Why I Will Never Ride The Train Again

So we boarded Amtrak some time after 11:00 p.m. on Sunday night. It was already running a couple of hours late out of Chicago. Found a couple of seats together across the aisle from each other and settled in with our pillows and fleece blankets. Jack slept like a log and I didn’t sleep at all. Not a good start.

Monday was fine. We both read books and I worked sudoku. We spent some time enjoying the scenery from the observation car. I took this picture of the sunset through the window. Had an o.k. breakfast in the dining car. Lunch and dinner were not so good.

Then we stopped in Gallup, New Mexico. About 50 additional passengers boarded so I had to give up my seat and Jack and I had to share. Let me tell you, it is truly impossible to be more uncomfortable than we were that entire night.

Then the unthinkable happened. The train stopped and the conductor announced that there had been an accident and that we would probably be there another four hours or so while it was being investigated. We mercifully fell asleep. Tuesday we learned that someone had decided to throw himself in front of the train. Since it was dark and we were traveling close to 80 mph, the engineer couldn’t possibly have stopped in time. Everyone was horrified, of course.

So we were supposed to arrive in Los Angeles at 8:15 a.m. Tuesday morning. By 8:15 we still had another eight hours to go. We actually arrived at 4:45 p.m almost five hours late. I’ll need an awfully good reason to board another train in the future.