The Amtrak agent told me I should be at the station by 10:00 PM to check a bag for the 10:30 arrival of the Empire Builder. Some cities have far more inconvenient arrival times in the wee hours of the morning so an 11:15 PM departure from St. Paul didn't seem so bad.
My friend Dave helped me spend time prior to arriving at the station by taking me out for a light dinner. It was a good time and I found that I wasn't as anxious about getting to the station as I usually am about getting to airports for flights. My friends joke about my need to be ready for air travel way too early. I guess I had confidence in Amtrak being more relaxed in their schedule.
In any case Dave drove me to the station by 9:45 and waited with me for a while. As a sleeper car passenger I was entitled to wait in the lounge designated just for those if us who reserved rooms on the train, so I took Dave on a tour of the room.
The St. Paul station is not glamorous by any means. It's a 1960's-70's modern styled brick and glass structure with all the charm of most bus stations. The waiting area for coach passengers is brightly lit (a bit too brightly for that time of night) and furnished with rows of hard plastic seats. It was full of people waiting for the train, many of them young adults or teens (some acting rambunctious), young families with unhappy small children crying, elderly people who looked like they were on a fixed income, and some folks who looked like life was hard on them. I was pleased to see that the train attracted so many riders but I have to admit I was happy to not be competing for a seat among them.
The lounge for sleeper car passengers by contrast is a quiet, comfortable area with subdued lighting, soft sofas, large windows overlooking the station platform, free bottled water and coffee, and populated by a much smaller number of people waiting. These are the comforts provided to those of us that paid almost twice as much as the coach passenger.
Dave bid me farewell and left about 10:15 so I hunkered down for what I thought would be a short wait. It wasn't long before I heard a woman comment to her husband that the train was delayed until 11:50. Apparently a severe thunderstorm that blew through Minnesota in the early afternoon had traveled southeast and disrupted electricity to the signal system along the line the Empire Builder followed from Chicago.
I read, I watched some freight train action through the large windows, I walked around. At one point nature called so I used the station's Men's room. Amtrak may wish to spend some money on this facility. It was clean but the stall walls were covered in graffiti. Worse, they had some structural problem that caused them to move slightly out of square when the door was closed. This was a problem because the door had to be forced into the door jam to keep it closed. There was no door lock hardware in my stall. After a moment, the door began to slowly open on its own! Feeling vulnerable sitting there I gave the door a good shove to force it closed again. This action had the effect of moving the stall wall enough to make the large round toilet paper dispenser cover drop down on its hinge. That was a little startling but I pushed it back into position...which caused the stall door to open again! Shoving the door once again caused the toilet paper dispenser to drop its cover and a comical cycle of action ensued until I was ready to leave. :) I was happy to return to the Sleeper car lounge and wished it had its own bathroom!
Oh well. I read a little more and talked to a couple of my fellow passengers when all of a sudden we heard an announcement that the train was arriving. I was surprised that it made virtually no noise when it glided in. What a beautiful train, all sleek and silver! The double level Superliner cars seemed huge!
Next: All Aboard! Shhhhhhhhh!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment