning, and found that we’d lost an hour getting into Needles, California. Amtrak has major padding between Fullerton and Los Angles Station. Despite being an hour late, we arrived on time and I got breakfast at the station.

The Starlight has a parlor car in addition to the lounge car and it’s only for those who are in the sleepers. While it is supposed to have wireless available, we were told that only one of the four parlor cars actually worked. There is a different menu for the parlor car and they do a wine and cheese tasting both days to Seattle. On the first day, it’s California wines and on the second, it’s Oregon and Washington wines.

While heading north through Vandenberg AFB, the conductor was sitting in the parlor car having his lunch. We were talking with him about different railroad items, when the engineer called on the radio. Now Amtrak engines 13 and 161 were on the head end. The engineer told the conductor that the fuse had blown for the radiator fan motor on engine 13 and that they felt that they could make it. The conductor started to make calls, when the call came in that engine 13 had shut down and we were running on 161 alone. We made it into San Luis Obispo and met the southbound #11. In SLO, we waited for Union Pacific to get an engineer to pilot the two UP engines in SLO to help #14 up the grade north of SLO. We were two hours late getting out of SLO. Heading north up the grade, I saw 2 bicyclists riding beside the track. There turned out to be three mountain bikers and it appeared that they regularly ride beside the tracks. At the top of the grade, the UP engines cut off and we headed north.

The next morning we awoke to a freight passing us, heading north. We were in Sacramento. Checking the time showed that we were now six hours late. From the woman in the room across from me, I found out that we spent time in Oakland trying to fix the lead unit. Now we were waiting for UP to loan us another engine to get us to Portland, Oregon. We spent most of the day in the parlor car talking to people. I probably sold 5 Amazon Kindles that day and the crew tried to make up time. In Portland, they had to inspect the train and change the UP engine out for one from BNSF as we were changing home rails to Seattle. We managed to get a couple of hours of sleep before Tacoma. We finally arrived in Seattle’s King Street station at 3 AM – almost six hours late.

On April 9th, we headed back to King Street station to catch the southbound Starlight #11 to Sacramento. At the depot, I was able to upgrade to a sleeper berth to Sacramento. They were late backing #11 in and we were a few minutes late getting out. I happened to be in the George Pullman sleeper – one of the last built by Pullman and still retaining his name on the sides. In the parlor car, there were several people who were taking this train because it was to go over the Tehachapi Loop instead of the coastline.

In Portland, we filled the sleepers and the coaches. People who’d been stranded because of the Empire Builder’s cancellation due to flooding in North Dakota were headed to Oakland to catch the California Zephyr back to Chicago. It was interesting to see the engine 161 was the 2nd unit, as it had the unit on #14 on my trip north. I enjoyed another day of interesting talks with different people.

I woke up the next morning right as we came into Sacramento, where I was to disembark. If I did not have to be back in the office on Tuesday, I would have stayed on the train and ridden the Loop. But, in order to catch #4 on time, I now had to take a bus to Stockton, the San Joaquin to Bakersfield, and another bus to Los Angeles. If I had stayed on #11, I would have missed my connection by 3 hours.vI boarded #3 and headed back to Lamy. The next morning, I talked to the train crew and found that it’s now harder to do upgrades on the train as they cannot call in to do the upgrades, due to changes in the rules.

Leaving Albuquerque, we hit two back to back red signals between Cerrillos and Galistao. Moving a restricted speed, we were late into Lamy. Despite the issues, traveling by train is still more enjoyable than flying.