The Arrival

Well, I made it in.  The train actually arrived impressively close on time -- in fact, five minutes early, getting into Union Station in Chicago after almost 40 hours on the rails. 

​(This is hardly the best photo of the Southwest Chief, but it did its job well, as I deboarded and headed out into the station.)

The elves taking care of the homestead said they had an even better time than I did because it was like I was incommunicado for two days, and they had everything to themselves.  (In fact, I did have full phone access, and although it turned out that the sleeping cars did have Wi-Fi, the network was dicey and very slow.  There was 4G broadband, as well, and better, though not ideal.  But it let me stay in touch somewhat reasonably.) 

Most of the yesterday was spent going through the desert, mainly New Mexico and then later in the day and through the night across Colorado.  It's not the most colorful part of the journey, but the rocks and foothills are wonderful to watch as you pass by.

I didn't spend as much time in the observation car as I did on my previous trip, but that's largely because I had a coach seat the time before, and this time the windows in my roomette sufficed quite nicely.  They also changed the configuration of the observation car.  My recollection from before is that it had comfortable high-back chairs that swung around.  Now, they had tables in one half, and smaller chairs in the other half.

I didn't find it as interesting as the previous design, although what makes the observation so nice is the wide expanse of all the windows when you look around, and the sense of the sky above.  

I was also looking forward to it at night, which most people don't think of with the observation car.  But the last time I recall entering the totally dark car that was largely empty, and you barely can see the desert around you -- but because you're nowhere near any towns, the sky is overwhelmed with stars that almost seemed to brighten the area.  Unfortunately, this time they had some dim lights on throughout the car which mucked up the effect.  Perhaps if I went later (this was around 8:30) the car would have been darkened and it would have been as wonderful. 

By the way, after getting into downtown Chicago this afternoon, my train traveling wasn't over yet.  I walked north along the Chicago River about eight minutes to the Ogilvie Transportation Center.  That's the old, significantly re-built Chicago & Northwestern train station which serves most of the local trains in the area (though the Union Station does handle some, while more a center for Amtrak nationally).  From there I caught the Union Pacific North to Evanston.  Much shorter.  That trip was about 25 minutes.

I may toss in a few other Tales of the Train later, but at the moment I'm still getting settled and we'll leave it there for now.

And what the heck, I might as well round things out and include that finishing train trip.  I've always loved these suburban commuter trains because they're double-deck.  They've been that way since I was a kid, and most of the time I love to sit above and get a better view of the ride.  They felt very magical back then when they introduced them, and they still do all those years later.

And with that, we'll leave the trains for the time being.