Tad's IT Blog
Sleeper Car on the Amtrak Coast Starlight
Klamath Falls Amtrak Station, in the Oregon Cascades
One thing I wanted to catalog while it’s still fresh in my head is my outstanding train trip on the Amtrak “Coast Starlight” train, a trip I took from Los Angeles, CA to Portland OR this month.
Thankfully, due to Obama’s insistence that we get some high-speed rail happening in the U.S., rail travel is starting to get a bit more exposure, but not nearly enough as far as I’m concerned. Most anyone looking to transport themselves from L.A. to Portland would automatically start looking for the cheapest flights, and would overlook the train altogether. Well, before I even hit my photo tour, let me explain my main reasoning one would want to take a train:
- It’s comfortable: Regular coach-class seats have significantly more room than on an airplane or a bus, and when you’re 6’4″ like me, that matters. Never mind how comfortable it is when you’ve got a sleeper car.
- Power Outlets: Most of the coach-class, and all of the sleeper cars, come with 110v power outlets, so you can just sit down and work on your laptop almost the entire journey if you so desire. Or, there is a Lounge Car and a Parlour Car, also outfitted with 110v power, where you can hang out, eat and drink coffee and look at the scenery through the windows that go all the way up into the roof.
Mt. Shasta at Sunrise from the Amtrak Coast Starlight Train
- Scenery: The trains go past some of the most breathtaking scenery that you just do NOT see when you’re in a car. I’ve driven the I-5 from Portland down to L.A. a number of times, and that is a boring, boring drive. But the Amtrak train manages to hit all of the most stunning country, from the California coastline near Vandenberg Air Force Base, to Mt. Shasta in Northern California, and the Oregon Cascades. Really just stunning stuff.
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National Park Guided Tour: From Santa Barbara up through San Luis Obispo, there was a representative from the National Park Service who gave a great guided tour of the scenery from the Lounge Car of the train. That part was great, as he pointed out the nifty rocket-launch and missile-launch gantries at Vandenberg AFB, and a host of other cool factoids that made the California leg of the trip more interesting.
National Park Guided Tour through Vandenberg AFB
- Bring your Bike: Another big plus, was I was able to just box up my bike and take it on the train, along with about 2x the luggage that any plane would let me take.
- Sleeper Car: We got a “Roomette” for our trip up to Portland, which is Amtrak-speak for a small room that has two fold-down beds, but doesn’t have it’s own in-room shower. More expensive rooms have their own showers. Ours worked just fine, even for 6’4″ me, and my 6-m0s-pregnant wife. It had nice, big windows, really comfortable seats, places for all kinds of storage for goodies, a little table for working on my laptop, and best of all — free meals. The train has a diner car and a parlour car, both of which serve meals, and we could just show up and get a full lunch/dinner/etc whenever they were serving. And the meals were absolutely not bad either.
Dinner in the Parlour Car while our train snaked through the Salinas Valley
And there are more plusses as well, but I’ll just hit those by way of photograph.
Easiest way for me to give you the photo tour, as well, is to just check this out on my Flickr map.
Or, you can get a visual tour on a Flickr slideshow here.
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about 1 year ago
In the late summer of 2001, I took an Amtrak vacation which is where Amtrak set up the whole itinerary. Sadly, Amtrak has dropped their vacation services, but the wonderful memories can't be revoked.
I traveled from Boston to Chicago on the Lakeshore Limited, switched trains and traveled on the Southwest Chief from Chicago to Williams AZ. A few days at the Grand Canyon, then back on Amtraks Southwest Chief, changing to the Coast Starlight and finally to our ultimate detraining destination in Modesto and shuttled to Yosemite, staying few a few days. Each named train had different vehicle designs. The overnight accommodations on the Lakeshore portion included a small television, private foldaway toilet, and very comfortable bed/seats. The Southwest Chief had a different sleeper configuration, no television, older and darker berths and also offered shared shower and toilet.
While any portion of the vehicles could have been improved esthetically and functionally, the lowest point would be the rails themselves. In several locations, the vehicles shifted violently. I'm talking 'amusement ride' stength motions which were perpendicular to the interior corridor (walking) direction. People fall every run, I heard the coachmen say. Mind you, I'm not referring to one big jostle per trip, I'm talking sections measured in hundreds or even thousands of feet in length. Movements of a few inches or less are common through out the thousands of miles, but the movements of note reach up to 5 or more inches of floor movement (peak to peak) on the upper portion of the 2 level cars.
The causes of the poor trackage can be traced back to the ownership of the rails. Amtrak owns no tracks; the Amtrak service has to be given permission to use track owned by freight companies, and in many areas needing track repairs, the daily train runs prevent reasonable maintenance of the track. That is a critical and key detail, IMO.
Otherwise, what's to not like? There are advantages to having traveled the way I did: nobody ever hijacked a train to the same extent that planes have been hijacked; it is rather difficult to steer a locomotive into buildings because the tracks usually don't go through buildings; you don't have time to get bored of talking about the prior sight you saw, you can recognize the flora and fauna along the route, and one final thing I like a whole lot: these trains stick to the ground for a lot more of the travel time.
about 1 year ago
Actually, Amtrak does own track, though mainly on the Northeast Corridor line.