Train Travel (Part 2)

Bethany pointed out that it's been a long time since I've done a blog entry, so I figure I'll take some ime and do one now.

A quick description of our train:
There are "sleeper" cars - these have three different size bedrooms for people who prefer to sleep laying down and not in a chair.

There are "coach" cars - this is where we're spending most of our journey. Picture a charter bus or an airplane. The seats are much more comfortable than that. They're in groups of two on each side of the car and a little bit wider than airplane seats (just enough to make a huge difference). The seats recline a good bit more than airline/bus seats. Now for the best part - You know the front seats when you first get on a plane? The ones with no one in front of them so they've got a lot of leg room? The train has more room than that at every seat!

The bulk of the train is two levels. For the coach cars, you come in on the ground level. There are bathrooms, some storage space for luggage, and the lower-level coach seating. I didn't understand the difference when we were buying our tickets, but upon boarding the train, it makes sense. The lower level seats are maybe 20 seats with a door to the seating area. The upper level seats are like on big plane where there are people walking up and down the aisle throughout the trip. (We're on the upper level for this trip).

There is a "lounge" car in front of the coach car we're in. The upper level of the lounge car is full of windows. There are large windows on the sides and dome-type windows on part of the ceiling. There are swivel chairs (I think they're the same size as our regular seats) and small tables on one side and booths with tables on the other side. Downstairs is the snack bar where you can get a cheeseburger, chicken sandwhich, french toast, or whatever else you'd like (they've got a reasonable variety). This hs more booth seating for the snack bar patrons.

After that (and as far forward as I think we're allowed to go) is the "dining" car. This is full of booth seating upstairs (and I don't know what's downstairs - maybe the kitchen?). They go through and ask if you'd like a reservation for whatever meal, then call everyone in 30-minute shifts to come and eat at their reservation time.

Now that you've got some background - here are my stories:

We watched some West Wing earlier tonight. We watched two episodes in our seats until Beth got fed up with the guy behind us who was watching "Live Free or Die Hard" on his portable DVD player without any headphones. The guy kept turning it up and Bethany got more and more aggrevated on behalf of the passengers who were napping. Besides the faux pas of watching a movie in a public area without headphones, it was especially inappropriate to be doing it in the coach car. It would have been much more tolerable had the guy gone up to the lounge or the snack bar and watched his movie.

So with Beth getting increasingly impatient with him, I figured maybe she and I should move to the lounge for a little change of scenery. We finished up the last episode of West Wing and came back to our seats. At this point, I felt like it must have been 10:00pm but was only about 8pm. The problem here is that it gets dark early outside. We've got reading lights and aisle lights but that doesn't do anything to offset the darkness outside.

I manage to doze off for a while and miss the purse-theivery saga that I'll let Beth tell you later.

We were in a spot where wireless coverage was very spotty so I decided I would wait for our arrival in Pittsburgh at midnight to check my email one last time before calling it a night. That plan didn't work out too well when I woke up at 2am!

My computer was handy so I checked my email (how great is EVDO internet access?) and started my blogging. It's now 2:35am and we're coming into what our time schedule says should be Cleveland, Ohio. Beth woke up just in time to see the skyline of the city before we got too far into it. We're stopping now (2:36am) which means we're only 5 minutes behind schedule. Hopefully that works out well for us getting into Chicago. Over the last 3 months, this train averages a 65 minute late arrival (only early twice and well over two hours on more than one occasion). We'll see what happens to us.

When we get in to Chicago, we'll take a commuter train (the Metra SouthWest Service) down to Orland Park where Molly will pick us up.


When the car is quiet, you hear the sounds of the wheels and feel the gentle bounce/sway of the train car. It's extremely relaxing.


Even though the sun goes down early in the evening, we learned last weekend that it doesn't stay down in the morning. I'm afraid for the busyness that is bound to come in a few hours. I hope I can get a few more hours sleep.

We'll probably catch up with you again when we're in Chicago waiting for our Metra train. Goodnight until then.