How did you spend your
summer vacation? Probably by traveling,
but hopefully without the disruptions my wife and I experienced.
In August we flew to Chicago
and drove to Wisconsin. That journey was
relatively on time. But the return trip
became an adventure when our return flight from O’Hare airport was delayed five
hours, and then cancelled, due to bad weather.
As any regular reader of
this column knows, I’m no fan of flying.
So I was happy to be grounded rather than fly through thunder
storms. But how to get home? Why not the train?
There are three daily trains
from Chicago to New York: the relatively
speedy Lake Shore Limited, which follows the route of the old Twentieth Century
Ltd; the Capitol Limited which goes by
way of Washington DC; and the
thrice-weekly Cardinal which meanders way far south into West Virginia, along
to DC and then NYC.
Luckily, we were able to
book a bedroom
on the Cardinal,
a.k.a. “the bird”, so named because the cardinal is the state bird of West
Virginia and because this slow-poke of a train was rescued from being cut by
then US Senator Harry Byrd of West Virginia.
While the Lake Shore Limited
makes its trip in 20 hours, and the Capitol in 23 hours, the Cardinal takes 27 hours
to go from Chicago to New York. That’s a
long ride, even for a rail fan (and longer still for my saintly wife).
As sleeping car passengers,
we waited departure in the beautiful new Metropolitan Lounge
at Chicago’s Union Station from which we had priority boarding of the train
where our attendant helped us get settled and showed us our new home for the
next night and day.
If you’ve never taken a long
distance train you’re missing out on a real adventure. Our bedroom had upper and lower berths, a
private bathroom which doubled as a shower, and comfy day-chairs to watch the scenery roll by.
As a member of Amtrak’s
Guest Rewards program, this $1200 bedroom
was free thanks to all the points I’ve accumulated riding Acela in the
Northeast. Also included in the fare
were four meals… two dinners, a breakfast and lunch, for my wife and myself.
Mind you, “the Bird” doesn’t
have a fancy dining car with cooked-to-order meals like the Lake Shore and
Capitol Ltd. No, we ate in something
like a Café Car with pre-plated, pre-cooked, frozen meals which were microwaved.
The food was far better than airline food, but hardly the cuisine of
years past since Amtrak has been under pressure to cut costs, especially in
food service.
It’s expensive to provide
good meal service on a train. But when
passengers are paying $1200 they expect, and deserve, better than frozen
food. But as a captive audience, what
choice did we have but to gobble down what was offered?
The train’s meandering route
was smooth, so we slept well. And the
daylight portion of the route was certainly attractive as we journeyed along
river valleys past some beautiful scenery.
But we had no observation car, unlike the Capitol Ltd.
“On time” is a relative term
and shouldn’t be your reason to take a train.
Sure we were an hour late into New York City, but by then we had a real
rail adventure to talk about.
Posted with permission of Hearst CT Media
No comments:
Post a Comment