Amtrak Has Yet to Live Up to its Reputation

I begin where I left off last night, going downstairs to take a shower while on board a moving train. This might go without saying, but it isn’t the typical showering experience, unless being compared to what one might go through at a sleepaway camp. Luckily, we made the Connellsville, PA station stop while I was in the shower, which made things easier. The shower stall is about 6 feet high, so the top of my head is against the ceiling. The showerhead is one of those detachable ones that can be held in your hand, and the result is one gets something slightly better than a sponge bath. There is also a shower curtain with snaps between the shower itself and a small changing area, which allows one to make a possibly futile effort to keep the water in the shower and the changing area dry.

I turned off the lights in my room and went to sleep at 10:06 PM ET. I slept soundly from about 11 until our station stop in Toledo, Ohio, at about 5:10 AM ET, went back to sleep, and woke up for good at 6:47 AM ET during the Elkhart, Indiana station stop. We actually arrived here early and had to wait for the departure time to leave! Shortly thereafter, I went to the dining car for breakfast, where I was seated with a man traveling to Seattle, Vancouver, and possibly some points in British Columbia. He wasn’t exactly sure of his itinerary, but his train from Fort Lauderdale to Washington was delayed, so he was bussed with some other passengers to meet the train in Pittsburgh. After breakfast, I went to the lounge car with the Sunday New York Times, and remained there until we were about to arrive in Chicago, at which point I tidied up my belongings. We arrived at Chicago’s Union Station at 8:40 AM CT, almost a full hour early!

I proceeded to the Metropolitan Lounge to leave my things for the day, having put the items I needed for the day’s activities in a separate bag while on the train. I had a ticket to the 1:05 PM CT White Sox-Blue Jays game, so I decided to do some railfanning before that. I walked to the nearest L station at Quincy and Adams, and rode the following trains:

• Brown Line (Car #3361) from Quincy to State/Lake
• Brown Line (Car #3382) from State/Lake to Fullerton
  • The work they are doing at Belmont and Fullerton stations is phenomenal, I can’t wait to see the finish products.
• Red Line (Car #2647) from Fullerton to Lake
• Green Line (Car #2480) from State/Lake to 63rd/Cottage Grove
• Green Line (Car #2437) from 63rd/Cottage Grove to Garfield
• Green Line (Car #2474) from Garfield to 63rd/Ashland
• Green Line (Car #2494) from 63rd/Ashland to Roosevelt
  • The connecting passageway from the Green/Orange station to the Red Station is very well done in my opinion
• Red Line (Car #2709) from Roosevelt to Sox/35th

Then, it was on to the ballgame. I think the new Comiskey is nice. It isn’t a retro ballpark, but it is not a cookie cutter stadium either. There did not appear to be any obstructed views, but the scoreboards were hard to see from many vantages in the park, and there was music playing at almost every possible moment. There were also endless promotions and advertisements being made over the PA. One nice thing about the music is that it was much softer and more subdued than at other parks, but the quantity did not improve my opinion of it despite the quality. The game itself was quite good. It only took 2.5 hours to play the game. The Blue Jays won, 4-1, and their two pitchers only faced 28 batters over the course of the entire game (one over the minimum), allowing two hits (including a home run to Jermaine Dye) and no walks.

After the ballgame was over, I hopped on the Red Line (Car #2409) from 35th up to Monroe, planning to walk over to Union Station. However, a 130 bus came up (D40LF 1195) and I took that over to Union Station, to help ensure that I would catch the 4:35 METRA Fox Lake train to Deerfield. It is from the home of my relatives in Deerfield (where the local time is 7:22 PM CT on Sunday, June 29) that I am currently writing this, and it will be posted as soon as I can get the wireless to work right, or once I transfer it to a different computer to post it.

Tomorrow, I intend to finish my tour of the CTA’s train lines (more on my opinion of how they have deteriorated since my last visit in a future post) and will revisit Wrigley Field. And if you are wondering how Amtrak didn’t live up to its expectations since I never directly dealt with that issue in this post, let’s just hope that the Empire Builder performs as well as the Capitol Limited did.