They sometimes refer to it as the "Coast Starlate" for a reason. Read on.....
I must have been pretty tired last night. We boarded the train last night and got underway just a few minutes before midnight. It took maybe 25 minutes for everyone to get settled in. There is a young lady sitting across the aisle from me that is traveling with five children. She had her hands full getting them all ready for the night but after awhile, they all were ready to settle down for the night. Frances and I had our blankets and the coach attendant had passed out pillows. Our next station stop was at Martinez, forty-two minutes after leaving Emeryville. I guess we made the stop. I sure don’t have any recollection of it. The next station I remember was Redding at 5:50AM. Seems like a lot of people started waking up there. “Two of the girls that were with the lady across the aisle from me got to giggling and making a bit more noise than they probably should have at that hour but after about ten minutes they settled down. I haven’t heard a sound out of them since then. They are both asleep now.
Frances and I had a breakfast from the café car. She started reading and I started typing this. She didn’t read for too long before her head started bobbing, her eyelids got heavy, and her bookmark was sliding all over the page.
We are north of Dunsmuir California, near Mt. Shasta. We just passed through a section of pine forest that looks like it has recently seen some harvesting. A lot of trees have been cut down but they left a lot still standing. You could smell the pine as we went through that area. Earlier we passed an area where a forest fire had damaged several trees. The undergrowth and the lower portions of most trees were black. The fire had not reached the crown of the trees.
I put the laptop away for awhile. We had a scheduled stop at Klamath Falls. We had an unscheduled stop for 25 minutes about a mile before Klamath Falls. Klamath falls is a crew change location for both Union Pacific and Amtrak. The Union Pacific had a freight at the station on the track we were to be on. They were making their crew change and they were in no hurry to get out of the way. When we finally got to the station, Frances and I got off to stretch our legs a bit, use a land based restroom, and buy a softdrink. We departed Klamath Falls either three hours late or three hours and forty-five minutes late, depending on whether you use the old printed timetable or the unprinted temporary “everything is forty-five minutes earlier” timetable. At this time, the old timetable makes things look slightly better.
Before and after Klamath Falls we went through a flat valley with some agriculture but it was nothing like what we saw in California between L.A. and San Francisco. We rode along the shore of Upper Klamath Lake for about fifteen minutes. There was a snow capped mountain in the background, I think it was Mount Harriman.
We left the shores of the lake and began to climb into the mountains. There were some more pine forest. Again we could tell where there had been a small fire in one area and a small area where some trees had been harvested. The harvesting had probably taken place several months ago. The undergrowth had grown to three or four feet all over that area. Further up the mountain we came along side a creek or river with some rafters and several fishermen. As we climbed further up the mountain we could look down on that river and see a few small waterfalls down in the rocky canyon below.
Frances and I went to the observation car for a few hours. The best view was on the east side of the train but all the seats on that side were taken. We sat on the other side and mostly watched a hillside go buy. We kept an eye open for two seats together to free up on the other side and eventually we were able to move to that side, but by the time that happened we had passed the best views.
I heard on the scanner that the conductor had a problem passenger onboard. Actually there were three of them. The lady and her two children were supposed to detrain at Chemult, Oregon but they watched over forty other passengers detrain while they just stayed on the train. The conductor didn’t find them at their seats and assumed that they were off the train. I heard her talking to someone in the observation car later. Her husband was supposed to meet her at the station. She had no way to call him. The train was nearly four hours late at that station to begin with. The next stop would be three hours and one hundred twenty-nine miles later at Eugene Oregon. The fortunate thing for this lady was that the southbound train would be coming through that station just a few minutes after we departed. She was already seven hours late and she was going to be another three hours before she could meet her husband and that poor guy hasn’t heard a thing from the lady. He watched her train come into the station and depart and she never got off the train. Tonight might be the time when the “Till death do us part” clause goes into effect.
We arrived in Portland at 7:55PM for a thirty-five minute scheduled stop. We departed eleven minutes later. We were still four hours late but at least we had made up some time. It didn’t really help much. Our next stop was Vancouver, twenty-three minutes away. It took us forty-three minutes to get to Vancouver. There was a freight train blocking our path to the station. When we got there the actual detraining and boarding process took about two minutes and then we had to wait another twenty-three minutes before the dispatcher allowed us to depart. We lost all the time we made up in Portland and then some. We just left the Kelso-Longview station and we are again about four and three-quarters hours late. Our 8:30 PM scheduled arrival in Seattle is looking more like 1:00AM. Bad, but not unexpected and not as late some of the arrivals in the last month.
Posted by john at July 16, 2006 05:06 AM