Holy Toledo!

I am writing this in Chicago. I just got off the Lake Shore Limited and I have some time to kill before I board the Empire Builder for St. Paul.

I left Nashua on Saturday evening and spent the night in Boston at my younger brother's apartment. He doesn't live far from South Station, where train 449, the Lake Shore Limited, departed Sunday right on time at 11:55am. The train dashed across Massachusetts, arriving at Albany almost 40 minutes early. This gave us about a 2 hour layover there, so I got off the train with my camera and watched the action as the northbound Ethan Allen Express to Rutland, southbound Adirondack from Montreal, and the New York section of the Lake Shore Limited all arrived at Albany and did their switching duties.

Trains going to Manhattan must be electrically powered, so at Albany all southbound trains exchange their P40 or P42 diesel for a P32 dual-mode locomotive. On the outside, these locomotives are virtually identical to the diesels, but they have retractible third rail shoes. They are powered by their prime movers until Manhattan. Once there, instead of going to Grand Central Terminal, the trains instead use an old freight branch down Manhattan's west side. This is not in a tunnel and therefore it is not required to be electrified. Finally, the train arrives at the old Pennsylvania Railroad tracks leading into Penn Station. These tracks are electrified with overhead catenary and top-running third rail. The dual-mode locomotives don't have pantographs, so they use the top-running third rail into Penn Station. The retractible third rail shoes allow the locomotives to use both top-running and bottom-running third rail.

After these two trains cleared Albany, the Boston section of the Lake Shore Limited backed towards the New York section, making a 13 car train. I boarded the train, and we departed immediately after the southbound Maple Leaf arrived from Toronto. We crossed the mighty Hudson river and snaked our way through Albany and headed west. The dining car opened for business, but filled up quickly, and I was not able to make a reservation in time. I instead went to the Cafe car and got a turkey sandwich for dinner. It was good, but it definitely wasn't the diner. I went back to my coach and went to sleep.

I woke up after a solid 8 hours of sleep. I looked out the window, checked the schedule, checked the time, and thought to myself, "Holy Toledo, we're still on time!". Toledo is a smoking stop, so we sat there for a couple minutes. I like to get out and take a photo of the train at smoking stops, but the person in the aisle seat next to me was still asleep so I stayed put.

I got to know the people I was sitting with. They were a family traveling back to their home in Minnesota, they had been visiting family in northern New Hampshire. They had five young daughters, and they were all fairly well-behaved, which is impressive on such a long rail trip. They are boarding the Empire Builder here in Chicago, so who knows, I might sit with them all the way to St. Paul.

After waking up, I made my way to the diner. Breakfast is unreserved, so I just walked in and picked a seat. I ordered french toast, and a couple minutes later a heaping pile of the stuff was set in front of me. It was filling but very delicious. I went back to my coach to watch Indiana go by. After South Bend, we changed to Central Time. As we got closer to Chicago, the corn plants gave way to steel plants, county roads turned into congested interstates, and grain elevators turned into high-rises. The train slowed down to snake its way through steel plants, factories, intermodal yards, and countless other rail lines, all radiating around Chicago and feeding this capital of industrialization with raw materials to turn into everything from refrigerators to lolipops. Finally we arrived at Chicago Union Station, where I am sitting now.

Well, right after I typed that last paragraph, my laptop battery died and I was not able to find a place in all of Chicago Union Station with both an outlet and wireless internet. So I will just continue where I left off and post it all as one post.

We left Chicago from the less-crowded north gate, because the Empire Builder goes north to the twin cities before going west to Seattle and Portland. However, because of the flooding in North Dakota, that day's Empire Builder wasn't going past St. Paul, and I took the train that far. The train was two locomotives coupled back-to-back, 2 coaches, a lounge, and 2 more coaches. I sat in the lounge car the whole way.

The ironic part is that the Empire Builder does not follow the original route between Chicago and the twin cities. Great Northern Railroad built west from the twin cities, so their Empire Builder left Chicago on Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy tracks with CB&Q power. Today's Empire Builder follows the original Milwaukee Road route to St. Paul. That route got bought out by Soo Line in the 1970s and later by the Canadian Pacific. CP owns the line now.

The train pulled into St. Paul at about midnight, an hour and a half behind schedule. I didn't mind the delay, because my bus didn't leave until 8:00am so I had some time to kill. I walked from the St. Paul train station to the Minneapolis bus terminal. It was a nice night, but a long walk with a suitcase. Taxis there are expensive, the bus system doesn't run at night despite the website saying it does, and none of the transportation hubs in the area are connected very well. The bus depot was about 6 miles from the train station, mostly through University of Minnesota's campus in St. Paul. The bus depot is over the river in Minneapolis and then a short walk through downtown, which is a very clean and modern-looking city. The light rail system there does run during the night. The city was also silent at night, quieter than Nashua on a regular night, and this was the fourth of July. It was a little strange.

I got to the bus depot at about 3:15am. The place opens at 5am, so I had some time to kill. It started storming after I got there, but there is a roof over the sidewalk in front of the bus depot, so I was fine. It was about 80 degrees all night. I was the first one at the depot, but a few other people came along before 5am. Most of them were quite...interesting. Later on I'll do a blog post about the interesting people I meet on this trip. When I finally got on the bus, it was a long ride to Fargo and then another long ride to Glendive. It was a very beautiful ride though. The trees of Minnesota gave way to the plains and farms of North Dakota. I never imagined a place so empty yet so beautiful. Unfortunately, I do not have any photos of the area because the bus windows were dirty, but I am planning on driving out there and taking some photos of the scenery. It was really breathtaking.

I finally arrived in Glendive, safe and sound albeit and bit tired and dirty. The first thing I did was take a shower, because my last one had been 2 days before. That's really the biggest disadvantage of taking the train. But everything else more than makes up for it. I slept in pretty late too, I had been awake since Toledo about a day and a half before.

Today James and I drove to Miles City to see what there is to see there. But that's a story for another time. I'll keep you all posted about what adventures I go on out here in the middle of nowhere.