Riding the Empire Builder
ABOARD THE EMPIRE BUILDER — Instead of flying to Chicago for a three-week holiday visit, I chose to take an AMTRAK train Thursday from Spokane to the Windy City. I’m not a veteran train traveler, but so far I’m enjoying throwback travel.
The train departs Spokane at 1:25 a.m. Or at least it’s supposed to. My Uber ride dropped me off at the station about 12:45 a.m. in plenty of time for the departure, but I quickly learned the train had been delayed and was not due until 2:45 a.m. It was not starting out well.
Because half of the train was already in Spokane, we were allowed to board. I checked into my roomette and fell asleep fairly quickly. Next thing I knew, I was waking up at 9:30 a.m., about 90 minutes from Whitefish, MT.
The roomette is a bit smaller than I had expected, but it seems much more comfortable for sleeping than the coach seats.
The Montana mountain scenery has been nothing short of gorgeous. I've seen mile after mile of tall trees, their boughs laden with the whitest snow I’ve seen since watching the Hallmark channel.
My previous AMTRAK train experience in the U.S. consisted of trips from Syracuse, NY to Fort Wayne, IN; from Fort Wayne to Wichita, KS; and from New York City to Hartford, CT. Overseas, I’ve had the adventure of traveling by rail from Helsinki to Moscow, and from London to Edinburgh. I’ve also ridden a bullet train from Tokyo to northern Japan.
But back to my home country. As I sat waiting at the Spokane station, I recalled some lyrics from Paul Simon’s Homeward Bound: “I’m sittin’ in a railway station, got a ticket for my destination.” Then I began thinking about what might be my favorite song about trains: The City of New Orleans, written by Steve Goodman. “Good morning America how are you?” Now that’s a throwback tune for the ages. (The Willie Nelson version, please).
I’m sitting in the observation car and we have stopped very briefly at the Cut Bank, MT depot. A woman asks, “Does anyone know where we are?” A fellow passenger pointed to the depot sign and said, “Cut Bank, as in the cut bank we just saw.”
I’ll be blogging now and then about my ride, which is supposed to end at Union Station in downtown Chicago about 4 p.m., but I suspect this morning’s delay will play havoc with the arrival time.
