A few photos of the Sierra's

The California Zephyr – Galesburg Illinois to HOME!!

At last, after 17 days on the train, I am arriving home today. This train has taken me from Galesburg through Nebraska, into Denver in the early morning. After that we went right up into the Rockies for an amazing day of scenery. We headed northwest from Denver along the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains where we could look out over the plains around Denver. We went through tunnel after tunnel that day, for a total of 45 tunnels in one day. The rivers, canyons, and ginormous rock mountains were amazing to see. We went through the Moffat Tunnel at the continental divide at 9180 ft elevation. It was snowy and blowing there on both sides of the long tunnel. It is 6.2 miles long, and takes over 9 minutes to traverse through. After that we followed the Colorado river for 230 + miles while we wound down the other side of the mountains. After going through Grand Junction Co, the tracks took us into the Ruby Canyon, a beautiful red rock – water worn canyon on the Colorado river that looks like a miniature Grand Canyon. I was unable to take any photos of it, as it was getting late twilight. While following the Colorado River, we saw a few bald eagles, deer, a coyote, and I forgot to mention that down in Texas, I saw quite a few Antelope and some deer.

This morning found the train near Winnemucca Nevada, taking us across the desert into Reno. The next part of my journey was crossing over the Sierras from Reno to my destination at Roseville. I always love this part of the trip, as the train travels high above the freeway on the other side of Donner Lake, affording us some amazing views from high on the ridges of the Sierras. We cross Donner pass at 6700 feet elevation going through a long tunnel, maybe 4 miles long, emerging in Norden. Crossing the Sierras by rail is such a different experience than in a car, as the rail follows such a different route. Not much snow up here now, just the tops of peaks and scattered patches in the shade, nut always a beautiful trip.

I am excited to be returning home today, but have enjoyed every minute of the trip! I decided that the 17 days was a perfect time to be on the train. It is so comfortable to travel this way, that I have found myself just today starting to get restless and ready to be off the train. It has been an amazing journey these past 17 days over the 12,965 miles of rail that I have traveled. I have seen the country in every in all of it’s different faces, and they are all beautiful. The plains, rivers, forests, lakes, swamps, deserts, farming country, back country, wild country, cities, reservations, wealthy areas and poor, and enjoyed every minute of it. I got to speak with people from all over the country and world on the train, ate some great food, and relaxed and relaxed and relaxed… Would I do it again? YES! When can I go?

More New Mexico Photos

The Southwest Chief - Los Angeles to Galesburg Illinois

Almost home – but not quite! Sunday evening I left the Los Angeles area (From San Bernardino), and headed east again. I wanted to ride the Southwest Chief which goes from LA to Chicago – via Victorville CA, Flagstaff Arizona, Albuquerque and Santa Fe New Mexico, Southern Colorado, Across Kansas to Kansas City then through Missouri and into Illinois. I decided to get off in Galesburg Ill, as I can catch my next and final train there. It is the California Zephyr which will bring me home in two days!
It was a beautiful ride across Arizona’s desert which was covered in an inch or two of snow in the eastern part as we entered New Mexico. It was finally nice to see a bit of winter weather as it has been warm and sunny for my ENTIRE trip! I was hoping to see some nice snow storms from the train, but no luck yet. Going through New Mexico, we went through a bunch of Indian reservations. I was surprised at how many there were. I was looking at them on my map. In the north east corner of Arizona, and into New Mexico, there was a huge, huge Navajo reservation that was as big as many states.
We pulled into Albuquerque an hour ahead of schedule which was great, as we then had an hour and a half stop in the city of some of my favorite food. As we approached town, I got on my map program and found a few Mexican restaurants close to the train station. As luck would have it, the closest was about 7 blocks away. As soon as the train stopped, I hopped off and headed for downtown. I walked the 7 blocks, found the restaurant and sat down to a wonderful New Mexican style Mexican lunch. I had combo plate of homemade tamale, and cheese enchilada, both smothered in their amazingly good green chili sauce made with the local hatch chilis, and a good fresh taco! Yum. I then headed back to the train, making it back with 20 minutes to spare, cause these trains don’t wait for nobody!, well maybe the engineer since he has to drive the thing. They warn us over and over again not to stray far from the train, as when it is time to go, they go exactly on time. The car attendants talked about a couple of people that tried to run to a store to buy some beer for the train on a 5 minute stop. The train left, and the people had a $250.00 cab ride to the next station. They made it and then found out to their chagrin that they were not allowed to bring the beer onboard anyway!
The rest of that day we climbed a mountain pass near Santa Fe NM, with some beautiful scenery and rock formations, as well as a number of Pueblos (towns on the reservations).
We came over the top of the pass at 7400 foot elevation, then only dropped about 1000 feet to the high plains of Northern NM and into southern Colorado. Through the darkness we crossed Colorado and Kansas ( so I was not able to see Dorothy, Toto, or any of the wicked witches). Daylight found us approaching Kansas city KS & MO. The rest of the morning under overcast skies, we traveled through the pretty farm land and crossed a few rivers in Missouri, arriving around lunch time at my destination of Galesburg.
I have been interested to see how many junkyards, scrapyards, etc you see along the railroad tracks all over the country, as well as the backyards of some pretty run down places. You also get to see beautiful rivers, farmlands, reservations, canyons, mountains, forests and more that are not available by road. A person misses so much of the landscape driving on a freeway.

the high desert in western Texas

more photos

Train bridge 391' above the Pecos River

A cool bridge we just crossed in Texas

I like photos of train tracks

The Texas Eagle and Sunset Limited

The Pecos River. this is the Mexico - US border in Texas

Eastern Texas

Looks like a cemetary for tall people . . . but it is really a bunch of horseshoe pits some where in Texas

Inside Chicago Union station out by the trains.

Well this was my longest trip of all, almost 3 full days on the train. I really enjoyed just sitting back and relaxing for the whole time. I traveled from Chicago, down through Illinois, into St Louis MO. It was dark before we got to St Louis But we still got to see the St Louis Arch as we crossed the Mississippi River. The train then headed south to Little Rock, Arkansas. I did not see any of Arkansas, as I woke up in Texas. The train spent over 30 hours going through Texas, from the rolling hills, trees, and forests of North East Texas, down to the plains around Dallas and Ft Worth. Then we headed to Austin and San Antonio. It was very pretty country, and so different hour by hour and day to day. The train parked for 6 hours in San Antonio overnight to hook us up to the back of the Sunset Limited early in the AM. That was interesting to observe. They took the sleeper I was in and 1 coach car and hooked them to the back of the Sunset Limited train. So now I am riding in the very back car instead of near the front where the sleepers usually are. It is cool as we can see out the back door down the back tracks now. The sleeper cars do not matter which way they run, as they are ambidextrous in their use. However, I noticed in the AM that the people in coach were all riding backwards! About midmorning the car attendant came in and turned all the seats around to face forward! It was cool to see, I did not know they could do that at all.
The high desert of West Texas was cool to see also. We climbed to 4600 feet in the desert without really realizing it. We came very close to Mexico also a number of times…. Within about 100’ just across the Pecos River… saw a few border patrol hiding by the tracks watching the river. We also crossed a bridge that was almost 400 feet above the Pecos River. When we pulled into El Paso we were again about 200 feet from Mexico. We pulled out of there in the evening and overnight went all the way through New Mexico and Arizona and into California where I detrained in Ontario, getting ready to get on another train headed to Chicago again. Two more legs to go and I arrive home Thursday afternoon.

It’s Déjà vu all over again!

Chicago. Again. So soon, but yeah here I am for 3 hours before I head out for Texas and Los Angeles after lunch. It was nice to be on the Superliner again. This was the City of New Orleans train. We left at 1:45 yesterday and arrived in Chicago today at 10:45. It was very cool to take the train along the shores of Lake Pontchartrain for quite a while, then up through Mississippi, Memphis Tennessee, a corner of Kentucky, and all the way through Illinois farm country and back into Chicago. I saw some beautiful country in Louisiana and Mississippi before dark. It is so neat to see all the woods, little towns, people sitting on a couch on the porch, a little country store facing the tracks with a dirt road leading to and from it. Quite a slice of the back yard of America! I think I could sit and watch the country go by for hours and days with out getting tired of it. Quite an uneventful trip, except for the drunken lady that passed out in her sleeper and the attendants had a hard time getting her off the train in Memphis! They finally roused her enough to get her to walk off the train. Hope she found her keys to drive home ok! Well, actually they said someone met her, so it seemed to turn out ok. It was rather funny to all of us in the car.

a few more photos from New Orleans