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Location: [Home] [Train Travels] A Weekend in Virginia (4)
Charlottesville is fortunate in having more than one Amtrak train: in addition to the thrice-weekly Cardinal we'd arrived on, it sees the daily Crescent. It is also a point on a few connecting bus services, which we had rejected in favor of taking the Crescent to DC.
We arrived at the station at about 6:30 am, feeling reasonably good despite waking early to make the train. Inside, the station had an old-fashioned feel despite its new, vinyl-upholstered waiting chairs. It was well-equipped, too; literature holders had pocket schedules for the Crescent, Cardinal, and some connecting trains; there were Amtrak city guides for three cities, including Washington (I picked one up, and it's not bad); and a glass case displayed available sourvenirs from the two trains and Amtrak at large. Since I'd once been unable to find a Southwest Chief schedule in Chicago, I was impressed. I hope the renovation work in progress helps the staff to make their good job even better!
I hadn't realized on arriving three days before that the station sits between the uprights of a "Y"--two sets of tracks come together from the north just below the station to continue south. The station's two doors were marked with the train numbers they served--the east door for the Cardinal and the west for the Crescent. This confused me, because both trains make the same stops north, and I still don't understand it. Yet when it came time for the train to arrive, we headed for the platform on the western track, which was not the one we had arrived on! Unlike the other, it was double-tracked.
A few minutes before the scheduled arrival I got really confused for a moment--I saw the headlight of a southbound train. It wasn't what we were waiting for, of course, but a Canadian Pacific mixed freight. It hadn't passed quite out of sight when the headlights of the Amtrak train became visible.
The Crescent arrived at 6:48 am, just ahead of schedule. There were quite a few people boarding, all, I think, for coach. As with the southbound trip, the crew assigned us to cars by destination, and we ended up in the next to last coach. It was still dark for the night, and the car attendant was able to give us four seats across. She also found pillows for us about as quickly as I thought was possible. The train started north again at 6:56 am.
We did a little napping, and then walked forward to the dining car for breakfast. The dining car was coupled with the kitchen end toward the coaches and the sleepers ahead, so we waited in the narrow hallway for a table, which came pretty quickly. We waited some to have our order taken, but the staff was very courteous and pleasant, and the menu offerings celebrated the breakfast specialties of the south and of the railroad: "Railroad" french toast, Virginia ham, and grits. We ordered, got our beverages quickly, and looked forward to the food.
In the meantime, we got to look out the window at the Virginia landscape as the sun rose, which was beautiful indeed. The sun slowly burned off some early fog, and looking west it made the fields just plain magical. I took a couple of photos which simply didn't do it justice.
When breakfast arrived it was superb--although Rebekah overdid it on her juice and spit some of it up--my wife was particularly enthusiastic about the railroad french toast! As for me, I'm a northerner who'd rather have a southern breakfast any day, so I was happy, too. It was one of the better breakfasts I've had in any restaurant, and certainly the best on a train.
We headed back to our seats, and to my surprise I had to evict someone who thought they were vacant. He went for a chat with the car attendant, as I gather somebody was asleep in the seat he'd been assigned. Somehow or other it got resolved.
By the time we arrived in Culpeper, the next station north of Charlottesville, we were on the same line we'd taken south. I don't have a railroad map of Virginia, so I don't really understand how that worked--did we board on a parallel track of the same road, or did we move over to another railroad? Somewhere around Alexandria (and its Metro shops and yard) we passed another CP mixed freight train, a northbound this time--do Norfolk Southern and Canadian Pacific share this route?
Well, whoever owned the rails, the skies were starting to cloud by the time we arrived in Manassas--whose station, by the way, I found as impressive from a single-level train as a bi-level. By the time we were rolling across the Potomac the skies were completely grey. As we went I tried to point out the sights to the kids out the window.
We arrived at Washington's Union Station at 9:10 am, twenty-three minutes ahead of schedule. Coming in, the conductor announced, with some satisfaction, that they had completed another on-time trip on the Crescent. Given our plans for the day, I was more than grateful.
The crew was very helpful getting us and our bags off the train, for which I was also grateful--this was just a good crew all the way around. I took a walk up and down the train as it stood by the platform in DC, getting the consist and so forth. At the train's tail, however, I'm not clear on what happened. It looked as if an MHC was being added as we headed up the elevator with our stroller, but perhaps it was being removed (hard to tell at a quick glance).
Locomotives: P42 #89 and P40 #817, elephant style (both cab forward)
One of the nice things about train stations is that they're downtown, not somewhere out in a former cornfield at a distance from anything you'd like to see. Since our train from Charlottesville put us into Washington early in the morning, we decided we'd make that stop a long one, and take the kids to some sights in the city--one sight in particular.
We spent a fair amount of time just getting things placed, however. We had plenty of stuff along which we had not intention of carrying around the city. Evelyn and I briefly debated checking some bags for New Haven, but eventually decided that we might want something in them. So we got a locker, and had to hunt some to find an available one large enough for all our stuff! And as I've checked the schedules since then, I'm not certain we could have checked luggage to New Haven anyway.
With luggage stowed (and bathroom breaks) we put our daughter in the stroller and set out for the Mall. Outside the station, however, we found the circle the rests in front of it transformed: a speaker's stand stood before the fountain, and lots of cloaked, cocked-hatted and sword-bearing Knights of Columbus were about. It took a few minutes to realize that this was Columbus Day and the area in front of Union Station is Columbus Circle; this was clearly the official Washington celebration of the holiday.
It wasn't on our agenda, however, so we pressed on across the streets into the parks around the US Capitol building. We passed around the Senate side, following the sidewalks that flow about half-way between the building and the nearest streets. Bekah did some walking on her own, pushing her stroller, but we also paused for a few rest stops along the way. At one of them, Brendan found a little brick-enclosed fountain with bubblers for drinking. It was a really pleasant spot and completely unmarked. I still wonder who built it and when.
Past the Capitol and the rectangular pool in front of it, we walked up the center of the Mall and across it to our destination: the National Air and Space Museum. Quite aside from the natural drama of that particular collection, they had a special exhibit which attracted us and our little boy in particular: Star Wars.
The Smithsonian does not charge admission for any of its exhibits, but for something like this they require tickets so that they can manage the traffic flow. I had ordered ours on-line a few weeks before--another reason to be grateful for the on-time performance of the Crescent!--so that we wouldn't spend time waiting in a line for tickets. So until our time to go in, we looked at the space program exhibits, including a lunar lander, Mercury, Apollo, and Gemini capsules, and a duplicate Skylab. Brendan also got to sit in a small plane's pilot seat and move the control surfaces about.
The Star Wars exhibit was the hit, of course. Models and costumes from the original production stood about, with a commentary relating the movies' plot to the ancient stories of heroes who rise from very reduced circumstances to righting great wrongs. I was somewhat surprised at how quickly Brendan passed through it, but he did enjoy it. As one might expect, he enjoyed the exhibit's special gift shop, too!
Somewhat tired by now, we went to the museum's cafeteria for lunch. Our sandwiches were pretty good, but sitting down was even better. We still had a fair amount of time before our train, so we asked Brendan if he would rather look more around this museum or go see dinosaur skeletons (at the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History). He chose dinosaurs, so off we went.
There's no denying it; the Mall is a big place. We did, however, have time to see the dinosaurs, though I'd have liked another half hour to see the new Hall of Minerals. Next time. There's also new construction in front of the National Archives, and I simply don't recall what is going there. Someday!
Rebekah had completely conked out--she slept entirely through the dinosaurs and most of the way back to the station. Brendan got pretty tired and footsore, too, and so we took a rest break at the fountains between the National Gallery's two wings. It was getting sunny again, too, and the spray was very welcome.
We made another stop at the little enclosed fountain, glad for the drink, and then up the street to Union Station. There, tired but happy, we got some drinks for the kids, retrieved our luggage (one thing I don't like about lockers is the endless quarters one has to feed them--this country needs one and two-dollar coins!) and found our gate. We were glad, again, for the chance to sit down.
Evelyn really likes the Metropolitan Lounge, so we had briefly discussed buying Club Class tickets for the trip home despite the added expense. A look at the schedule, however, informed me that they weren't available for train 148 anyway, but we did get Custom Class, mostly so that we could get seats early and stay together. Besides, I like the added leg room and foot rest on a trip over three hours, too.
A few minutes before departure, an Amtrak employee picked up the loudspeaker next to our gate to announce the early boarders: seniors, families with small children, and Custom Class passengers. As in Boston, those in the waiting area surged for the door on seeing him, and we had some small difficulty getting through the crowd to the gate. As we qualified for early boarding on two counts he was happy to let us through. We took the elevator down to the platform again (they don't allow strollers on the escalator) and started looking for the Custom Class car.
An Amtrak employee directed us to the front of the train--which was a fair ways away--and we headed for it. To my surprise, every car along was simply marked coach until the first car behind the locomotive, which said Cafe at the rear and Club at the front. I climbed on and asked the attendant if it was Custom Class, and if not, where it was? It turned out, however, that we were in the right place, so Evelyn and I got the kids aboard and then I tossed up the luggage. At that point in the day, I was really regretting that planned high-level platforms for single-level trains (the high-speed American Flyer in particular) hadn't been finished at Union Station yet. Or if they had, this wasn't one of them!
The front half of this car was set up with Amtrak's Club seating: two large, red-upholstered seats on the left side of the aisle, and one large seat on the right. We took double seats one behind the other, and gratefully settled into them. Amtrak had also placed a copy of USA Today on each seat. Behind a curtain was the cafe area occupying the middle of the car. The car clearly hadn't been modernized, as the bulkheads were orange and there were no outlets at the seats for PCs.
Before we left, the attendant seemed to give most of his effort to shooing away passengers without Custom Class tickets, all of whom wanted to go back through the cafe to the next coach, which he wouldn't allow. I can sympathize with his predicament but I thought he might have explained things better--or better yet, have been standing at the rear of the car on the platform to head folks off before they stepped onto the train.
We started north at 4:06 pm into an afternoon that had turned grey again. In the yard north of the station, I saw one of Amtrak's four GP-7 switchers, #760, and shortly after we passed AEM-7 #915. Then we were on the main line of the Northeast Corridor.
This was the first time I'd travelled the Corridor by daylight (at least half of the trip in daylight, anyway), so I spent most of the time window-gazing. What I saw was a lot of trains. Between Washington and Baltimore I saw five southbound trains: two NortheastDirect, two Metroliners, and one MARC. Then I stopped counting. The scenery wasn't much, I'm afraid. The railroad was mainly lined with trees until we approached a city, when we'd see more factory sites--many abandoned--and the backs of other buildings. And heading into Baltimore, of course, a fair amount of tunnel.
Coming out of Baltimore, however, we got a good view of the city to the east as we emerged from the tunnel. The signals along the railroad were clearly Pennsylvania Railroad inspired, circular with lines of three lights that could be horizontal, vertical, or slanted. We also passed a Conrail freight yard with several open hopper cars sitting in it. With the breakup of Conrail its cars are being allocated to two holding companies, which will then retain ownership but fall under the direction of Norfolk Southern and CSX respectively. So I was not surprised to see fresh markings on about half the cars identifying them for "NYC," or the old New York Central. The other half, however, were not marked "PRR" for the Pennsy as I'd expected. I learned when I got home that Conrail had decided that adding those markings would be more expensive than necessary, now that they knew which was which, and I wonder if it will ever be added when those "PRR" cars go to Norfolk Southern.
A little farther north we passed a military airfield, which I think was probably part of Aberdeen Proving Grounds. Quite a few A-10s stood on the taxiway, and I thought I saw a World War II vintage PBY Catalina seaplane.
Just beyond the well-kept platforms of the Wilmington, Delaware station, I saw a building labelled "Amtrak Consolidated Operations Center" on the right. If any of the bosses ride the train to work, that may explain why the platforms look so good! A little farther north I could see a large Amtrak yard and shop area.
Somewhere along this part of the route we decided to get some dinner in the cafe, which was more of a problem than we'd anticipated, at least for the kids. I had a reheated chicken sandwich which wasn't too bad, but the kids refused every item on the menu (except candy, of course, which we weren't about to get for supper!). Brendan would have had one of their breakfast items, but on an evening train they didn't have it. I rather regretted not getting something at the station before we left, though we'd had a large lunch and weren't hungry then. Still, that qualifies as the worst meal of the trip.
I didn't check my watch in Philadelphia, but we must have been running pretty close to time. At any rate, we had about ten minutes sitting on the platform. I debated running upstairs to get a look at 30th Street Station, and possibly to find something the kids might eat, but regretfully decided not to risk missing the train for it. As we waited, I watched two P42 Genesis locomotives, #58 and #80, spotting some Material Handling Cars and a baggage car on another track. I'm not sure which train they were from or bound to become part of.
The tracks emerge from beneath the station into a yard area on the north side, and I got a pretty good view back at the station house behind us. Among the locomotives in the yard were some E-60 electrics, but I didn't get the numbers. A little farther north a large railroad control tower stood on the left side of the tracks, with lights on inside--they haven't all been shut down by centralized control yet. A short time later, with dusk falling, we crossed the bridge over the Schuylkill River.
The railroad stays on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River until it crosses at Trenton, New Jersey, some miles northeast of Philadelphia. A large neon sign just upstream read "Trenton makes, the world takes." I wonder if the sign's poor repair was a deliberate echo of the sentiment expressed.
As we rolled through New Jersey we started seeing New Jersey Transit trains, generally self-propelled MU electric coaches. I noticed that these trains do not have enclosed vestibules between cars, and I wonder if passengers can pass through at all. Metro-North trains also lack the vestibules, but passengers can move through--though it's an uncomfortable thing to do.
While in New Jersey I took a walk through the train to get the car numbers and all, and ran into an interesting feature: a car I couldn't enter. I came to the end of a coach where a conductor was chatting with a passenger by the vestibule door. Looking through I could see another coach with red seats and the usual Tyvek headrests, but it was completely empty. I looked at the conductor, told her I'd been taking a walk through the train, and asked if that car was closed. She very kindly told me it was an old coach that had been added to the train because of "mail cars" at the end, which ran roughly and would make an uncomfortable ride for the coach ahead. I asked if it was one of the old Metroliner cars, but she said it was a Heritage coach dating from the 50s.
Sadly, I never got the number of that coach, and I gather that while it was considered safe for the rails she considered it unsafe to carry passengers. I still wonder about the reasoning, though, since plenty of Amtrak trains pull MHCs without a buffer coach.
The other thing I did in New Jersey was make a phone call to my brother, asking him to pick us up at the train station. I used the train's Railfone, which wasn't working terribly well: the connection was awful. We repeated ourselves a lot, and I wondered at the end whether he'd got much useful information.
We started doing some dozing as we went north, though I didn't actually sleep until somewhere past New York City. Sadly, the night had brought some light rain, making it hard to see the lights of Manhattan as we rolled along the elevated tracks in Brooklyn and Queens.
I woke again just past Bridgeport and started assembling things to get off. It's a long stop in New Haven, but a family with two small children can do a fair amount of unpacking! We had something of a chore recovering all the pieces of one of Brendan's toys, but we got them packed, leaving the kids to sleep until not long before arrival.
We arrived in New Haven at about 10:20 pm, about fifteen minutes late. It was pretty easy getting us and our stuff off the train with the wide aisles of the Club section and high platforms, but we had to leave through the door of the coach behind us. The train was so far along the platform that the front door may have opened on empty air, and I suspect the crew didn't want passengers exiting just where they were uncoupling the locomotive. The train would go on to Springfield after leaving New Haven, and so the electric AEM-7 locomotive was exchanged for diesels, probably an F-40PH or two.
We walked quite a way along the platform to the elevator down to the below-track tunnel to the station itself. From there I could see the higher, gentler curve of the Heritage coach, and at least two MHCs behind it--there could easily have been a third. Consist-checking gets low priority, however, at 10:30 at night with two sleepy children who need to be home and in bed.
Down below in the tunnel my brother found us, though he was fairly confused about when we'd arrived. The big board in the station's main waiting area, which is centrally controlled at late hours, hadn't reflected our late arrival. He'd been on the platform, and since we came from so far forward, he hadn't seen us there. We were all pretty glad to see each other when we did.
By a little after eleven o'clock, we were home and the kids in their own beds. It had been a very, very good trip.
Locomotive: AEM-7 #941 (phase III)
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