Part 21 here
That finally happened and we rode a train. We bought tickets to the coach car, not sleeper, but we will ride in sleeper next Spring or Summer. Our train had a name Auto train, went from Virginia to Florida and our car traveled with us. There were 10 passenger cars, 19 auto cars, several dinning cars and a lounge car. The length of the train was about half of mile.
For the boarding convenience the train was divided to the several parts and auto cars were added after all passengers were inside.
In the evening we went to the dining car, to eat a yummy dinner. Dinning happened at 3 different times (5pm, 7pm and 9pm), and time was chosen during check-in. That helps to solve problems with spacing in the dining cars. The next car to dinning car had a cafe-bar in it, so passengers could buy some snacks and alcohol there. Also the movie was shown there, but we didn’t go and watched the “National Treasure” movie from our laptop. It was funny to see the places there that we just visited and we talked to each other from time to time – “We saw that! And we were here! Look to that stairs, we’ve walked there!”
The ride supposed to be 16 hours, but was for a couple hours longer – late in the evening the train stopped somewhere in the middle of nowhere and waited for the green traffic light. Apparently some train was broken ahead of us and blocked the line. The engine driver told us about all the interesting places we drove by and gave us all the updates while we were waiting for the line to be free.
The seats in the coach car are pretty comfortable, can be reclined, with leg support and it is OK to spend the night there. But still I was glad that our Californian Zephyr tickets were in the sleeper car, so in the Spring or Summer we will ride in the sleeper car, it should be very comfortable and ride itself is longer – about 3 days.
We sat in the double decker car, on the upper deck. And when we saw first oncoming train we realized how high were our seats – the engine’s roof was below our window.
The train was supposed to make a quick 15 minutes stop in South Dakota, for fueling the engine and change conductors and engineers. But because of the unexpected lateness the train went almost till Florida and made a stop there, because crew should work 12 hours and our crew worked almost 24 hours.
When we came to Florida I had a feeling that we came to the different country – because we rode the train and nature changed rapidly compared to Virginia. It so humid in Florida! I even felt like I don’t have enough fresh air in the beginning, but later it became easier.
Part 23 here
That looks awesome! Thanks for sharing!