“Th, th, th, that’s all folks! Hope you enjoyed the series enough to plan one similar if not the same.
This is strange to write. The ‘best train trip ever’ took place from May 27 – June 12, 2005. I wrote the first nine episodes of the saga over the next year, finishing in May 2006, while memories were freshest, still reasonably vivid, including the original final part 10, and sent it, along with the others as they were completed to friends and family. I have (and occasionally re-read and continue to edit) parts 1-9. But Part 10 is gone. Cannot find a hard copy anywhere and probably the only computer on which it may still exist is at LLNL in Livermore, CA, so I am now rewriting it six years later (July 2011) but the memories are no longer freshest.”
–mike
“Best Train Trip Ever: Part 10 – You Can Go Home Again
There are 3 main entrances in Glacier National Park: at East Glacier, West Glacier, and Canada. We had tried 2 of the 3 and had been stopped, praise the LORD, because He might want us to see it in July. [We probably won’t though. Dad is now 91 and no longer seems as interested in extended travel. S’OK. We couldn’t reasonably expect to duplicate, much less exceed, the wonder and excitement of such a great trip again. Trains are more crowded and expensive now that airline travel has been made intolerable, the dining car food is no longer chef-prepared, and surely by now global warming has melted all the ice in Glacier Park.]
At about 10:30, Friday morning June 10, 2005, both Summer and the Empire Builder arrived at Glacier Park. The weather was as big-sky beautiful as was the Genesis-led Train 8, eastbound for Chicago. Dad and I were still overstuffed from the mammoth Glacier Park Lodge buffet breakfast as we climbed aboard along with more than a dozen other passengers and were shown to our first class roomette. No possibility of an upgrade this time since soon the train was going to be full. I lost no time getting back to the observation lounge to watch the Rockies recede and the rolling Montana cattle country roll by for the rest of the day. The BNSF (Great Northern) track used by Amtrak closely parallels US route 2 all the way across Montana, and I’ll let you easily guess which was put down first. And James Jerome Hill paid for every bit of right-of-way himself, no federal subsidies. By late afternoon we passed the restored Wolf Point fort still guarding the upper Missouri River. But by the time we crossed the MT/North Dakota border and stopped in Williston to change crews (and so I could closely admire and photograph the little depot and static GN 2-8-4) it was dusky, then black by Minot with its huge and well-lit BNSF classification yard.
We bedded down shortly after Minot but Saturday morning, June 11, were up, showered, shaved and coffee’d before pulling into Minneapolis-St. Paul for a lonnnnnnnnng smoke break/crew change. The new-ish Amtrak depot resembled in way too many ways a big 1960’s Greyhound terminal, but successfully atoned by housing a faithfully restored beaver-tailed Milwaukee Road Hiawatha observation car on the grounds, along with several more vintage Santa Fe and CMnStP&P passenger cars no doubt belonging to members of the local RR Historical Society.
We followed the Mississippi River south from St. Paul, and saw some of its really wide, really shallow dams/locks until we crossed the river into Wisconsin near La Crosse and sped across America’s Dairy land to the Wisconsin Dells where lots and lots of people trained and detrained. I remembered it had been a popular 1920’s vacation spot, but I was surprised as to how popular it still is. We both stayed in our Sleeper compartment during our stop in Columbus so as not to risk catching any of the pervasive liberalism contagions rampant at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, a mere 28 miles distant. Very shortly after leaving Milwaukee’s depot the conductor announced our first view of Lake Michigan, if you squinted between the Mercantile and a docked Great Lakes freighter. We were soon in Chicago’s Union Station, before 5pm and less than an hour late after 1,000 miles. Turned out we needn’t have been concerned with missing the 6:20pm scheduled departure of Train 30, the Capitol Limited, bound for Washington, DC and home. Because we were really late leaving Chicago.
Although we were “All Aboard” by 6pm, almost as soon as we had settled into our familiar roomette the conductor confessed over the intercom that we’d be delayed briefly while mechanics repaired a bad HVAC unit on one of the other sleeper cars. Three hours later they gave up and replaced the whole car. We left at nearly 9:30pm and passed the Illinois/Indiana south shore in the dark, including what is now described as “the most miserable city in America” abandoned Music Man throwback, Professor Harold Hill’s Conservatory steel town, “Gary, Indiana, Gary, Indiana, Gary Indiana, My home sweet home,“ now best seen at night from a distance. There were other distinct advantages to the late departure also. We passed the vital but monotonous farmlands of the Midwest in the dark and having seen much of it from the Cardinal windows on the way out, we didn’t feel overly deprived.
We were up, clean, sweet and fed after Cleveland and saw the whole crushingly abject Ohio river approach into Pittsburgh, passing dozens of shutdown, never-to-reopen steel mills and fabrication plants both before and after the Station, done in by EPA, old technology and age, questionable trade agreements and labor union issues. Pittsburgh was another lengthy smoke stop and crew change before the Capitol eased away from the platform weaving through the steep valleys south of Pittsburgh toward Connellsville, PA. Here we joined and followed the scenic Spring-swollen Youghiogheny River and began our slow and interminable climb up and over the Alleghenies, passing a half dozen even slower CSX unit coal drags bound for Hagerstown, Baltimore and points south, all the way to the gap at Cumberland, MD through which virtually every train from the Midwest to the Mid Atlantic must pass, another train-watcher’s busy paradise.
Soon after Cumberland, we crossed back into WV and drifted down the Potomac’s SW bank until the brief stop at postcard-scenic Harpers Ferry and the bridge-tunnel back into MD. We were due into DC’s Union Station shortly after Noon, but since we were so late, or possibly because I’d showed our car attendant my note from the Coast Starlight’s Carla – he did remember her, the Diner crew gave us sandwiches, chips and drinks on the house for lunch. Somewhere along the revived C&O canal I cell-phoned brother Kevin to arrange for his taxi service to meet us at the station. My profuse apologies, Kev. We were within sight of the station when the train just stopped. Eventually someone announced that we were too late for our normal arrival track and arrangements had to be made for an alternate. We sat there for an hour, probably timed out and replaced our crew, but eventually pulled in and dropped all air at 5pm, four hours late. But I still think that eight hours tardy over 7,000 miles was/is a pretty good record. Really not too bad if you consider that half the delay was on the last leg, and exceptional when realizing one-eighth of it was within the last few hundred yards.
So, on Sunday, June 12, 2005, at 5pm my father, Joe Harrison of La Plata, MD, with his oldest son Michael, pulled into Washington, DC’s Union Station on Amtrak’s Capitol Limited having just completed THE BEST TRAIN TRIP EVER from Manassas, VA to Washington, DC, about 30 miles distant. But for a true rail fan the best trip is always the longest, so we had taken the scenic route from Manassas to DC, via Chicago, Denver/Colorado Springs, Sacramento, Seattle and Glacier Park, 7,000 miles in 17 days. We loved 6,999.9 miles of it. Kevin was there to meet us. We were home, and glad to be there.
Much thanks to Amtrak for an exceptional and unforgettable travel experience. We never met a surly or even brusque train or station employee, though among our train crews Carla on the Starlight wins our Miss Congeniality. All employees were knowledgeable, courteous and professional. Never a cross word even when we were running late and a few passengers were complaining. The preponderance of dining car meals surpassed our high expectations, but Dad admitted he would have ordered something besides the prime New York strip steak after his seventh consecutive. It was and remains difficult to consistently name the best leg, so I’ll equivocate that it is a close tie between the Zephyr, Coast Starlight, Empire Builder, Cardinal and Capitol. But if you can only ride one in your life, take the California Zephyr, Denver to Emeryville… Wait, maybe the Starlight, from Santa Barbara to Sacramento Union Station. No, the Empire Builder, Harve to Whitefish, MT. Or the Cardinal, Charlottesville to…
All praise and thanks to GOD for the opportunity and means to see so much of His glorifying creation in such style. And for bringing us back home safely, and by His schedule exactly on time. By His grace may He someday permit another trip.
20 Oct 2013: Very last post trip note: Dad took the “Going to the Son” road without me. At 8:27pm on August 27, 2013, with all work and all trips completed, by His grace and mercy GOD brought Dad Home to stay with His Son Jesus and rejoin our Mom, Ruby Joan, his wife of over 60 years. He rests in peace and I look forward to joining Him and them soon. He would have been 93 today.”
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