The Empire Builder: Seattle to Chicago

The train pulled out of Seattle exactly on time from Seattle, and immediately went underground through Seattle. Once we resurfaced we followed Puget Sound (about 5 feet from the waters edge) for about 90 minutes. It was a beautiful time to sit and watch the water while having dinner. The train then turned east and went up and over the Cascades. By the time we hit the mountains, it was dark, so I didn’t see much of them. We did go through a 7 mile tunnel, one of the longest on the Amtrak routes. Pulled into Spokane early and then waited for the train from Portland to meet the train I was on. I had about 90 minutes there in Spokane at midnight, so I got off the train looking for a snack. Went in the terminal, and instead of potato chips, I found a great little Chinese place, so I promptly had a nice plate of Chow Mein at 12:30 AM… mmm good!

It was interesting to watch the merging of the 2 trains for the rest of the trip. Our train had 3 sleepers, then the dining car, then 2 coach cars. The other train pulled up behind us, our train then pulled forward, they unhitched and their engine pulled up and on a siding, then we backed up and hooked onto the other cars, which had the lounge/sightseeing car, 3 coach cars, and another sleeper car. Now we have a big ole long train… Funny thing happened while this was happening. I was eating my chow mein out on the platform as I decided to watch the switching of trains from outside. The platform was almost empty as few had gotten off at the late hour. As our train started to pull forward, an older lady bursts out the door of the terminal, looking a bit worried and said, “our train!!”. I couldn’t resist, and said “yeah, it’s gone”. Then I told her what was happening, so we didn’t have to call any paramedics for her thankfully. She got quite a laugh out of it too.

In the morning sunrise met the train at Whitefish in Montana, and we then rode through beautiful Glacier Park during breakfast. Had an interesting breakfast with a young man (22) who got on the train at West Glacier after camping there for 5 days… He said he did not realize how chilly he was until he got on the warm train and had hot food again. He had been traveling for 6 weeks so far and planned to be gone for at least 3-4 more months, camping, visiting friends and relatives, and taking the train and buses all over the country. I ended up having lunch with him, and then we chatted till dinner. At dinner he was ready to get off in North Dakota to meet a great aunt of his. He had to hurry and eat as we were getting close to his stop, and our table, and the wait staff kept urging him to get going as it was a 2 minute stop, but he had to eat every bite and take a roll with him, so he is standing next to the table, trying to shove as much food down as he can before we all threw him off the train. I think he made it . .

When we reached Shelby MT, I waved at Kirstyn and Shawna, but I am not sure that they saw me…. Well hey, it is only 100 miles away from Kirstyn and a little over 200 from Shawna,… they should have seen me waving! I looked retarded enough doing it.

The next morning found the train in Minneapolis/St Paul and on down through Minnesota and Wisconsin. The train follows the Mississippi for quite a while through this area. Big river, even this far north.
I find that a lot of people are interested in watching the GPS on my laptop. Even the train crews stop by to check it out. The conductor out of Seattle looked at it for a bit, and said he was thinking about getting one, as part of his job is to monitor the speed of the train. The engineers are allowed a maximum speed of 79 MPH, and can fudge by 3 MPH to 82. He is the watch dog to make sure they do not exceed it. These trains only have one engineer in the engine. What a lonely job!! They have a dead man switch that they must hold down at all times with their hand or arm, to allow the train to go. If they have a medical problem and let the pressure off the switch, the train brakes to a stop. Very interesting!