AMTRAK Southwest Chief II – Lake Shore Limited
The second part of the journey with the Southwest Chief begins in Raton, the place of my 7-hour exile. The route leads with a very slow speed over the Raton Pass, partly double tracked, possibly because of the relatively tight curve radii – to me it seems to go excessively slow – and then go out into the night of the vast Great Plains. So I cannot experience this – unfortunately – because in the morning in the area of Kansas City, the world is already very green. Slowly accumulates the delay, but I do not care. I have enough time in Chicago.
- Shortly after Kansas City we crossed the Missouri, and then pass through a green, gently rolling landscape, where especially corn and soybeans are cultivated. Three and a half hour journey (according to schedule) through the states of Missouri and Iowa to Fort Madison on the Mississippi. In the lower sites, mainly near the larger rivers, everywhere traces of flooding can be observed. The Missouri, this would have also to admit convinced friends of the Rhine, is a few points bigger. And the Mississippi River just once more. We cross it at Fort Madison and run then through the flat western Illinois through here much larger corn and soybean fields always in direction northeast towards Chicago. The previously often poor looking villages are more and more well kept and the suburbs become noticeable. With just over an hour delay, the Southwest Chief arrives in Chicago Union Station in a rather gloomy concourse with very narrow platforms.
The Mississippi at Fort Madison
Skyline of Chicago
The Union Station is compared with that of Los Angeles a hodgepodge of relatively low levels – not all that as I have in mind – filled with everything that has to offer the American fast-food gastronomy. Finally, I find the AMTRAK desk, but unfortunately not the desired product: sold out of the sleeper to Springfield MA! Do I have lunch in the dining expressed the opinion that I was too old for a night trip in coach, I will have now no choice if I do not want to have my program again changed – one is finally flexible. In MacDonald’s (!), which offers free wifi, I find a corner where I can free my planning of uncertainties: I reserve a hotel room in Springfield, rent a car and reserve with a ticket for the trip to Mt Washington.
From the outside it becomes clear: The old Union Station is next door. To what it still serves, I do not know. The new building of Union Station is a glass skyscraper, which fits well into the surroundings.
The night trip in the Lake Shore Limited, which cons ists of two sections, one
is to New York and the other one to Boston, in an Amcoach car is just the way it is. At some point, you don’t know anymore how to sit or to lie, as far as the latter is even possible. But precisely: one is convinced, that you had not a minute of sleep, but somehow it is suddenly 6 o’clock and 8 o’clock. You survived! But it is to say that these cars offer a very decent comfort: plenty of space between seats, rotating seating, all of which are on windows, a quality, from which all European railways could very well take a little something as a model. This is finally second Class Buy Lucipro Cipro without Prescription , but has more space for the individual as such TVG in the first Class or in the SBB IC-double deck coaches.
Almost one anecdote, if not a joke, is the following episode: When the train stopped in Buffalo NY, near the border with Canada, a uniformed guy comes and asks me something in for me badly understandable, mashy English. After I asked him what it is about, it turns out, that he wants to know whether I am a “citizen” My first reaction is clearly yes indeed, until I noticed then that the guy means “U.S. citizen” – apparently there are no other. Border control, right in their own country. Well, my Swiss passport with the U.S. visa which I had to acquire with so much effort has then convinced this gentleman.
From Lake Erie, the namesake of this train, you do not see much. First, the landscape is flat, later on hilly and is actually reminiscent of England. The line follows more or less the Erie Canal, which connects Lake Erie about 584 km with the Hudson River, which he reached in Albany. In Albany, the train is split in the two parts of New York and Boston. Here also arrives the line from north from Montreal.
In the Berkshire Hills between Albany NY and Springfield MA
After the departure of Albany the train runs uphill, first on very bad track. Virtually the entire line is in the forest through the Berkshire Mountains, and with a lot of cuts and a tunnel at the highest point and is up to 15 ‰ relatively steep. A fantastically beautiful journey, especially because of the onset of autumn colours in the evening light a (if only I had not been so tired!). But the train station in Springfield brings one back on the ground, but promises an early redemption of the uncertainties (let’s say it this way) of a 48-hour train journey.
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