Sunset Limited Route Description

The train is ten minutes late out of LAUS. As usual, I set about recording details to add to my route description, since even though we've covered this line as far as Cabazon from the adjacent road and street, there are always some details that can only be seen from the line itself. The train runs down the Alhambra subdivision from Los Angeles to El Monte, not the line down the middle of I-10 that it had used the last time we took this train. We're stopped twice for opposing freights before reaching Pomona. The huge Receiving Yard at West Colton is almost completely devoid of trains or cars, with just a few cars, in two trains, awaiting classification adjacent to the hump. We lose more time because we have to crawl through the wye-bypass track at the east end of West Colton because trackwork is being done on both mains at that point, due to a previous derailment. We stop once more for an opposing freight before Palm Springs, and again for unknown reasons along the Salton Sea.

We take late dinner reservations, so that as far as is possible, dinner doesn't conflict with note-taking. In the event, we're called to dinner as the train stops in the siding at Niland—and sits there for an hour and 20 minutes waiting for five westbound Union Pacific freights to pass, including one that takes the El Centro line. Darkness has completely fallen by the time the train starts away again. The train also stops for several minutes just after leaving Yuma.

Thursday, July 13^th, 2006

In the middle of the night, the train makes three separate stops at a grade crossing somewhere in Arizona, probably for a crew change. I observe the most amazing station procedures in Tucson, where the station agent checks the tickets and photo IDs of all boarding passengers at the gate, after calling the train, rather than during the waiting period beforehand, thus making the boarding process a 20-minute ordeal for passengers and car attendants alike, rather than quick and easy to get the passengers on board and (for first class passengers) into their sleeping quarters.

I arise as the train departs Benson, Arizona, and we're eating breakfast in Lordsburg. There's a long period of slow running due to track construction (of a second main track and associated resignaling) east of Lordsburg. There's a 20-minute delay after leaving the station at Deming, and two more short stops before reaching El Paso. At Anapra, the closest approach to the Mexican border, there are many examples of patched holes in the high border fence, but one remains open and a little girl is sitting on the fence railing, in the hole, with her legs swinging on the US side of the fence but her body and head in Mexico.

Leaving El Paso, we stop for short periods three times before leaving the built-up area, before the freight ahead gets out of our way in the Texaco sidings, and then for a longer time at McNary, while we're eating lunch, for an opposing freight. We wait for another 32 minutes at Hot Wells, because UP 5030 east, ahead, has air brake problems, and there are two opposing trains. We meet Amtrak train 1 at 4:53 pm (meaning it is also several hours late), and finally overtake UP 5030 at Wendell, after another ten minute stop.

Dinner is east of Sanderson, Texas, where darkness falls. The train stops for another  wait of over an hour for an opposing train, but picks up a little time over night (to only four hours late at Houston) due to the timetabled long wait at San Antonio.

Friday, July 14^th, 2006

I awake as the train leaves Flatonia, TX, and must be only just over three hours late at this point. There are three stops for interfering traffic, of about 14 minutes apiece, along the way into Houston. The train passes through Houston, where there are two private cars, Warren R Henry and Evelyn Henry in a spur opposite the station, just after noon. The departure from Houston onto the ex-MP trackage requires a reversal, around a connector at a flat crossing, that take about ten minutes, but presumably that is accounted for in the timetable. The crew change at Beaumont, where the depot has been demolished since we last passed this way, requires the train to make two stops.

We eat lunch east of Beaumont, mindful of the announcement that there won't be any dinner service in spite of the train's lateness. (The two servers get off in Houston to catch train 1 this evening; with the steward alone serving "late lunch", which continues until 5:30 pm, when the cafe car also closes.) We have another 20 minute stop while still on UP-owned track. The train gets still later on the BNSF-owned trackage in Louisiana, ten minutes waiting for one westbound freight at Iona Junction, and 75 minutes at Crowley, where a westbound freight and Amtrak 1 pass us, and we then overtake a freight that had already been in the siding, requiring us to back out. We stop for another ten minutes at Lafayette Yard, but have only a couple of 'stop-and-proceed incidents after that.

Several places on the way into New Orleans, we pass communities of shanty houses and manufactured housing, all in disrepair, with magnificent large churches at their centers—all the available money must go to the church! Darkness falls as we enter the New Orleans suburbs, but the residual crew still  makes no attempt to serve dinner, or even to serve anything in the cafe for the last almost four hours. We arrive at New Orleans Union Station over five hours late, making a reverse move before we enter to turn the train around.

Both on-board services crew and local station personnel recommend taking a taxi for the three-block trip to the hotel, due to the social conditions prevailing in the city in the wake of hurricane Katrina. the taxi drivers have accommodated to these short trips by charging a $10 flat fare without the meter on. At the hotel, we eat a quick dinner before heading for bed, noting our required early arising in the morning.

Crescent route description

As we head out through the city of New Orleans, we're appalled by the state of the structures (mostly housing) in the areas along the London Canal and the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain, more than ten months after the hurricane. There's a 5-minute delay at "X" Tower awaiting an opposing NS freight. Crossing Lake Pontchartrain, we observe that it is very high, today. The causeway is only a foot or so above the water. We eat breakfast as we pass through Slidell, Louisiana, and the train loses another five minutes at Richburg siding due to the need to throw a switch manually. We eat lunch passing through Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Passing through Birmingham, it is evident that almost the entire infrastructure of the former steel industry here has gone, mostly being replaced by derelict land! The train loses about half an hour just west of Anniston, due to signal problems.

Our dinner reservation comes up just as the train reaches Atlanta, and the steward seems nonplussed when we walk into the diner at that point (apparently she had expected to serve all passengers already on the train before reaching Atlanta), telling us brusquely to come back when the train restarts from Atlanta. So, we eat dinner on departing Atlanta, after dark, with a couple from Toledo, Ohio, who are returning there by the connection to the Capitol Limited at Washington, DC.

Sunday, July 16^th, 2006

I awake in Lynchburg, Virginia, where the train is only 25 minutes late. Just after leaving there, it waits for almost 50 minutes for an opposing freight, and later loses more time crawling past Manassas Junction. It takes  almost 50 minutes to change engines and service the train in Washington Union Station, after which we lose more time because the AEM-7 turns out to have no working dynamic brakes and must thus adjust its braking patterns (and thus take longer to slow for stations) accordingly.

The train is into Philadelphia after 1:30 pm, giving us only time to ride SEPTA out on the West Chester line to its current terminus of Elwyn (train 8317 out and 8320 back, with the same  EMU equipment, cars 382 & 383), before taking a New Jersey Transit train (4619, three loco-hauled Comet II cars pushed by an EMD locomotive) out across the Delaware River and the southern reaches of New Jersey to Atlantic City.

SEPTA West Chester line

NJT Atlantic City line

In Atlantic City, we (mistakenly) wait forty minute for a shuttle bus that take us to a spot several blocks from our hotel. After checking in, we have time before darkness to take a walk on the famed boardwalk along the beachfront, eating dinner at the hotel after all of the guests who are here for the Madonna concert tonight have left the place. We're not at all impressed by the present state of Atlantic City, but we came only to ride the rail line, not spend time at the "resort".

Route description for the Pennsylvanian

At Paradise, the Strasburg Railroad's steam excursion train is getting ready to return to Strasburg as we pass, and whistles us a greeting. There is copious evidence near Lancaster that the track rebuilding along here is still going on. There is also work going on on the platforms at Lancaster. We stop for 11 minutes at MP 133.5 for two eastbound NS freights to pass (one is train 22W), and then run on the other track to MP 144.4, without seeing any sign whatever of the reason for operating only a single track this afternoon.

Checking the route details along the way, there are places where I fail to see crossings of the Juniata River that must be there (the river trades sides of the line), and other places where I find the SPV Atlas seems to have shown a pair of river crossings that aren't really there. Leaving Johnstown, we take "track 3" west of SG Tower, the Conemaugh line on the north side of the river that is supposedly set for only 40 mph maximum speed (we do seem to drag along here), returning to the main over a section that seems to have been heavily upgraded recently. Perhaps this has something to do with NS' new Shelocta Secondary that heads north from the Conemaugh line for coal traffic to a power plant at Shelocta?

Bob Brewster is also on this train, as Chris discovers when walking the train to get the consist, and he comes back to chat as we approach Pittsburgh. We chat some more at the station, while waiting for the bus to depart, and again on the bus.

In spite of our early arrival, the bus (already holding passengers arriving on airplanes) waits until the advertised 8 pm, ostensibly for some people who missed the train in Harrisburg due to a later Ambus connection. It later transpires that Dianne and Braley Pastorino should have been on this bus, but their airplane was delayed somewhere and they don't get to Pittsburgh until 11 pm, taxiing to New Philadelphia after that.) The bus takes us west on US 22, through Weirton and Steubenville, and then northwest on Ohio 800 and US 250 into New Philadelphia, getting us there a little after 10 pm. This time, we have no conflict with the Donald Winters (from New Jersey) reservation at the hotel (we're staying in the Holiday Inn) and also get our reservation and banquet table in the NRHS reservation room before going to bed.

These cars were built by Budd between 1947 and 1950, mostly for the Pennsylvania Railroad (later used by MARC), with the Cafe Car built for Southern Pacific and the Observation for Florida East Coast. The locomotives were built by MLW for Canadian National. The Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad operates over a line built as the Valley Railroad in 1880, becoming the Baltimore & Ohio's Cleveland Branch in 1890. Excursion train began over this line in the early 1970s, in what has now become Cuyahoga Valley National Park, with the railroad assuming its present name in the 1990s.

Cuyahoga Valley Scenic route description

The train leaves Breckswell at 9:13 am. Along the way south on the truly scenic valley line, we have a runby at a grade crossing with a convenient road for the photo-line, near MP 51, taking 43 minutes, and then another near MP 63, where there is a convenient boardwalk for the photo-line, taking 30 minutes. Lunch is at the normal southern-end of the train's operations, at Akron Northside, where the coach passengers have to alight and get into line outside, while those of us in the observation car are served in our seats (a 51 minute stop). I take the opportunity to walk the outside of the train to get the full consist. On the way, Chris has taken the opportunity to walk the train, talking to At-Large Members, handing out surveys and collecting completed surveys. She finds more people who have not yet received their 2006 membership cards.

South of the Akron Northside station, the train uses a part of the former B&O line (the whole run is former B&O) that has been out of service for many years, and has recently been rebuilt for excursion use. We have another runby at a park on the north side of Canton, taking 23 minutes, before reaching the end of the line, where the buses wait, at 2;30 pm. There are three different destinations for buses at this spot, and confusion reigns as the buses are pointing away from the alighting spot (there is only one), and their destinations signs are in small type in the front windshields only. Joe Williams helps resolve this issue, at least for us.

We're heading for the Minerva Steam Museum in Minerva, Ohio, some 13 miles east of Canton. The bus starts out following the bus in front, which is apparently headed west, but the driver realizes the mistake, and heads east, arriving at the museum well behind the other two buses going there. This museum has a couple of home-built ex-Wheeling & Lake Erie steam locomotives awaiting potential restoration, and used to have ex-C&O 2-8-4 2700, also needing restoration, which now sits on the north side of the Ohio Central line west of Dennison station. The museum traded that engine to the OC for three diesel locomotives and five passenger cars, used by the museum for passenger excursions such as the one we'll take today.

Inside the museum's main building are some artifacts for sale, and a large collection of junk awaiting appraisal as to its use in a museum. Chris point out that a stack of china is not collectible at all, but is in fact a cheap line of china from the early 1960s. Our excursion train has two old clerestory passenger cars, with no air conditioning on this hot day, and three cabooses, with a former OC diesel for power. We travel three miles east, to the branch line's Norfolk Southern connection at Bayard Junction, while hearing about the railway history of Minerva along the way. The town used to have five railway stations, of which only one remains (visible on the south side of the line). Minerva is where William McKinley's wife had a farm, and was thus the site of the "Porch Speeches" of his Presidential campaign. I also get to chat with the newly-retired Alex Mayes and Teresa Renner, who are sitting directly behind us. There are a couple of runbys at a convenient spot along the way, and return to Minerva, where we board the buses for the return to New Philadelphia, about one hour later than expected.

This gets us back to New Philadelphia some 20 minutes after the last bus should have departed for the next activity, but since that activity required these buses, things have been delayed somewhat. We hustle forward and get on the front bus, which promptly departs for the Amish restaurant in the Sugarcreek area. Many conventioneers are already here, already seated, and in some cases, already eating. Soon, we're doing likewise. We happen to be seated across from a couple of At-Large Members, so we engage them in conversation, finding out the usual set of facts. (Not surprisingly, at the convention, the At-Large Members seem to have joined NRHS to go to conventions! This is a self-selected sample on this question, so proves nothing.)

At the end of the dinner, our return bus has to stop at a Comfort Inn to drop off Charlie Bach and his lady—they booked too late to get into any of the hotels actually in New Philadelphia and are taxiing back and forth each day. Back at our hotel, it's time to go to bed.

Dennison-Newark route description

The train departs Morgan Run at 10:14, having taken 24 minutes to change locomotives. There is a photo-runby, taking 29 minutes, with the passengers in a grassy space that used to be a freight yard in the vee of the former PRR and former W&LE lines at Trinway, after which the train continues to Newark. here, it turns around using various CSX tracks (formerly B&O) that collectively have the effect of going around a wye (which takes 55 minutes), and then stops for the steam locomotive to be serviced (which takes 25 minutes, with another 12 minutes to get back out on the main line). The return journey should have featured another runby at Trinway, in the opposite direction, but instead features the passengers getting off, and then back on again when lightning is seen, followed by a thunderstorm. Nontheless, we have to wait 45 minutes at Trinway for a coal train to clear the line ahead of us, as it heads down the former W&LE line. It takes eleven minutes to change locos again at Morgan Run.

Back at Dennison, at 5:35 pm, we bus back to the hotel, read for awhile, eat at Denny's and go to bed anticipating our first night with no early-morning alarm for awhile.

Progress is fine until after Tyrone, PA, when we stop at a red signal, and then inch forward under "Restricting Proceed", with the occasional "Approach" intervening, with, it is said, six NS freights ahead of us and a work area right on the crossovers at CP Jacks (in the Mount Union area of Pennsylvania). We are unable to pass any of the freights until east of CP Jacks, and we don't pass the last couple until just west of Lewistown, after we and two of the freights ahead of us have crossed over at McVey, to go around an eastbound freight whose crew's hours of service have expired. By this time, we're three and a half hours late, a condition that prevails all the way in to New York City. We pick up some time into Harrisburg, but lose it again waiting for 25 minutes west of Lancaster for a train to clear a line that is effectively single due to the overnight construction activity.

We arrive in New York City at 2:25 am, and hurry up to the concourse level of Penn Station and out the Seventh Avenue exit to the Hotel Pennsylvania right across the street. We may be booked into a hotel elsewhere in the city (not what I had thought we were doing, but . . .), but at this time of night, with an early morning departure, we're not going to waster any time finding that other hotel. We're in bed by 3 am.

Maple Leaf route description

This is a real business train as far as Albany, used by people on their way to meetings (or a work week) in the state capital there, who are probably not enjoying the river scenery the way I am. There are a couple of minor delays still in electric territory, and at Croton-Harmon, I notice that the FL-9s are still stored outside the shops. Just north of Poughkeepsie, the train stops with a hot axle indication on coach 25095, but no hot axle is found. There are 27 minutes of delay between CP 114 and CP 115 due to red signals not caused by trains ahead. The Control Box at CP 114 is stenciled "Abolish Poverty".

At the Rensellaer station that serves Albany, I take advantage of the switch from the dual-power Genesis locomotive that has brought us this far to the standard genesis that will take us on to Toronto, to step out on the platform and take some pictures of the process, and of the newish depot here, that was being built the last time we were here (in 2000). The run along the Mohawk River, as far as Utica, is also very scenic. There are two minor delays before Utica, and an unexpectedly long stop at Utica. Freight train interference difficulties (and incompetent dispatching) finally show up on the west side of DeWitt Yard, just east of Syracuse where Amtrak used to have its station, with a very slow crawl around the north side of town and a stop of several minutes before entering the new, permanent, station northwest of downtown.

The station in Syracuse is also new to us, having replaced the Amshack on the east side of town that we had to use in 1998. Unfortunately, we are losing more time to freight train interference on this section, with three more stops at adverse signals, and slowing due to track reconstruction on the east side of Rochester making us two hours late by Rochester (we were 50 minutes late out of Albany due to those signaling problems near Hudson, NY). A 45-minute crawl between Buffalo Exchange Street and the Tonawanda area seems to have been factored into the schedule, since we lose no more time over that segment of the line.

We're only an hour and 45 minutes late leaving Niagara Falls, Ontario, because the Canadian Customs and Immigration inspection really doesn't take all the time allotted it in the schedule. However, we're late enough that we have to yield to an on-time incoming train just west of the Niagara Falls area. In Canada, the train becomes a Via operation, albeit using Amtrak equipment, with a Via cafe car menu and attendant. We're late enough that we must eat on the train, not in Toronto, however. In Toronto, two hours late, we're glad our hotel is (again) just across the street.

Via Canadien route description

While I suspect that every bedroom in these sleeping cars is taken, the other kinds of rooms are by no means full, and the dinner sittings, other than second, are also not completely full. Since this is the height of the season, there has to be some economic inefficiency in this mix of rooms, carrying around empty space while those desiring bedroom space are unable to travel because that kind of space is all taken.

The route out of Toronto is not exactly what I had expected (there are two possibilities, and I had guessed wrong), and I hadn't realized that the Parry Sound to Sudbury segments was on CP, not CN. However, my route notes are now correct. There is a reverse move required on the way out of Toronto that consumes a few minutes, but is presumably accounted for in the schedule. We wait 17 minutes for a southbound freight (CN 102) at Pine Orchard, and a total of twelve minutes for CN 106 at Zephyr. There are a couple of one minute stops and a period of slow running on the CP Parry Sound subdivision due to track maintenance

We eat lunch near Washago, and dinner after departure from Capreol. The first class section of this train has two dome/"activity" cars, plus the dome/observation at the rear, and two diners. For this part of the trip, we're assigned to the forward diner, "Diner A", and have first sitting for lunch and dinner on Tuesday and second sitting on Wednesday. The swap is determined by the crew, so that all passengers have first sittings one day and second the next, due to the imbalance in requests. (Unlike on Amtrak, where everyone seems to want early dinner, the preference on this train is for second sitting!) During the day, Chris buys herself a "Silver and Blue" insulated mug in the activity car, to complement the "Daylight 4449" insulated mug that I already use.

On leaving Capreol, there is a 16-minute stop at the end of two track waiting for CN train 114 to clear, and an eight-minute stop for another eastbound freight later in the evening. The sleeping-car attendant makes up the bed at about 9 pm, and we go right to bed as darkness is falling rapidly. (Eastern time extends a long way west in Canada, as does Central time.)

Wednesday, July 26^th, 2006

We awake still in Ontario, and still in the "Canadian Shield" area of trees, lumbering, and shallow lakes that we had been in the previous afternoon and evening (albeit, several hundred miles further west). These trains stop at many places across this segment of country, some of them scheduled as flagstops (of which we take only about half), but other at unscheduled places and times, such as one at 7:30 am today to drop off two fishermen and a canoe.

During the morning, the train makes a 20 minute stop at Sioux Lookout, before leaving that geological/biological province. Sioux Lookout is named for an incident in a war between the Sioux, from further south, and the local Ojibway, in which a fortuitous sighting of the Sioux from this area led to an Ojibway victory, sometime in the late 18th-century. Today's town is about 100 years old, dating from the construction era of the railway in this area. Today's opposing freights are doing a good job of avoiding delaying us, with one pulling into Sioux Lookout from the west just before we leave, and others being already at the passing sidings when we get there.

In Manitoba, and out on the great prairie, the train makes a much longer stop in Winnipeg for servicing the train in mid afternoon, and one of the four locomotives that had hauled us hitherto is taken off the train. Out on the prairie, there are not as many grain elevators in the small towns as one would have expected from the similar towns across North Dakota and Montana. Once the line is single track, again, we do have to make a couple of five minutes stops for opposing freights

By the end of second sitting dinner, the attendant has made up the bed, and we go to bed before the train enters Saskatchewan.

Thursday, July 27^th, 2006

We awake already in Alberta. After breakfast, the train backs into its small station (on a long stub side-track) in Edmonton, and we move back to car 117, again in bedroom B, which means we move back to the second activity car and Diner B. Today, we have first sitting for lunch and second sitting for dinner. West of Eedmonton, we make a seven minute stop at one location, and fifteen minutes at another, to wait for eastbound CN freights. As we approach the double track segment through Jasper, we slow down behind a westbound CN freight, running on "Restricting" signals for the last 45 minutes into Jasper.

In early afternoon, the train enters the Rocky Mountains, and in mid afternoon, makes its long stop at Jasper, a resort town in the Rockies, on the east side of Yellowhead Pass. Here, the train drops off one locomotive, adds another, and adds sleeping car 118 at its correct spot in the train, which requires switching with the entire train from car 117 forward (15 cars) to pick up that car, and then shove it back onto the rear six cars. During this move, which takes about 45 minutes, we're isolated from a dome/activity car, since a group boarding in Jasper is taking over the forward dome/activity car and the rear one is behind the split in the train.

West Of Jasper, we stop for a couple of minutes to meet each of three eastbound CN freights on the way up to the summit at the Continental Divide. Once over Yellowhead Pass, and thus into British Columbia, we pass Mount Robson, highest peak in the Canadian Rockies at over 13,000 feet, and most impressive in its westerly aspect, since it towers 10,000 feet above the elevation of the railway line. (By contrast, Pike's Peak is only 9,000 feet above the surrounding land, and the many 14,000+ ft. peaks in the interior of the Colorado Rockies are only about 6,000 ft. above the adjacent Arkansas River valley.) As the line exits the Fraser River valley it has followed from the summit, and turns south to head into the Upper Thompson River Valley, there is a 15 mph slow order covering about seven or eight miles of track that takes us over half an hour to pass through. We meet five more eastbound freights before bedtime, only one of which requires us to wait (for less than five minutes).

We eat dinner as the train heads southward, past Pyramid Falls, and are sound asleep before the train reaches Kamloops. The previous nights have included an hour's extension due to the change in time zone (first, from Eastern to Central, and then from Central to Mountain), but we've been on Pacific time since late afternoon, so don't get such a benefit this night.

Friday, July 28^th, 2006

When I awake, we're already in the outskirts of Vancouver (at "CN Douglas Island"), although the train's slow approach across the Fraser River and into the city gives us plenty of time to get dressed and ready to leave the train. The train reverses before arrival (a process that consumes 17 minutes), and then splits to fit all 21 cars into the platforms at Pacific Central station. We deposit all of the luggage with the Via baggage folks, alongside the suitcase they already have, for pickup just before boarding of the train to Seattle begins at 4:30 pm.

We then spend the day in Vancouver, riding the entire length of the Skytrain routes, including the Millennium line that didn't exist the last time we were here in 1995 (we were in North Vancouver in 1997, but not in the main city), as well as eating in a Thai restaurant and doing some shopping on Robson Street.

By 3:30 pm, we're back at the Pacific Central station. We get something to drink, and then Chris retrieves the bags from the Via baggage folks. A little after 4 pm, we move to the line forming at the Business Class sign, which starts to move forward at 4:30 pm. US Immigration checks are performed before boarding, and tickets are taken before going through immigration. Paul, the conductor taking the tickets, greets us with "welcome back", and then later comes by to find out where he's seen us before. We agree that it must have been on our trip over the Sierra Nevada on Silver Lariat. We're seated in the front car on this Talgo train, which means I can record the consist as we walk down the platform. To our surprise, the train includes a Diner, which upgrades our expectations of dinner tonight. Because Business Class boarding started 90 minutes before scheduled departure, there's a long wait after boarding before we leave.