Every Mile A Memory

I hope you've enjoyed reading about my adventures on the rails this past July. I certainly enjoyed being there. I shot just over 2,000 photos with two cameras, and I spent hours looking at all of them and deciding which ones to keep and which ones to toss out. I still kept about four CD's worth of photos! Many of my friends have asked to see them, and I certainly enjoy showing the photos and telling my friends about my trip. People at work have mentioned they haven't seen me in a while, and where have I been? Well.....

I left home July 2 and got home July 31, a time period of 30 days. In that time, I traveled 12,041 miles in 278 hours. Of that, 11,400 miles and 263 hours were by rail, 11,379 miles and 260 hours on Amtrak. What makes up the rest of the time? I rode 8 miles for 45 minutes on Boston's subway system, the T. I spent about 2 hours on San Francisco Municipal Railway, riding 13 miles. I spent 3 hours on ferries and tour boats on San Francisco Bay, traveling 22 miles. I also rode 619 miles by bus, giving me another 12 hours of travel time. During all this travel time, I went to 27 states, 14 of which I had never visited before. I have now been to a total of 35 states.

Let's put that into perpective a bit. 278 hours is over 11 straight days. That's like getting on a train right now (assuming you are reading this the day I posted it) and getting off on August 29! As for the mileage, that is like going from my home in Nashua, NH to Sydney, Australia...the opposite side of the planet! And I should remind you, I never flew anywhere, so I never left the surface of the earth in my travels. On Amtrak, I traveled 11,379 miles. For a $579 rail pass, that means I spent 5 cents per mile. As for time, at $579 for 260 hours, I spent $2.23 per hour. Both, I'd say, are very good rates! Out of my 30 days of travel, only 16 days were actual travel days, and on those days I averaged 753 miles per day. My average speed for travel days was 31.4 miles per hour.

Okay, that's enough statistics. What else did this trip do for me? It was my first time traveling completely across the country to the west coast. It was my first time seeing deserts, palm trees, Spanish missions, big sky country, the Cascades and Mount Hood, and the Pacific Ocean. Some things I had learned about in history classes in school now have more meaning: the Alamo, the Chisholm Trail, Pioneers and the Oregon Trail, the Lewis and Clark expedition, and General Custer's less than fortunate military actions. I also got to ride such once-famous trains that I had only read about such as Great Northern's Empire Builder, The joint effort of the California Zephyr, Santa Fe's Super Chief (now Amtrak's Southwest Chief),Southern Pacific's Sunset Limited, Missouri Pacific's Eagle (now Amtrak's Texas Eagle),Southern Pacific's Coast Daylight (now Amtrak's Coast Starlight), and New York Central's Lake Shore Limited. I realized just how enormous this country is, seeing everything from vast deserts to open plains to mountains that seem to touch heaven itself. I met people from all over the country going to other faraway places. I met young people and older people. I met people who remember riding the original trains when they were run by the private railroads, and people who had never been on a train before. I met people who travel for the sake of traveling (like me) and people who were traveling on business or going to visit friends. I met people with all sorts of cool accents (Texas comes to mind) and people from the northeast that didn't have a hard time understanding what I said to them. I met people who could name all the species of cactus as they went by, and some people (like me) who had never seen a cactus before.

I had a blast riding the train. It was bittersweet coming home. I missed home, of course, and was happy to get back. Now that I am home I find that I miss my coach seat that bounces along the track as I sleep, I miss the dining car with the amazing french toast breakfasts and salmon dinners, I miss the lounge car with enormous windows that showed me a new landscape every day. I tend to shy away from people I don't know, and even people I do know, so I'm surprising even myself to say that I miss sitting with people I've never met and telling them about my adventures and listening to theirs. In quiet times, I find myself thinking back to my adventures and remembering the things I saw, the places I visited, the people I met. The trip may be over, but I know that it will always remain, every mile of it, a great memory.

If you missed out reading my articles about this trip, you can find them all on the website. Speaking of the website, don't forget to check out the rest of it. It is a great place to find all the past articles we have written, and if you are looking for a specific article, they are very easy to find. There are also a few features on the website that are not available on the blog, so go check them out!

Coming Home

The Sunset Limited snaked its way through the urban sprawl known as Los Angeles, carefully tiptoeing its way around skyscrapers, city streets, and palm trees. As the train found a way east through the concrete jungle, home was only five days, three trains, and 4,000 miles away. Eventually the buildings got further apart, the carefully irrigated grass turned to dirt, and palm trees became windmills. Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean were behind me, the train was crossing another desert. The sun set when we were near Arizona, it was dark by the time the train pulled into Yuma, right on schedule.

I woke the next morning to one of the most beautiful sunrises I have ever seen, over the New Mexico desert. I wandered over to the dining car for breakfast. I ordered the scrambled eggs, which is not my usual breakfast choice. I always get the french toast, because it is amazing, but I decided to try something different this time. The eggs were delicious as well, but I still prefer the french toast. There were only four of us in the diner at that time of the morning, so we all sat together. I was traveling the furthest out of the four of us.

That morning the train crossed the Rio Grande from New Mexico into Texas, stopping in El Paso shortly after. El Paso is only feet from the Mexican border; another city, Juarez, lies right across the river from El Paso. You can see both cities from the train, and there is a vast difference between the two. Juarez is basically a dump, while El Paso is a very clean and modern looking city. El Paso is also crawling with border patrol vehicles. It was kind of an eye-opener to see the two cities, there's no wonder why everyone wants to come to this side of the border.

The train spent the next two days crossing Texas. There was nothing but desert that whole day. The train stopped in Alpine and Del Rio before reaching San Antonio. The desert was pretty...for the first hour or so. After that, it got boring. Real boring. This was even more of a desert than I had seen on the Southwest Chief. This desert had the cracked dirt, animal bones, vultures, cactuses, the whole works. And it lasted all day with no break. However, a cool family sat with me in the lounge car. They got on at Alpine, which is kind of near Big Bend State Park. They had been camping there when their car broke down. That is usually a death sentence in that park, but they were lucky enough to be in one of the only places with cell phone service in the whole park. They managed to get out of the park and get to the train station at Alpine. The ticket agent felt bad for them and sold them seats on the Sunset Limited even thought the train was sold out. They were getting off at San Antonio, which was the same day, so they just sat in the lounge since those were the only available seats on the train. They had two young boys, both 4, who were crazy. They actually reminded me of an awesome 3 year old that I know who is a handful by himself, but here there were two of them! They were a lot of fun.

The train made it to San Antonio right on time. The Sunset Limited would continue on to New Orleans, and the Texas Eagle would originate here to go to Chicago. That is the route I was taking. You can book it as the Texas Eagle all the way to Los Angeles, which is what I did. The train splits in San Antonio, but not the same way the Empire Builder or Lake Shore Limited split. The last two cars on the Sunset Limited, a coach and a sleeper, were uncoupled from the train at San Antonio. When the Sunset Limited left, the Texas Eagle trainset backed onto the coach and sleeper to haul them to Chicago. In Spokane and Seattle, the trains split into two sections that go two different directions. But here, they pulled two cars off one train and stuck them on another train.

The Texas Eagle would sit in San Antonio all night and leave in the morning, so I got off and wandered around the city a bit. I found the Alamo, which was not far from the train station. The Alamo is not actually the name of the place. I forget the name, it was a long Spanish name that I couldn't possibly remember, mostly because I don't speak any Spanish. It earned the nickname Alamo after it was a mission, there are a few conflicting stories as to how it earned that nickname. But the name has stuck, and that's what everybody knows it by at this point. I also walked over to the famed Riverwalk in San Antonio. I was a little disappointed though. I had heard all about how great and wonderful it was and how it's a must-see in San Antonio...it was a sidewalk next to a tiny river. That's all. Nothing special. After that, I went back to the train so I could sleep for the night.

I woke up the next morning just before the Texas Eagle left San Antonio. Two people from the national park service got on board there to narrate the ride to Fort Worth. This is considered the scenic area of Texas, but honestly I don't know what scenery they are referring to. But maybe that's because New Hampshire is a forest, like all of eastern Texas. It was just trees. I didn't think it was anything special, but that may be because that's what I live in. Scenery or not, the narration was interesting. They talked about the different towns along the route and how they got started. They also talked about things I had only learned about in school, like cowboys and the Chisholm Trail. It was all very interesting. The train left Texas at Texarkana. The station there is on the Texas/Arkansas state line, and in the schedule it is listed as being in both states.

I woke up the next morning in St. Louis. In its day, this was the second biggest railroad town in the country, second only to Chicago, the Texas Eagle's destination. We spent the day crossing Illinois, arriving in Chicago right on time. I had eight hours before the Lake Shore Limited went anywhere, so I checked my suitcase to Boston and walked around the city. My first stop was the Willis Tower, formerly the Sears Tower. The Willis Tower is only a few short blocks from Union Station. There was a three hour wait to get to the top, but I had the time, so I waited in line. I finally got to the top and I could see for miles. There were these glass boxes on the side of the building that you could stand in and look down. It was a little scary, but kind of cool. After the Willis Tower I walked down to Lake Michigan and just sat there and enjoyed the view and the breeze. The lake is about a mile and a half from Union Station. When it was time, I walked back to Union Station to get on the Lake Shore Limited, the last train on my trip.

The Lake Shore Limited, with Amtrak's Phase 2 heritage locomotive leading, left Chicago about half an hour late. They held the train for the California Zephyr, which was running very late, arriving about when the Lake Shore Limited was supposed to leave. We didn't lose any more time by the time we got to Albany. In Albany, everyone going to Massachusetts got off the train. Because of track work, Amtrak was running buses between Albany and Boston. This was actually a good thing, because the buses made less stops and ran faster than the train, so I ended up getting to Boston a little ahead of schedule. I claimed my baggage and got on the Red Line to Alewife, where my parents were waiting for me. They drove me back home to Nashua, and the first thing I did was jump in the shower. That is the biggest disadvantage to riding the train. It had been about a week since my last real shower, and despite it being midnight, I took one anyway.

It was a great trip. But it is nice to be home. I have a bed, which doesn't move or make noise. I have a shower. I also have over 2,000 photos to go through. All the photos I have shared, and plenty more (but not all 2,000) can be seen in a Facebook photo album, viewable here.

Southwest Chief

As the California Zephyr departed Burlington, IA, I checked the schedule. The train was running five and a half hours late, and I was worried about my connection. I was getting off in Galesburg, IL, to get on the Southwest Chief. Normally, I'd have a six hour connection there, but if the train lost any more time, I wouldn't make that connection. I called Amtrak to check the train status on the Southwest Chief, and thankfully, it was running 45 minutes late. The Zephyr did not lose any more time, and I got to Galesburg with a little over an hour to kill. There is plenty of freight action in this small town, so I just sat down with a camera and watched freight trains go by. The Southwest Chief arrived, and I climbed on board, ready for the new adventures and the new people this train would bring.

I found my seat, next to a man holding a fireproof box. I put my stuff there and went to the lounge car, which was about 10 feet away from my coach seat. I sat there for the rest of the day, although there wasn't much to see across Illinois and Missouri. I went back to the coach seat for the night. When I sat down, the man sitting next to me got up and went to the lounge car for the night, leaving his seat empty. I lay down across both seats and slept pretty well that night. When I woke up the next morning, I went into the lounge car again. The man with the fireproof box was still there, and when he saw me come into the lounge car, he got up and went back to the coach seat, never saying a word to me. I thought this was all very strange.

That morning we crossed from Kansas into Colorado. However, this area of Colorado is much different from what I saw two days before on the California Zephyr. I actually thought I was already in New Mexico! Rather than the Rockies, I saw desert. A lot of desert. More desert than I thought existed. It was actually beautiful at first. But it did get boring after a while. However, the train didn't stay in the desert all day.

Crossing into New Mexico, the train also crosses the Continental Divide at over 7,000 feet above sea level. This area is called Raton Pass, and is a famous area on the old Santa Fe Railroad. The mountains also had trees. Notice I used the word "had." A few weeks prior to this trip, the Southwest Chief was cancelled due to wildfires in this area. Most of the trees through here were charred remains of trees. I'm sure this area is more scenic when the trees are alive and well. It was kind of gloomy and sad when I went through there.

After Raton Pass, New Mexico started looking like southeast Colorado again. Honestly, it was getting kind of boring. It was nothing but dirt, cactuses, and sagebrush as far as I could see. Occasionally there was an antelope or some cattle off in the distance. There were usually a couple mountains off in the distance as well. Every so often you'd pass a fence dividing the desert in two and you'd wonder, why do people own all this land? In the evening, the train returned to civilization and stopped in Albuquerque. This was a longer stop, so I got out of the train and looked around. There were some vendors on the platform, so I bought an Albuquerque shotglass for my grandfather, who has a very large collection of shotglasses. I also saw some of the New Mexico RailRunner commuter trains there.

After Albuquerque, I went back to the coach to sleep. Once again, the man with the fireproof box got up and went to the lounge car for the night, never saying a word to me. He got off the train during the night. I woke up the next day in southern California. We went through Cajon Pass in the morning before arriving in Los Angeles about three hours late. Honestly, I thought this train was overrated. While nothing went wrong during the trip, I think people love this train only because the Santa Fe used to run it. I think people love Raton and Cajon Passes only because the Santa Fe went through them. Those were really the only scenic areas on the train, and they weren't very scenic. But my opinion about the scenery might be because I had just ridden the California Zephyr. If I had ridden the Southwest Chief first, I wonder if my opinion would be different?

I did meet some cool people on this train though. There was a family traveling to the Grand Canyon and eventually to Los Angeles. They were going to go up the west coast and take the Empire Builder back east. They were on a 15 day rail pass. There was also a girl about my age from New York whose grandfather, a railfan, had convinced her to get a rail pass and go across the country. She got off in Arizona to visit friends there. There were also a few boy scout troops taking to train to Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. They all got off in Raton, I'm not sure how far Philmont is from there. They came from all over the country. That is something I always wanted to do when I was in scouting, but my troop never went to Philmont.

Los Angeles is the furthest from home this trip takes me. 5 days and 4,000 miles separate me from my house in Nashua to where I now stand. Once again, I will board a train, the Sunset Limited, where I will see new places and meet new people. The Chief was the last westbound train I would take on this trip, the Sunset Limited is the first of three trains that will bring me back home.

California Zephyr

After my trip to San Francisco, it was time to board the next train, the California Zephyr, in Davis. The California Zephyr currently has a service advisory on the Amtrak website. Due to trackwork in Glenwood Canyon and recent flooding in Omaha, the Zephyr was running late. The service advisory said 3 to 5 hours behind schedule. I was taking this train to Galesburg, IL where I would board the Southwest Chief. I had a 6 hour layover there, so I was a little concerned about missing that connection. When the Zephyr pulled into Davis 45 minutes late, before reaching either of the service advisory areas, I really started worrying. I decided to put off the worrying until two days later, when I would have to change trains. Before then, there was nothing I could do except enjoy the ride.

After boarding the train, I found my way to the lounge car. The large windows there provide great places to take photos, and the train was going across Donner Pass through the Sierra Nevadas. Donner Pass is famous for two reasons. First, it earned its name when the pioneers were going west across the mountains to Sacramento. Donner was the name of a man leading a wagon party across the mountains when an early winter hit and stranded them in the pass. Some daring people went ahead to Sacramento to get help, which did not arrive for another five months, in the early spring. During that time, only half the wagon party survived the winter. They made it to Sacramento and recovered from their injuries and frostbite. Much later, after the railroad was built, a Southern Pacific passenger train was going through the pass when an avalanche fell off a mountain and buried the train. The train was stuck there for several days. Of the hundreds of passengers and crew on board, all survived, but some of the members of the rescue effort perished saving other people's lives. Fortunately, my journey across this mountain range was uneventful. The mountains provided some spectacular scenery when the trees allowed. The trees there are enormous, and are constantly in the way, even when the train is perched on the edge of a cliff. As a result, I did not get many good photos from the Sierras, but I did enjoy the view.

After the Sierras, the train arrived in Reno, the biggest little city in the world. Reno recently completed a project that put the railroad tracks in a trench through town. The railroad has always gone right through the center of town, blocking up all the traffic, especially in recent times with the long unit trains. Reno remedied this by digging a 35 foot deep trench and putting the tracks in it. Where the railroad crossings used to be, there are now bridges over the trench. The depot has a staircase going down into the trench so passengers can board the train.

After Reno was a big desert. The train picked up speed here, as it was a straight and flat run across the desert. I had seen a desert once before, from the California Zephyr in southern Utah. However, it was raining that day, so for the past two years my mental image of a desert included rain. However, this time it was a typical cloudless, sunny day in the desert. I got some photos of the desert, including the sun setting over the distant mountains. After the sun went down, I went back to my coach to sleep. I did not sleep well that night. The air conditioning on the train worked too well, and I had not brought a jacket or a blanket, so I was cold all night. When I got up, the first thing I did was go to the cafe car and order a hot chocolate. That warmed me up nicely, and I went upstairs to sit in the lounge all day again. Again, the scenery was desert. If I had never been to Utah before, I would have thought that was all the train passed through all night. However, during the night the train passed through Salt Lake and Utah valleys, both of which are the big population centers of Utah. They are probably the greenest parts of Utah, but I think they still qualify as desert. But they certainly are not flat and empty like the area the train was going through now.

After the desert, the real scenery started. The train crossed into Colorado through Ruby Canyon, a long canyon carved by the Colorado River. This canyon is so named because of the way the rocks almost glow red in the sunlight. It is really incredible, one of my favorite spots on the California Zephyr run. After Ruby Canyon the train stopped in Grand Junction, the biggest place between Denver and Salt Lake City. Two people from the National Park Service got on the train there to narrate during the scenic run between Grand Junction and Denver. It was very interesting, they often ride portions of the long distance trains during the summer months. I sat in the lounge car to enjoy the scenery and hear what they had to say about it. They narrated as the train wound its way around mountains and through canyons, gorges, cuts, and more often than anything else, tunnels.

Glenwood Canyon is a scenic highlight on this trip. The canyon walls extend so high that in order to see the peaks, you have to look through the windows in the ceiling of the lounge car. Interstate 70 winds its way through the canyon as well, on the other side of the river. This is another spectacular canyon carved by the Colorado River. The interstate through this canyon was not completed until the early 1990s at a cost of $45 million per mile. The railroad had gotten the only route through the canyon over 100 years earlier, so the interstate is built almost entirely on bridges and tunnels through the canyon.

During the Rockies, I met two other people in the lounge car who I ended up sitting with for the rest of the ride to Illinois. One of them was traveling to Milwaukee, the other to Syracuse. We hung out in the lounge car all through the Rockies. When we got to Denver, one of them got off the train during the long station stop there, found a pizza joint, and bought a pizza and a few cold ones to share on the train. I declined the beer but had my fill of pizza. While we ate, I uploaded my photos from the past two days onto my laptop, and they were both interested in seeing the photos I had taken. After we left Denver, it had gotten dark, and a poker tournament was forming at one end of the lounge car while a cowboy with his guitar was playing music. I listened to the music for a while before going back to my coach to sleep. By this time the train was running about two hours late.

I woke up the next morning in Lincoln, NB. If the train is on schedule, it passes all the way through Nebraska during the night. It was light out, so I knew we had lost more time. I went to the lounge car and ate some breakfast while looking out the window. As we headed east, we saw the Platte and Missouri Rivers in the Omaha area. However, the conductor explained that the nearest river was actually about a mile away, and the water that we were seeing next to the track ballast was in fact floodwater burying crops and entire neighborhoods. In fact, we were not on the normal passenger route. BNSF had kept a freight line around Omaha open by raising it five feet and building levies on either side of the track. There were a few places where the track would have been submerged if it had not been for the levies. We bypassed Omaha, but it was the only line open in the area, so the train had no other choice. There was water on both sides of the track as far as we could see.

When we crossed into Iowa, we were running about three hours late. I was starting to be optomistic about meeting my train on time in Illinois, because we had passed both areas that had a service advisory. However, there was a medical emergency while we crossed Iowa, and we stopped in a town called Fairfield where an ambulance met the train to take the patient to a nearby hospital. I do not know what happened, but I certainly hope he is all right. After that incident, we ended up waiting for several freight trains, delaying us even more. We finally rolled into Galesburg five and a half hours late. Fortunately for me, the Southwest Chief was running about an hour late already, so I did not miss my train. I sat at the station in Galesburg and watched freight trains come and go before my train arrived. There are a lot of freight trains there, it is a great place to visit to go railfanning. I did end up making my train, and I am sitting on the Southwest Chief as I write this. On this new train, I have new adventures ahead and new people to meet. Let's see where this train takes me!

San Francisco

First of all, I apologize for not updating the blog with my adventures. After leaving San Francisco, I was not able to find any internet for the rest of my trip. I did write every so often, so now that I am home, I will post the stories I wrote as if I was still on the trip. This is the first one, that I wrote on board the California Zephyr after visiting San Francisco.

On Friday, July 22 I took a day trip into San Francisco. I have always wanted to visit this city, as it is kind of unique among American cities. San Francisco was built on a spit of land with a bay on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other side and steep hills in the middle. Oakland, Emeryville, and other cities lie across the bay. The famous Golden Gate Bridge leaves San Francisco in the north part of the city and crosses the entrance to the San Francisco Bay, known as the Golden Gate. The bay has several islands including Angel Island and Alcatraz Island. Angel Island was known as the Ellis Island of the west, it is where all the Chinese and Japanese immigrants checked into the United States in the early 20th Century. Alcatraz Island's history is a litte darker, it hosted a United States military prison, which was later converted to a maximum security civilian prison that housed several famous criminals including Al Capone himself. The prison has since been shut down, and is now open for public tours. I do not believe the facilities on Angel Island have been preserved.

I got on Amtrak's Capitol Corridor in Davis, one stop west of Sacramento. I took that train to Jack London Square in Oakland. Jack London Square is an interesting place. After Emeryville, the train passes a coach yard and then enters Oakland. The train slows down, sounds the horn several times, and enters the street. The train follows the street for several blocks until the street ends, and the Jack London Square station begins. There are two tracks through the street, and all the side streets have gates that go down at the intersections. Since the train does not go into San Francisco itself, I had a few choices. I could have gotten off at Emeryville and ridden an Amtrak bus into San Francisco, I could have gotten off at Richmond and ridden BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit, one of several transit agencies operating the Bay area) into San Francisco, or I could get off at Jack London Square and take the ferry across the bay. This sounded the most appealing, so that is what I did. I had to walk back the length of the street with the tracks in it to get to the ferry terminal, but it was a short walk and easy to find.

The ferry left the dock right on time. I was able to buy my tickets on board the Encilla, as the ferry was called, so I bought a round trip so I could take the ferry back. The ferry stopped in Alameda before going to the Ferry Building at the end of Market Street and then on to Fisherman's Wharf. I got off at the Ferry Building. Inside the Ferry Building, I bought a one day MUNI Passport. MUNI is not actually an abbreviation, so it is incorrect to capitalize it, but everyone in San Francisco does. MUNI is short for the San Francisco Municipal Railway, which is the biggest transit agency in the city. MUNI operates the cable cars on Nob Hill, the historic streetcars and the modern light rail lines, as well as many of the transit buses in the city. The MUNI Passport cost $14 for one day and was good on anything operated by MUNI, including the cable cars.

The cable cars were my first stop. There are three lines the climb Nob Hill. The California Line starts at California and Market Streets and goes straight down (well, up) California Street as far as California and Van Ness. These cable cars are double ended and do not have the armstrong turntables to turn them, so they are not overrun with tourists. I rode this line out and back, and was glad I bought the MUNI Passport, because the cable car fares are a steep $6 one way! The Powell/Mason and Powell/Hyde lines both leave from Powell and Market Streets, a bit further down Market Street from the California Line. Powell and Market Street has the famous armstrong turntable for turning the cable cars by hand. There was an enormous crowd around the turntable, but I managed to fight my way in and get some photos of this very interesting operation. I fought my was to the nearest cable car and got on board the front so I could take photos as the car went through the streets. This was a Powell/Mason car and was completely crowded. The Powell/Mason line operates up Powell Street, then turns left for one block and turns right again onto Mason Street, which it takes to Fisherman's Wharf. The Powell/Hyde line, which I did not ride, turns left at the same place but turns right a few blocks later onto Hyde Street. I expected the tourists to ride the car to the end of the line, but by the time the car got there, I was one of only a few on board. There was, of course, another armstrong turntable at that end of the line, but nobody was there to watch the operation. This third ride would have cost me a total of $18, so my $14 MUNI Passport had been more than paid for already.

The hills in this city are incredible. There are steeper portions than what the cable cars operate on, but the cable cars still feel like roller coasters. I did not look up what the grades are on those lines, but I am willing to bet they are in the area of the Mount Washington Cog Railway in New Hampshire, if not steeper. The big difference here is that a city was built on top of these steep hills! The cable cars are called such because they do not operate under their own power. A metal cable moves under the street between the rails the whole length of the line. A groove between the rails allows the cable cars to grip the cable to pull them up the hill. Since the cars do not generate or receive any electric power, there are no air brakes. There are different levers on both ends of the cars, one of them grips the cable and one of the operates the hand brake. The cars operate with two-man crews because they need to. Each brake lever only controls the brakes on that end of the car, but these hills are so steep that both brakes are needed to keep control over the car as it goes downhill. As the car goes down the hill, there is an awful screeching sound as the brakes work for all they're worth and a horrendous smell generated from the brake pads. I wonder how often they have to replace those!

I got off the cable car at Fisherman's Wharf and got something to eat. I was going to wander around Fisherman's Wharf for a little while and then ride the F line, the historic streetcars, from this end of the line to the other end on Market Street. As I was walking past the docks, however, I saw a reasonably priced boat tour of San Francisco Bay, so I took it. I boarded the Miss Farallones and the boat was off. As we passed the breakwater protecting Fisherman's Wharf, the bay got pretty choppy and tossed the boat around a bit. I think a few passengers got seasick, but having been on many boats before, and not always in the most desirable conditions, I was fine. My dad served aboard cargo ships before I was born, and he has stories of being tossed around on the North Atlantic in the winter. That is not something I wish to experience! Growing up, he has always brought us on ferries from Manhattan to Staten island, or from New London to Orient Point on Long Island. I think this is why the ferry across the bay and the boat tour appealed to me. But I digress. The Miss Farallones fought the rough seas and eventually made it to the Golden Gate Bridge. She sailed underneath the bridge and then turned back. Since the water was pushing towards the bay, the ride out to the bridge was slow but the ride back was fast. We went back by going around Alcatraz Island to see what there is to see there. You can get a tour of the island itself, but if you don't book it in advance, you won't get to the island because it regularly sells out two weeks in advance. After seeing Al Capone's alma mater, the Miss Farallones returned to port.

Fisherman's Wharf is at the end of MUNI's F line, which is the famous historic streetcar line. This line operates a fleet of PCC cars painted to represent cars from different cities of the country, including one from Boston. There are also some Peter Witt cars from Milan, Italy. I boarded a PCC car painted up as a Cleveland car and rode to the end of the line. The F line follows the Embarcadero from Fisherman's Wharf to the Ferry Building, where it turns onto Market Street. It follows Market Street to the Castro station, at Market and 17th Streets. There you can board several of the light rail lines, which all follow Market Street but underground. They come above ground past the end of the F line and branch out in different directions. I did not have time to ride any of the other lines, so I waited and got another trolley back to the Ferry Building. I boarded the next Ferry for Oakland, the Peralta. She followed the same route as the Encilla that morning. At Jack London Square, a few trains came through before mine pulled in, so I was able to get some photos of the street running operation. I boarded my train and got off at Davis right on time.

San Francisco is a beautiful city and I wish I had planned more time to spend there. It is definitely high up on my list of things to do again. I made a mental list of what I wanted to do next time I'm in San Francisco, which included everything I had done and plenty more! We'll see if I ever make it out to San Francisco again. I wish I had planned more time to spend there, as I really was not there long enough. But I had a train to catch the next day, and we'll see where that brings me and what new adventures lie ahead.

Go By Train

I just stepped off the train in Davis, CA. I left Montana on Tuesday aboard the Empire Builder. I took that to Portland and got the Coast Starlight to Davis, just outside Sacramento. Both trains have a reputation regarding their adherance to the schedule. The Empire Builder is notoriously on time, while the "Coast Star-late", well, you can figure it out. However, this was not the case for either train. Due to a derailment in Minneapolis, the Empire Builder lost about an hour. Going west from there, the train got to Minot, ND where the railroad line had only opened the day before. The tracks from there all the way across eastern Montana were plagued with slow orders due to the recent flooding, and the train ended up getting to Spokane about 3 hours behind schedule. The train was so late I didn't even get to see Glacier National Park because the sun had already set by the time I got there. After Spokane, the "Baby Builder", as the Portland section is often called, made up about half an hour before arriving in Portland. I had about an hour before boarding the Coast Starlight, so I got something to eat and looked around a bit. However, the Coast Starlight then pulled in 15 minutes early. The train boarded right away but sat in the station until it was time to depart. We arrived at the next stations right on time, and eventually got to Klamath Falls, OR half an hour early. Again, we had to wait until it was time for us to depart. The train can't leave early because then it can leave people behind that haven't gotten to the station yet. I went to sleep after Klamath Falls and woke up in Sacramento...a full hour ahead of schedule. The train sat in Sacramento for an hour and then left for Davis, arriving there right on time. I am staying at a friend's house in Davis for a few days, I will be going to San Francisco tomorrow.

My Empire Builder ticket was from Williston, ND. Williston and Wolf Point, MT are both about two hours from Glendive. However, we were not able to leave the apartment until about one hour before the train was due in Williston, so we went to Wolf Point instead, which is further west, so the train gets there later. We didn't think to check the train status before leaving. I got some lunch in Wolf Point and waited...for quite a while. I was an hour early if the train had been on time, and it was about two hours late by that point. There were a few other passengers at the station. A father and son were traveling back to their home in western Montana. They had been visiting a friend in Circle, about halfway between Glendive and Wolf Point, when they wrecked their car. Stranded in the middle of nowhere, they had no choice but to take the train back home. The other passengers left the station when they heard the train status, so I did not get to talk to any of them. However, I did tell a few people on the train about my trip, and news about my journey must have spread around the train because people were coming up to me the rest of the way to Portland and asking, "Are you the kid traveling all over the country by train?" Most people are not aware that you can do that. Most of the people on that train did not know that it goes all the way from Chicago to the west coast over a span of three days and that there were people crazy enough to do just that. I, however, am one of them.

I missed the trip through the Rockies and Glacier National Park because the train was late. However, because the train was late, I did see the whole Columbia River gorge between Spokane and Portland. That is a beautiful run. The train follows the old Spokane, Portland, & Seattle alignment on the north bank of the river, the Washington side. The train is on the riverbank most of the way. On either side of the river, the hills rise out of the water like giant walls. Looming in the distance for most of the run is Mount Hood, an 11,249 foot behemoth towering over northern Oregon. Despite the clouds, you could see the whole mountain...because the clouds were below the summit! Although it was July, the giant rock was covered in snow and ice. Washington, Oregon, and northern California are full of these random mountains. They tower over everything else and are white year round. Mount Ranier in Washington, the biggest of the bunch, is where a lot of Americans that climb the Himalayas go to train. Mount Saint Helens is known for, well, exploding. Sure, they are in the Cascade Range, but these monsters are so big that they hardly seem to be in a mountain range at all. They stand apart from each other, not clustered together. The surrounding mountains are so small compared to these giant landmarks that they hardly seem to exist. Mount Hood was at least 30 miles from the tracks at the closest point, and it was visible almost the whole length of the Columbia River Gorge. None of the others were visible, but I'm sure Mount Saint Helens can be seen from the other side of the river. There was a rock wall on the north side of the Empire Builder and nothing could be seen that way.

The train arrived in Portland with not enough time to look around the city much. I did go outside and get some photos of the famous train station in Portland. "Union Station" and "Go By Train" proclaim the clocktower that once stood high over the city. Once a towering icon of the city and an important transportation hub, this antique little landmark among modern glass skyscrapers stands as a reminder of what travel once was. Formerly the only gateway into Portland, the long, empty platforms stand as a reminder of days when the tracks hosted trains from the Great Northern, Northern Pacific, Southern Pacific, and Union Pacific Railroads. Today, this station only sees two long distance trains per day. I had gotten off one and was about to get on the other.

The Coast Starlight, a remnant of the Southern Pacific, left Portland right on time. This train already had people from Seattle on board, and would go all the way to Los Angeles. That, however, was not my route. The train was sold out, so they were assigning seating. I found my seat, put my seat check there, and went to the lounge car. The train passed through Oregon City, the destination of the pioneers following the Oregon Trail in the 1840s. We followed the Willamette River right up into the Cascades. The train crossed the Cascades on a 1.8% grade, climbing to a summit of over 5,000 feet. After the Cascades, the sun went down, so I uploaded my photos from the day to my computer and went back to my coach to sleep. I woke up in Sacramento, and it was another 20 minutes to Davis.

Davis is an interesting place. There is a big university here, so there are a lot of young people with bikes. In fact, there are parking lots for bikes. There are more bikes in Davis than there are cars. A lot of people here own more than one bike, like people owning more than one car, so the bike population of Davis is probably about the same as the people population. Tomorrow I am going into San Francisco. It is a city that I have always wanted to visit, because it is very unique among American cities. I will write about that trip later.

That's a really big butte

When I first booked this trip, I was originally going to visit James and then return home. I then realized that if I get a 15 day rail pass I could also go to San Francisco, a city I have always wanted to visit, for about the same price. Later I realized if I upgrade to a 30 day rail pass, I could ride all four of the cross-country Amtrak routes. This is what I eventually did, and planned it so I would spend most of my free time in Montana, as that was the whole point of this trip anyway.

I thought with two weeks out here in the middle of nowhere, I might get bored. I was wrong. I leave Montana in two days, and I don't know where the time went. Because of car problems earlier in my visit, I was not able to do some of the things I wanted (go to Wyoming and South Dakota, go railfanning, etc.) but I still had a lot of fun. James and I did some work on his models. We walked down to the yard a few times and he showed me what goes on there. When the car was fixed, I drove to Miles City and chased his train back to Glendive from there.

Miles City is an interesting place. On one end of town is the old Northern Pacific, the route James works on. The other side of town has the old Milwaukee Road. The town is sandwiched between the two railroads. The Milwaukee Road basically built Miles City up from the dirt. Miles City was a crew change point for them and they had a big car shop there. Northern Pacific just passed through the town, as Glendive and Forsyth were the crew change points and Miles City was too close to both places to have another crew change point there. The Milwaukee Road is long gone through Montana except for a few places. The tracks and car shops in Miles City now belong to BNSF. BNSF built a connection between the two lines just east of town so cars that need repair can go to the shops on the old Milwaukee Road. Outside of town, the Milwaukee Road tracks disappear. The right-of-way is now a dirt road called, you guessed it, Milwaukee Road. Both depots in town still exist. The Milwaukee Road depot is now the school system office building, the Northern Pacific depot is all boarded up.

On Friday, I drove to Miles City to chase James's train back to Glendive. I had five places in mind to meet the train: the depot in Miles City, the Milwaukee Road crossing east of Miles City, the Highway 253 crossing in Terry, the town of Fallon, and the Marsh Road crossing in Glendive. I left Glendive armed with my camera, my scanner, and some food for the road. I got to Miles City at about 3:15. Listening to the scanner, I knew there would be a little wait before James came through. There is no siding in Miles City, so nothing can meet there. A westbound coal train had a track warrant through there, and an eastbound coal train and James's eastbound M train were in sidings west of Miles City. After about 20 minutes, the westbound coal train came through. A little while later, I heard the two eastbounds get their track warrants. James's train came through at about 4:20. Once his train got past the depot, I hit the road again. I got on Valley Road, a road that follows the railroad out of Miles City. I would take a turn off of that road that would put me on Milwaukee Road, which crosses the tracks to get to the old right-of-way. The speed limit there is 70, so I knew I'd make it. However, the person in front of me was only going 40, and I was not able to pass him for a while. I finally did and caught up with the locomotives...just as they blasted across Milwaukee Road. I kept going, hoping I'd beat the train to Terry.

On my way to Terry, I passed the eastbound coal train I saw in Miles City. I knew I'd make it to Terry on time. I got off the interstate and found a good spot to watch the trains. The eastbound coal train came through, and then James's train followed. I heard a westbound coal train get clearance to Terry. I hoped it wouldn't show up until James's train was already there, because where I was standing, the siding was in front and I wanted a good photo of James's train. James's train showed up and picked up three loads at the grain elevator in Terry. The train pulled out again onto the main as the coal train showed up. The two trains passed each other and went on their way. However, by the time the coal train cleared the crossing, James's train was long out of sight. Because of this, I did not make it to Fallon on time, and drove straight to the Marsh Road crossing in Glendive. No sooner did I get there, I heard James's train get a track warrant from Colgate siding to Glendive. Ten minutes later, his train rolled through. This was my favorite spot, so of course the sun disappeared behind some clouds two minutes before James got there. Oh well, it's close by, I'll have to go down there again today or tomorrow to get some better photos. But with that, my chase was over, and I drove back to the apartment. James told me later that he had a trainee that day who had never heard of railfanning before, and thought I was a creepy stalker. Needless to say, James did not tell him that I am his brother.

Yesterday we went to Billings. It is three hours west of here but still in the eastern part of the state. We went there for some modeling supplies. There is not much in Glendive, not even a Walmart. That being said, the closest place to get any modeling supplies, even something as basic as paint, is Billings. We got some supplies there and headed back to Glendive. The trip to and from Billings was more interesting than Billings itself. Outside of Billings is Pompey's Pillar. This is basically a big rock sticking up out of the plains near the Yellowstone River. This is the last evidence of the Lewis & Clark expedition. Willliam Clark and other members of the expedition signed their names on this rock, and their signatures are still visible 200 years later. You can also climb to the top of the rock and see everything around. After the Lewis & Clark expedition, General Custer ran into trouble here. His army was camped near there and swimming in the river when some Native Americans, perched on top of Pompey's Pillar, started firing on them. The Little Bighorn Battlefield, where General Custer and his army met their fate, is nearby as well, but further out of the way, so we did not have time to stop there. It was interesting seeing these places that I had only heard about in history books in school.

That being said, the Empire Builder just started running between St. Paul and Havre once again. I am scheduled to get on the train in Williston, ND on Tuesday morning. I have been here for nearly two weeks and I don't think I am ready to go quite yet. But such is life. I will leave here and go on to whatever other adventures await me on this trip. Next stop: Davis, CA on Thursday.