Very, very, very early (4am) on Monday morning Sandra and Gary dropped us at the Flagstaff train station so that we could catch the Southwest Chief to Chicago.
From there we would get on the Cardinal and travel to New York. Three days and two nights in total. When you add our initial trip from Los Angeles to Flagstaff, we have trained from coast to coast.
The Southwest Chief follows the famous Route 66, although Route 66 has not existed for about 40 years because it was replaced by a series of new interstate highways.
By my count we crossed California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa and Illinois on the Southwest Chief and then Illinois (again), Indianna, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Washington DC, Maryland, Delaware, Pennysylvania, New Jersey and New York.
We were only able to get off the trains at a few stops and not for very long – and we were sleeping while crossing a number of states including Kansas and Missouri and Indianna and Kentucky.
We had a Roomette on each train, which is a small room with two seats facing each other and a small table during the day. At night the seats fold into a bed and another top bunk bed folds down or is lowered from above. The top bunk on the Southwest Chief was pretty uncomfortable (Viewliner I – a double story carriage). It was very close to the ceiling so you couldn’t sit up and was very narrow. The Cardinal was a more modern train (Viewliner II – single story carriage) and had an upper bunk that lowered from the ceiling and gave enough space to sit up comfortably. It was also much wider for one’s upper body and tapered for the lower body, so maintaining the ability to get down quite easily but providing a lot more comfort while in the bed.
The Southwest Chief had the advantage of a Dining Car, a Viewing Car and a Café, whereas the Cardinal only had a Café car with not many tables (but instead we got Roomette service for meals). We enjoyed both experiences of dining in the Dining Car on the Southwest Chief and dining in our room on the Cardinal. We loved sitting in the Viewing Car on the Southwest Chief and enjoying a gin and tonic before sunset and then going on to the Dining Car while the sun went down.
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| So in 1988 I was in a production of Sweet Charity, and in this particular song the name of a company was mentioned, Seagram's, and I never knew what their business was until.... |
The idea is that you share a table with other passengers in the Dining Car and we had a lovely experience from LA to Flagstaff. At our first meal on the Southwest Chief after leaving Flagstaff we were sat with a couple who were not the least sociable – and to be fair I don’t think the lady spoke English – but there was no effort from her husband (who clearly spoke English) to communicate and she just looked out the window. Fortunately, the lovely Manager spotted this, moved us to a table by ourselves that was normally reserved for staff and ensured that we had a table to ourselves for each subsequent meal.
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| Dining car. or..... |
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| .....Roomette service? |
There were a lot of Amish people on both trains but they were really noticeable on the Southwest Chief because there was so much more public space with the Dining and Viewing cars. Interesting that they were prepared to travel on the big iron horse. It was also interesting seeing this community up close compared to our limited interaction with the conservative Mormons. The Amish seemed to be chatting and smiling all the time and the kids happily running around. The men seemed to be very comfortable chatting with non-Amish men. It seemed to me that the women were keeping to themselves a little more but they may have been equally happy chatting to other women. When we got to Chicago there were also lots of Amish people in Grand Central Station.
We liked looking at the desert rocks and mountains through New Mexico and the climb from New Mexico into Colorado during the late afternoon and evening was delightful (no bear sightings unfortunately). The next day we crossed the Mississippi River via the Fort Madison Bridge. At this point the river is the border between Iowa and Illinois. When the bridge was built in 1927 it was the longest and largest double-deck swing span bridge in the world. Sandra and Gary’s friend James was born and bred in Fort Madison, so he had keyed us up to take note of the bridge.
I mentioned earlier that we were only allowed off the train at a few stops and then not for very long. At Fort Madison we were allowed off and we decided to walk up to the front of the train to get a better view of the bridge and to check out the engine car. We were chatting with another traveler and she had her dog with her and thought that she’d do this as well. Well – we were loudly and publicly dressed down for walking too far by one of the guards. Dale asked her what the issue was, and she said we would not be able to hear the ‘All aboard’ announcement, to which he responded ‘well we certainly heard you’. This became a running joke between the three of us and we made sarcastic remarks over the rest of the journey - but not to the face of the guards.
We had a short stopover in Chicago and were able to spend an hour or so wandering around central Chicago. I had not been there since 2003 so Dale took me along the canal, on a walk which was not there back then. Dale has been back a couple of times since then, including relatively recently. It was nice to have a little walk around and look up at lovely Chicago buildings from the early 20th century. We have fond memories of doing an art-deco architecture walking tour in Chicago way back in 2003.
On the Cardinal we loved the views through West Virginia and they were the best of the whole journey. We followed the Kanawha and New Rivers and crossed the Appalachian Mountains. There were beautiful wide rivers, with some rapids, and dense green forests with smatterings of rocky cliffs. Take me home country roads…..
Then we went through Virginia. We went through a town called Staunton which my friend Google told me is the home of the Woodrow Wilson library. The train stopped but only for 10 minutes and the guards yelled at us that we weren’t allowed off the station. No time for site seeing.
Salt was rubbed into our wounds when we stopped in Charlottesville, the home of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. We loved our relaxed trek across the USA but it was also frustrating that we couldn’t get off and explore interesting places.
Still sometimes it was just enough to be sitting at a particular station with your itunes handy.
