June 20, late afternoon
One of the things we enjoyed about the California Zephyr (back in the 1980s when we rode it several times) was its timing.We’d get on in Chicago in the afternoon, sleep through western Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and the northeastern plains of Colorado. Denver was the first stop of the waking day and we were able to enjoy a leisurely ride through the Rockies. Evening fell as we crossed into Utah for a long stop at Salt Lake City while the Desert Wind and the Pioneer broke off for LA and Portland respectively. We slept through western Utah and the salt flats and pretty much all of northern Nevada, waking to a peaceful desert dawn just northeast of Reno. From Reno we began our climb up the Sierra Nevada mountains along the Truckee river. The train arrived at Oakland in the afternoon so our last sight before deboarding was the Bay.
However, in trains, as in comedy, timing is everything. The Union Pacific Railroad, our so-called “host” for our journey seemed to take a positive delight in making a bad situation worse with frequent sections of track deemed hot spots over which we could travel only at a leisurely 10 mph. Adding to that were a couple of long stops in the middle of nowhere because freight trains up the line were higher priority. Ironically, one of the delays was due to the westbound Zephyr which was running seven hours late. This was not entirely due to Union Pacific. Sadly, someone had committed “suicide by train” early on in the route. Where we met the westbound Zephyr there were no side tracks, but there was a short spur where we could pull off. We’d have to back out onto the track again to resume our journey. That delay only added about 25 minutes to our lateness but given all the other delays we were close to five hours behind. Instead of reaching Salt Lake City at 11 pm we finally arrived at 4:05 am. That meant our scenery for the day was salt flats and scrub desert. We’ve driven that route before and knew it all too well. But while the driving is tedious and seems interminable you have the very work of driving to distract you from the scenery and you can drive faster than Amtrak can.
Fortunately we were able to navigate the Sierra Nevada route in daytime and pulled into Sacramento only 4 1/2 hours late. Since we had an 11+ hour layover waiting for the Coast Starlight that really wasn’t a problem. Thus at the end of the first day of train travel in 20+ years we were reminded at, at least in the US, one doesn’t travel by train just to get from point A to point B. You’ve gotta like trains. But given what I’ve shared so far, it may not sound like there’s anything to like. Just wait for my next installment for a more positive view.
