A Train Odyssey 2, Part 1: AMTRAK Southwest Chief

[Applause] so this is the start of my new trainer de si leaving my suburban location on the Chicago metro rail heading for Union Station in Chicago to embark on the first leg of the trip which will be the Southwest Chief of Amtrak bound for Los Angeles the date is May 12th 2018 as usual I've packed fairly lightly for a two-week trip this my overhead size carry on for overhead carry-on sized suitcase and my backpack which mostly just carries things like camera equipment this is huge the next shop anybody go yes [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] they're doing a little bit of renovation here since the last time I was here this doing some serious renovating in here [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] that's one of the downsides to being in a sleeper car because most trains are boarded from the rear so even though you're a first-class passenger you've got the longest walk to get to your car because the sleepers are usually upfront [Music] and since I couldn't shoot videos I was carrying my bags of the stairs [Music] and here we are in number nine so I'll be on the right side of the Train as far as Los Angeles my car is the last one before the dining car so at least meals will be convenient [Music] okay so as mentioned earlier on the metro train footage this is going to be a long video this is going to be the longest train Odyssey I've done so far the date is Saturday the 12th of May 2018 so may 12 2008 teen I'm on train three may I turn the volume down here a little bit so Amtrak train three in Chicago Union Station and I've got a grand tour here it's gonna be a train Odyssey heading from Chicago to Los Angeles and then that's on again train three the Southwest Chief and then continuing from Los Angeles up to Portland Oregon on the coast starlight Train and then returning from Portland to Chicago on the Empire Builder those people have been watching my train videos know that I recently took the Empire Builder just as recently as a few months ago in late December of 2017 and even though it was overall a good trip there was one day there where the heat wasn't working and with frozen toilets and cold temperatures it was somewhat unpleasant not unbearable but definitely unpleasant and part of this trip has been subsidized if you will buy a voucher from Amtrak as partial compensation for the things that didn't go very well on that other Empire Builder trip and now that it's mid May it's going to be quite different from my other trips I've not taken the Southwest Chief this time of year there should be more daylight now than what I've taken it before that coast starlight is going to be a new one for me and the Empire Builder even though I'm well familiar with it I'll be taking it on the Portland what do you want to call it the branch of the trip instead of the Seattle branch that I've always taken before that means that on that trip I'll not only be going from west to east contrary of my usual direction but I'll be going along the Columbia River for the first part of the trip which should be nice and definitely different from what I usually get on the Empire Builder and it should still be daylight going along the Mississippi on the Minnesota Wisconsin border something that's always been in pitch darkness when I've taken the Empire Builder in the past so there's something to look forward to there and there's probably going to be some other videos as well because I've got several day lay overs in both Los Angeles and Portland to do some sightseeing visit museums I've done walkthroughs of some aviation museums I'm going to do some more on this trip and some other things so should be a lot of good videos coming out of this but just to start this one off properly it's now 259 in the afternoon and the Train is supposed to depart at 3 so it should be rolling almost any minute here and usually they depart pretty punctual II so hopefully we'll be rolling here shortly I don't want to cover a lot of Illinois because I've done that on other training videos so I'm gonna try to be more selective but we should get a nice crossing of the Mississippi at Fort Madison of Iowa and I don't think I've got that on another video from the past and some other things here we go it's 3 o'clock to 59 and 50 seconds by my watch and the train is starting to roll as usual I'm in a row met in the Superliner sleeper car I have my GPS set up it still doesn't know where we are because we're underground here I have my scanner setup scan the Southwest chief frequencies I've got my Road Atlas so I can check out locations along the way and I've got my usual bag of goodies that I picked up at Union Station and my suitcase and hanging up here is my backpack I had a memory card error there just as we were pulling out of the station so I lost a little video hopefully the video I got up to that point is in good shape it's a rainy weekend but luckily it's not raining right now I'm gonna figure out where I'm not getting any announcements in my room huh and here's where the train curves coming south out of Union Station our curving towards the west we'll be heading out past Naperville and then out into the great Prairie land of northern Illinois [Music] well I didn't actually have a memory card error I was just checking that out I bought a new camera for this trip it's identical to the one I usually use but that one also gets used in my shop and it was getting banged up a little bit from being dropped too many times so I bought another one just like it and I thought I had it set up properly but it turned out I had it set up for the extreme high quality high definition video and it was just chewing through memory on my memory card so I have remedied that now [Music] don't sell it [Music] so we're just sailing along on our way towards Naperville probably get there pretty quickly I think while we're doing this I'm gonna take an opportunity to review the route so here's the good old US of a thing getting decent non shadowed lighting on this so we're here in Chicago and the train goes down - let's see yeah right about here there we go so it makes a diagonal from Chicago down to here and this is where Burlington is and then just south of it is Fort Madison and I believe that's where the tracks across the Mississippi at that point and then the tracks continued down to Kansas City so it's a diagonal about like this Kansas City and then it's more or less straight west across Kansas and the end up coming down here kind of skirt the corner of Colorado more or less like this and then it comes down here kind of close to I 25 and then it goes through the mountains here and then it curls down and it comes to Albuquerque and then it runs pretty much straight west along the northern part of Arizona it goes through Flagstaff right here then it comes in here again fairly close to the interstate and it comes in kind of up by San Bernardino here like get rid of bouncy piece of track here whoa yeah these old this is actually it grow used for Metro too and those aren't usually quite so rough but they're not spending the money to maintain the rail bed as much as they should anyway so San Bernardino comes down here through Riverside that precedes West and it hooks into Los Angeles from the south so that's the first leg of the trip Chicago all the way down descent to Los Angeles the second leg of the trip will be on the coast starlight which I actually haven't investigated the exact route but it's basically going up through here all the way to Portland when I do the separate video on that leg of the trip I'll go into more detail and then the third leg of the trip will be the Empire Builder and it'll run along the Columbia River here it'll make its way up to Spokane it'll join the other half of the Empire Builder that comes from Seattle the trains will join and then it runs all the way along highway 2 up to Grand Forks here drops down to Fargo then its diagonal down to Minneapolis and it follows the Mississippi down to the cross right here crosses over diagonals across Wisconsin - Milwaukee and then back down to Chicago so that's the Grand Tour here for this train Odyssey and we're sailing through the town a while right now that's what the family room is good for I was just having a chat as we're stopped here at Naperville with my car attendant pointing out that the PA is not working in my room that's not a big deal and it's not the first time I've had a car where the PA wasn't working they're just gonna have to write it up there's no fixing it now so mostly I don't have to listen to it because I'm getting off at the end and I'm not too worried about having to get off at some intermediate station or anything like that the main thing is hearing the call times for dinner and on this train lunch since they've decided to make lunch by reservation as well but that's not too hard to figure out without a PA system so minor inconvenience anyway so Naperville is down here relative to Chicago and after Naperville we're going to come down here and cross the Fox River in Aurora and then it's countryside after that it tracks a little bit of rough here my water bottle falling over [Music] it's one thing I like about these train trips is not only do you get to see some really spectacular scenery and a more leisurely way than you would if you were you know driving tests and you have to keep your eye on the road and certainly better than you can see it from an airplane or at least a commercial airplane but you also get to go through the the less than cosmetic side of so many towns and cities the back end of the industrial areas and a lot of backyards and so on so now we're in Aurora Illinois as evidenced by the GPS [Music] and we're gonna turn a bit south here before we cross over the river [Applause] little bouncy here and in two forks of the river was the Fox River which in many people's minds defines the west edge of Chicagoland or the greater Chicago metropolitan area after which most of the suburbs kind of petered out pretty quickly and the cornfields begin so we should be into that real shortly [Music] we're passing through sandwich Illinois [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] anyone miles an hour too early for any corn to be up [Music] we're just on the outskirts of Leland Illinois [Music] Mendota Illinois I have a friend who grew up in Mendota in the I said that there were no stop signs or stoplights anywhere in the town not sure that that's still true [Music] I didn't think Mendota was a stop but they're slowing down like that's going to be [Music] you may have all cars yep it is a stop the station looks pretty new half a quarter three so they've ordered a few passengers into my car and now they're moving ahead three cars to let these guys get on since it's not a regular platform here it's just that narrow [Music] you can hear them saying two cars one car half a car I wonder if this little railroad museum mayor's knew I don't recall singing at the last time I came through here [Music] [Music] [Music] and just pulling up Princeton Illinois so we're right there now we're going to come down here diagonally to Galesburg and continue on down to burlington past Dallas City and to Fort Madison and it is 447 so the trains been rolling only for an hour in 47 minutes [Music] that's interstate 80 down there [Music] [Music] [Music] and I think the cars are gaining on us [Music] and something else that's a little different for the first time that I can recall my sleeper car has Wi-Fi so I may try that out so I came here a small trick tip so this is just outside of the town of Buda Illinois [Music] [Music] it's interesting to observe in instances like this how the road follows the terrain but the tracks are graded to remain more or less level at least for the short term [Music] I was thinking we're going 80 miles an hour and that truck was facing us and then you'd get this little town there with these sharp turns to slow down a lot lower than 80 to make those turns so we're coming into Kewanee here [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] just outside of Altona Illinois Oh ray I'm enjoying the relaxation but I wouldn't want to be out here driving today [Music] [Music] excuse me [Music] that was the little town of Watauga I think the next town is gonna be Galesburg we're pretty close to it [Music] which should be our last stop in Illinois so this is Galesburg Illinois [Music] and it's now 5:30 so we've been rolling for two and a half hours from Chicago [Music] [Music] yeah this is the first time I've taken a train through Galesburg in many years when it wasn't pitch black by the time we got here these are a bit breezy out there the trees are moving around quite a bit wouldn't be surprised if they've got a thunderstorm brewing here in the vicinity [Music] they're doing this big project here I seem to recall the street used to cross the tracks at grade level so they're doing one of those huge underpass projects that takes forever huh know what they're doing there no idea well we're sitting here at Galesburg I should point out that I have been trying the Wi-Fi here in the car and it's it's worse than doing it over the cellular network it's probably okay for checking your emails and so on but I tried just a test of watching a couple of YouTube videos and it spends more time pausing than it does playing so not good barely usable I'm not sure if it would have been any better if I'd tried it when we were closer to the city but yeah I'm not not all that great there's a pretty stiff breeze blowing out there number 35 [Music] so we're here at Galesburg trying to get some good light on this we still have to get down here kind of by burlington we don't actually go to burlington there's this little tunnel lomax that you can see right in the middle of the picture the tracks go diagonally up from Lomax to Galesburg and then they follow the river so I'm guessing that's gonna take about another hour check it out the hewlett-packard 85 [Music] as you can see from the GPS here Galesburg is a meeting point of quite a few different railroads coming in from different angles that a switch yard in there and everything and I think pretty much every Amtrak Westerley trip from Chicago except for the Empire Builder and not counting the city of New Orleans does that go straight south more or less goes through Galesburg but they don't all go the same way they may use the same tracks as far as Galesburg and then go off and some of these different angles depending on where they're gonna cross the Mississippi and and head further west and it's possible I don't actually know the road of the city in New Orleans maybe it goes through here too classic round barn kind of a small one but I don't think that qualifies as a grain shed maybe it is anyway it's around and the trains making this little gyration here looks like we're swapping over to another set of tracks here at Cameron yep there's the right branch and we're taking the left one it seems to me when I've come this way before because this other track here also comes from Galesburg so it's like they send us out on a different track than you normally use now we have to do this little maneuver to get onto the correct track there's price some rail fans out there that'll say no I'm full of it it's always done this way but I don't want so now we've merged onto that line once miracle [Music] [Music] this is the town of media Illinois it's more of a place than a town I think there might be a little town there a couple blocks wide I was just exhausted it was like the different oils like Fred my different style the council's you're not in this is a weird bridge yes ever show to her way River came right oh you're not in don't worry let y'all get the graduate in the first week so we just crossed over the Mississippi and now we're in Fort Madison Iowa spiritually from right so we'll having crossed the Mississippi and into the very corner of Iowa south of Forth Fort Madison we've been coming down at an angle here and you can see on the GPS there's the border with Missouri so we're just getting right across from Iowa into Missouri now now that we're bending westward again this is the state line here this is the Des Moines River by the way [Music] so now looking at the detailed map [Music] trains going to come pretty much diagonally across the state into Kansas City I suppose by the time we get to Kansas City it'll long be dark then we get to go through Kansas tonight and wake up in Colorado or possibly western Kansas I'm not sure exactly how the time line works out for that but so North East and Missouri isn't much different from northwestern Illinois [Music] fun and timely fact that in the dining car they didn't have any salads for this trip even though it's supposed to be part of the meal they didn't really offer an explanation my only guess is that because the recent scare of romaine lettuce from wherever in Arizona are I think of Arizona that it was coming in infected with e.coli or something that there's been a big drop in the supply of lettuce maybe that caused it we're doing about 90 miles an hour now they stood by sure it off the base my program [Music] well it's about 8:20 in the evening and it's gonna be too dark to take any video here pretty soon so I think I'm going to have to continue this tomorrow so it's about 9:30 that's my usual going to bed time on the trains because it's usually dark by that time nothing to see and I don't really find that the lights in the room are bright enough to do much reading at least not one sitting up it's okay to read my book laying down but that's about it so 9:30 is retiring time and my room has been made up for the night for a nice section of rough track here and probably an hour to north east of Kansas City at this point but I suppose we'll be there before midnight at the rate we're going and I'll resume this video in the morning well it's now the 13th and it's about 6:10 in the morning I was up at 5:30 to get a shower I'm getting ready to go to the dining car now and it's still mostly dark outside the GPS says that we're in Garden City which if i zoom out you can see right there there's the state line so we should be in extreme western Kansas at this point ready to cross over into Colorado so time for breakfast well they're not actually open in the dining car until 6:30 I could have sworn I heard them say 6 o'clock but since I wasn't getting announcements in my room I may have misheard so I have to wait a little bit more enjoy some of this Creed on Kansas glory here my home state by the way [Music] even though I was so little I didn't know it [Music] well on the state map of Kansas we're not quite as close to the borders I thought I was I wasn't getting any reference points on my GPS so looking at the map here's Garden City and we still have a ways to go however many miles that is looks like it's at least 60 miles yet till we get to the border and we're paralleling highway 50 so I'll probably probably be done with breakfast before we get out of Kansas [Music] I don't know how we're doing schedule wise because I've noticed on my more recent Amtrak trips that they haven't been putting the schedules in the rooms anymore so I don't know if that's a cost-saving move or what if I really really wanted to know I could pull it up on my smartphone but I don't care that much [Music] whereas remember to check three garden cities hatzor 1721 [Music] [Music] so while I'm waiting for breakfast a bit of a tidbit of information here that I don't know that I've mentioned on my other train videos you'll hear on the scanner they'll say you know Amtrak three clear to highball or something like that just before the train starts to move and there's usually a blast from the whistle happening at that same time and highball is just a shorthand term meaning that the Train is clear to proceed and go to the full rated speed for that section of track so basically no speed restrictions other than the maximum allowed speed they don't have to pull out at any particular slow speed for a while they can you know if the speed in the area is 60 miles an hour they can go to 60 as quick as they want a goal basically is what it's saying and the term apparently originated from early signal pre radio where in rail yards they would lift a large white ball off a vertical pole in sight of the locomotives and if the ball was all the way at the top of the pole that meant the same thing basically you're clear to take off and go to your full allow the speed so hence the term high ball and it's a cute term that's stuck apparently another round and at 7:15 we are crossing into Colorado [Music] having just returned for breakfast [Music] so 7:20 in the morning on the second day and the GPS says that were to get a focus here and it's bouncy on highway 50 or just by Highway 50 just about halfway between the state line and highway 385 which puts us around Granada there well actually we're not that far Yeti which we're not eating at 385 yet so we're kind of where it says Holly there and I think in general where we going along Highway 52 blunt and then more or less down along Highway 350 there to the Trinidad area and then down into New Mexico they that's the general route such as cutting the corner of the state [Music] there's something about the particular vibration from the tracks at this moment which is resonating with the bottom of my door if I put my foot against that it stops vibrating but if I don't it shakes so off there in the distance is highway 50 [Music] she is my camera gonna focus [Music] looks like it's gonna be difficult [Music] you can pretty much hear it on the video here is the there's a shaking rattling going on can feel it through the seat of my pants I guess it's the track here but almost feels like there's a flat spot on the wheel but we didn't have that earlier so this is Granada and when I was mentioning times this morning it was central time I was mentioning but we're in mountain time now I'm not sure where the timezone changed if it was right at the Colorado border maybe anyway so it's now only 6:30 in the morning local time and just before 7:00 in the morning mountain time we pull into the town of Lamar Colorado [Music] it sure mines me the little Bergen Wisconsin where my father grew up [Music] about the same kind of town the Thai spicy basil Asian grill yeah well seven o'clock in the morning on a Sunday it's gonna be pretty quiet me neither I've seen a lot of these windmill type rigs this morning they look like the traditional windmills I'm familiar with except they have many more vanes with a much finer finer blades on them it's just a really wonderful stretching traffic around here it pretty much precludes trying to read tried reading my kindle and I just couldn't keep the text and focus with the bouncing around so it's looking out the window instead everything here is apparently irrigated this this area might actually be fairly arid on its own but it's irrigated all the fields you can see around the corners of them are just scrub like this area here and on the green parts of the big circle [Music] where they've got the irrigating machines and see what there so we're approaching a conservation area here just south of highway 50 which is just a little ways off in the distance this is I think they called the John Martin reservoir and coming up very quickly on the left we'll see the dam at the discharge of the reservoir I believe it's the Arkansas River that flows in and out of this reservoir see the dam there in the distance it's gonna bounce around a lot I see if I can stabilize it just about impossible to hold cameras that he had here with all the bouncing around and the speeds been quite low were technically going 61 miles an hour feels like we're going 40 and I think it's because the track is so rough here they've got a speed restriction on it otherwise we should be flying through here p.m. have a few Tector milepost 50.1 no defects repeat no defects touhou acts out you can see here we're approaching a the section the reservoir that extends down I have a vague recollection that there might be a causeway across that that the drain goes across I guess we'll find out [Music] well if there's gonna be a causeway we're gonna be on it any second here there we go [Music] now the track has gotten slightly smoother and R up to 80 miles an hour now approaching the western edge of the reservoir a lot of submerged trees over there this is lost on us I think they have a few cows at this ranch a little smoother now not so much rattling but it's still bumpy and bouncy here so I'm still not able to read my book we're paralleling a small river here I'm not sure which one it is here's I can tell from the map it's the Arkansas River I'm not sure about that my GPS doesn't show it and my other map isn't of sufficient resolution I'm not getting good data connection out here for my phone to look it up a Google map so [Music] we're on the eastern outskirts of LA that's spelled like La Junta but it's la untie Paulo Eve [Music] that's a big freight train here [Music] so I suspect that the Leventis station is on the other side of the train you got time yeah so this is the wonderful lanta station not very much here we detected so what we have here these two locomotives followed by the baggage car followed by what I believe is the transition car there and then one sleeper car in my sleeper car and then the dining car and the lounge car that I have not been to yet and then looks like three coach cars back there goodbye the see these people over here cleaning their window they're apparently in the family room there because it's got the small window that's one reason why I don't care for the family room is because the windows are small I wish I could clean my window but I'm on the upper level you can see that the windows are a little bit dirty I last year [Music] so still in a LAN to Colorado there's a long station stop here and I've relocated to the lounge car because there are a couple of people from the National Park Service who are going to be giving a talk as we proceed from look into here down pest Trinidad and as I can find in Mexico and then continuing down from Trinidad as far as Las Vegas New Mexico testing testing one two the Internet cheering number three Southwest eco services Los Angeles California most of you between the ages of 7 and 13 we offer a junior Ranger program after the conductor perspective your ticket you're all welcome to join us in the lounge car for this interpretive more thank you - and an attract I'd like to introduce you to the trails and roads program aboard this outlet chief the program which began in 1994 is a partnership between Amtrak and the u.s. national search in which with an Irish or Scottish growth and multi cultural setting was beginning of us where people from many backgrounds were mixed and socialize that's work was not a military clothes but 1,700 troops past the 40 1840 lives paste about 50 yards apart placed by the u.s. Forest Service these polls show the amount of the original Santa Fe Trail was important venture on the trail for survival of the people and the lifestyle even though the stop at tempest was considered important for survival the Greek here was often just a serious Internet at pool the Plains Indians lives for centuries and Matic tribes supported by the the Comanche and Kiowa they dominated the southern flanks and later Messiah and Arapaho rose to power and 2,600 perforce quest the plane has spent many hours rewinding their buffalo hunting techniques the Cheyenne move their mark the buffalo head was used for spiritual rituals dance was and still is an important aspect complaint Indian culture is an expression of art spirituality language ritual culture and identity and some large annual gatherings that last one week we can't see it we could have a little bit ago if we didn't have floud but we need to talk about pipes is a most famous plant it inspired an English teacher to write the words a chance right stops this is normal throughout most of the year the grass is dormant waiting for the next rainy season which runs from May through July the time we are all hoping we get more rain the dominant grasses are blue drama and buffalo grass both highly nutritious raising plants bird grasses have long root systems but plant only a few inches I pie can have a four foot root system grasses are eaten by grazing animals even in the door in the southwest the premise for the mainstay of the range grammas meaning brats and Spanish were named by the Spanish conquistadors the US Department of Agriculture says Gramma's our choice grazing for all livestock so this is looking for Pikes Peak here Oh yeah I think that's it there but now I'm shooting obliquely through the window and it's not coming out I don't know if it's completely true with the Park District person said this section of track is not used by freight trains except in emergencies it was supposedly improved from whatever it was fairly recently it's still pretty rough that's got to be a major expense and Amtrak has had big cutbacks in their budget so and I don't know if they're responsible for maintaining this rail line or not if it's owned by another company and they're just using it I'm sure but whatever the case may be it's still not very smooth track well I'm back in my room I really wanted to hear the presentation that the Park Service ladies were trying to present but it seemed like every five minutes the guy from the dining car decided to chime in with his his sales pitch and they had to keep interrupting it and then all the people in the car a bunch of people moved in who wanted to carry on their own conversations instead of listening to the presentation pretty soon I couldn't follow it anymore and just became annoying so I think that's Pikes Peak in the distance I wonder if my camera will pick it up now totally losing focus I think that's it there you try my other camera so as the GPS shows we're just paralleling highway 350 here so we're still paralleling highway 350 at 9:30 in the morning and we're coming in we're highway 160 and highway 25 s intersect at Trinidad so we've made our way from La Quinta down here almost all the way to Trinidad were right there where the highways come together on the east side of Trinidad then we're going to be heading pretty much straight south into New Mexico so we can start seeing the mountain range here after the West [Music] [Music] my Road atlas identifies the nearest mountain range for the West as the Sangre de Cristo Mountains just a very narrow mountain range I would have thought those would still be further away than what these look like so again I'm not sure there's a couple of decent-sized peaks in the distance there but I can't really identify what those are [Music] [Music] [Music] so we're pulling into Trinidad Colorado now and that's I 25 just off to the right so we just now pulled into the Trinidad station and do a quick walk but we're not at any platform yet at least not this car pretty jury yeah we're gonna go to Sedona tomorrow which have you ever been there love it it's like heaven I think it's they call it the second heaven wait now the next day she's not coming up we'll be right on the Mexico and talk to anyone our we're telling the Mexico come know anyone out so just a few minutes before 10:00 in the morning we're leaving Trinidad Colorado soon to cross into New Mexico this is actually a pretty area here you've got a little bit of elevation there's a bit more vegetation got the nice rock outcroppings [Music] I was down hoping to get off at the station platform but they did not open the doors on my car so I think it's one of those stops where they only open it for the people who need to get on and off in those specific cars it wasn't a long enough stop to be letting everybody offer a smoke break or anything so we're paralleling I 25 here and gaining elevation trains will enjoyed about 30 miles an hour because we're going up a shallow grade at this a little bit of a mountain range here I think he gets up to about seven thousand seventy five hundred feet elevation at the pass and proud and higher adjacent to the pass of course otherwise it wouldn't be a pass luckily the Heys is cleared now we've got a nice blue sky day [Music] [Music] [Music] get a view of the front of the train there briefly [Music] [Music] [Music] no defects no defects snow detector now so we can zoom in up here and see that the interstate is going up a pretty good climb there and our trains gonna be there it is making this big curve it's going to go all the way around there that's where we've come from down there so you can see we definitely been coming up a pretty decent grade it's the 20 miles an hour the trains been doing for the last 20 30 minutes [Music] we're about to go through the rattan tunnel and this is right near the Ratan pass which itself is 7800 35 feet above sea level I believe it's also right at the Colorado New Mexico border so we're getting into the cut here for the tunnel and there's the face of the towel so we are now in New Mexico and the way up there are people traveling much faster than we are and as was mentioned by the Park Service ladies a bit earlier this train is generally paralleling the old Santa Fe Trail which was an important trail during the expansion of the United States into the western territories and the trail went through the same route on pass that we have just been going through and that was the highest point on that trail yeah we can see that everything's going downhill gradually there there was evidently a forest player came through here in the not-too-distant past Walt telephone lines laying down there all the wires snapped and laying on the ground [Music] windows are real dirty I think it did get some rain on it overnight and then picked up all the dust going through the the more desert area this dry that's been there thank you [Music] you know unclear should we get the high bowl right back and we're rolling on my car attendant says it takes four to five hours to get from here to Albuquerque which is the next stop I believe it's pretty much along this way up through these mountains so it's fairly pretty up there and I recall it goes near Los Alamos and then it continues on down to Albuquerque and then at pretty much parallels i xl west past Gallup and then into Arizona and it'll probably be pretty late in the day by that time late afternoon so right now it's about 11 o'clock so it should be maybe four o'clock ish by the time to get into Albuquerque hopefully for some good scenery between here and there [Music] until a dry wash here [Music] there's a rest stop along i-25 which is now on our right side we've got this nice Bratley jostling Trackman got here I 25 [Music] come on are only going 78 miles an hour we go 80 day we can pass that truck somebody's got a broken down or not broken but a small threshing machine and a combine harvester with at least one head on it lots of cattle out here including all the little squirts that have then born in the not-too-distant past a lot of them are laying down the hard to spot it's 12:00 noon mountain time and according to the GPS we are about here still paralleling by 25 and approaching Las Vegas New Mexico so I never I put most of my train videos up on YouTube I've got a lot of people who subscribe for them and they criticize me harshly because I don't show the food so it's about 1:00 in the afternoon and I just finished lunch as I was at lunch the train went through Las Vegas New Mexico and now it's heading towards Santa Fe it's still paralleling I 25 so it's dipping down and now it's heading back up towards Santa Fe and although if I recall correctly from the last time I took this trip it didn't actually go to Santa Fe that it kind of cut the corner and a bit south of there so I don't know if they're running exactly the same route now or not we'll find out that's interstate 25 just over there and we ran a bit of twisty turny track here which is probably why the train isn't going any faster than the 20 miles an hour is doing we are going down a slope here so the land is rapidly dropping away as you can see here it goes down to a pretty low Basin down there I'm gathering that's where we're going to be presently [Music] so we're still paralleling i-25 here and we're approaching the town of ilfeld in this area here is considered to be the national I'm sorry the Santa Fe National Forest we're coming into the outskirts of ilfeld now [Music] and we're sailing along here at about 75 miles an hour bumpier than anklet still paralleling hi 25 go into that area now where we're heading back up a little bit when I cannot put the camera steady there even with both hands it sounds like my washing machines out of balance or there reporting for West it was bring her total be trapped under there 13:54 one three five horror right here on that zigzag loop of i-25 that's two o'clock in the afternoon marvelous erosion down there this me has a cute ranch down there and that bowl seems like quite a few of these isolated houses here that imply somebody has a fair amount of money so we're just now leaving the Santa Fe National Forest we're still next to I 25 and the map this is where we are right in the center of the picture there is the zig zag Ron so we're really just outside of Santa Fe New Mexico on the southeast side tracts have departed away from i-25 I do seem to recall that there was a bypass the last time I came this way where it didn't the goal quite where you thought it was going to go after a 24 with an immersive bachelor this is Lanie or Allah may or la my anyhow verify our track morning maybe her man yeah just waiting on a warrant runner which is right there in the middle of the screen right below Saturday three anniversary special everything you've got tread for 1020 so we're somewhere right around here now and I think we kind of parallel I 25 at a bit of a distance coming into Albuquerque from the north there yeah so we weren't urging so bad so this is where the train is now it's kind of running near this river and a bit off to the west of i-25 heading down into Albuquerque and you can see the River Valley down there where that river is and it's just about 3:00 in the afternoon we should be getting into Albuquerque by 3:30 and we're making about 75 miles an hour at this moment [Music] we're all right grunts weird aunt Kendall a row now boydle and we're in Albuquerque proper now but not the downtown part yet obviously a lot of fences with razor wire on top maybe this isn't the nicest part of town I'm number four ten monitors so delay outside the station while another Amtrak train was sitting there it had to wait for it to get its bit done that at work doctor for I'm already a bureau all right Albuquerque and this is a lawn stop here so here in Albuquerque station it's about a 45-minute stop I presume they have crew changes and fuelling the locomotives probably adding new water to the tanks and the cars and so on this car here it looks like a Superliner sleeper car but where the crews leaves they have a different complement of bathrooms and showers I don't think they have the full-size bedroom is upstairs I think it's all all romance although these transition cars so I've been told I've never been in one but apparently from time to time when they have a room that they'll let an overflow of people from the regular sleeper cars stay in a couple of the rooms in the transition car nice and warm but not hot this one's a little different it's got this no windows on the lower level I don't know it's just a different model or if this one's got baggage storage or what the crew member back there confirmed this is a special model of coach car that does not have seating on the lower level and instead they have that area the windows are blocked off and they've got that extra door on there and that's so they can carry additional baggage there otherwise the baggage is way up at the other end of the Train t'rul attractive station [Music] one thing that I've been asked many times not so much on YouTube but by friends and colleagues who are interested in going on the trains and I point out that the Superliner trains your double deckers and that you can only get from car to car at the upper level and that's in evidence there and they say well how tall are the cars and I point out they're only about as tall as the metro rail cars that are common in Chicago which are double layers too but they they're more like a mezzanine level there is not really two distinct levels and there's a big difference that those cars do not use the interstitial space between one set of trucks and the other set at the front that whole space in the middle on something like a Metroliner car really has nothing in it maybe it's got air conditioning or something but the floor is actually about where that red line would be on this car so the first floor starts from there and goes up and there or there's not a full-height for the second level so it's kind of scrunched vertically but on the Superliner cars the bottom floor is only one step up from the from the platform you don't have to go up about three steps like you do on the commuter train cars and that allows the lower floor to be lower therefore they can have two full height floors in the Superliner car but the downside to that is that the lower floor cannot go all the way to the ends of the car because there's the wheel trucks there so you've got a shorter lower level and that's also why you can't go from car to car at the lower level because there's no physical space to get a person through there you must go to the upper level to get through I'm hoping that my camera is getting this narration but the wind blowing like it is but here's an illustration getting into a sleeper car so it's this whole area here above the truck is machinery I don't know what all's in it you know there's air conditioning heating equipment whatever in there all the way up to the floor level and then of course the upper floor continues to the next carb out there and that's roughly where the the floor is for the upper level and then the lower level starts right about here that's the end of a handicapped Turo more accessible room as they call it and then you've got the little half window because you can't go all the way over there's a wall about there so no room for the usual six-foot window and then then you've got the two row Mets on each side here and then the space in between is either got the stairway if you're on one side or it has the restrooms if you're on the other side so while I'm yakking about it yeah that's the side with the family room and they for remits and then of course the luggage area and the stairs and a utilitarian utility area and then on this side you've got the shower room and three restrooms and then the accessible room on Thanet which is a mirror image of the family room I think number three have all Albuquerque personally loved research equipment that is correct sitting here with the train facing south and the Sun coming in are you're baking in here so I'm eager for the trying to stop headed west there's a big old round table down there where turntable whatever they call it so it's about 5:30 and the train is left the Albuquerque immediate area and now we're heading out into the flat more desert like area between Albuquerque and Gallup which is on the Arizona border we're still heading south here and it looks like now to the west of Los Lunas the trains are finally starting to turn in a westerly direction which means I won't have the Sun blasting in my window so much of the art we're now paralleling highway 6 heading westbound there's a nice long freight train that's interesting there's another one coming up right behind he is rolling at the moment there's another freight train in the distance it's just sitting there they like they're queued up [Music] I'm on top awful today another time she's up reset it without doing that by the time they reached us [Music] and paralleling the freight rail line and highway 6 just the narrow blacktop road there we are rapidly coming up to intersect with Interstate 40 which is heading west to Gallup and Arizona [Music] [Music] I believe that was highway six we just went under all of the old wooden bridge surprise make for a highway of that sort and then why in the distance just by that bluff there or that ridge is inter nice interstate 40 [Music] rapidly gaining on them [Music] and so we finally caught up with interstate 40 here I've said we're gonna go under it yeah parallel it from the north side apparently [Music] [Music] workers dr. judy won't be flagstaff to station stops away when did you step off the drink beware there is a step between the train and the set box a little ways down please touch when you are detraining thank you calendar Mexico phone up and as it says up here we're now in Gallup Mexico this is a real short stop there's a few minutes and so at about 7:30 we're pulling out of Gallup my Mexico the next stop is Winslow Arizona and then after that Flagstaff that'll be at night trying to get a picture out of here now because of all the glare and reflections but we're sailing along than parallel with I forty in extreme western New Mexico right there ready to cross into Arizona we're sailing along here at about 90 miles an hour and we're really close to the Arizona border now yep that was yet just about somewhere right about here is the state line I think we just passed it I could actually see the color on the the highway change color as if one state is maintaining it differently from another it's about 8:45 at night or just sailing along here still paralleling I forty and were in between Holbrook and Joseph City and all these nice lights and the distance is the the Choya powerplant that CH o ll a which is one that I helped design earlier in my career [Music] let up like a Christmas tree [Music] it's gonna be time to go to bed here pretty soon [Music] it's about 10:15 at night and we just pulled into Flagstaff so it's the morning of the third day of the trip this is May 14th 2018 got up at about 4:15 this morning because breakfast was going to be served from five til six with a limited menu due to the early time expected into Los Angeles they require a couple hours to clean up and put things away and whatever they have to do to clear the crew out of the diner car and in my experience they usually require at least a couple hours after the last service before the train arrives so that timing made sense that they needed to have us done by 6:00 a.m. pretty much so in order to get my shower and all that stuff taken care of I was up bright and early so we went through San Bernardino while I was eating breakfast according to the GPS were just on the west side of Grand Terrace and that would put us well again the shadows gonna be inconvenient here but there's grand Terrace in the middle of the picture and San Bernardino on top Riverside would be down south of us and the lighting is not gonna be ideal for this but see if I can make it work so I think the Train pretty much makes a big loop like this and then up into LA from the south [Music] and of course we came in from the north along the interstate into San Bernardino it is a big pass in the mountains there and even at the time I got up this morning it was just choked with traffic commuters apparently heading into the Los Angeles area and trying to beat the traffic but they already consist of a there was already a lot of traffic because they were there I can't imagine doing that commute and now we're just coming into the north side of Riverside California [Music] it's 6:10 in the morning we're still going through Riverside her butt halfway through it it's a pretty big community back America we're just over on the west side of Corona now negging their service another Westerkamp report to gate nine one one zero seven more people and nine five one eight of the ten penis against romantic of three K 44 one has to risk like a mofo 30 dungeon without stuffing and that Bufferin penis crawl matron oh yes that I'm not heading into the city this morning and that by the way is highway 91 down there California 91 it might as well be an interstate it's a limited access highway but it is not an interstate it's like we're converging 91 maybe we're going under it [Music] and now we're passing through with your Belinda [Music] Grandad's approach 13 [Music] and we're now sailing along halfway in between placenta and Fullerton so on the overall Los Angeles area map we've come down this way and now we're right about here we're in Fullerton now [Music] very approach [Music] [Music] mrs. Fullerton station this is Pico Rivera we're going through here this is in the big rail yards and commerce which is just south of East Los Angeles so this is East Los Angeles now track know where possible even though you go back somewhere in that area there just west of i7 to south of i-5 basically great about here yeah downtown Los Angeles is visible not too far away our heart there's this large canal here basically which is often dry although it's got that slightly lower area in the middle that every time I've been here has some water flowing through it my map doesn't identify what it is but I've been told it's the Los Angeles or Los Angeles River at about 7:30 5:00 in the morning we're just parked here next to the Los Angeles River which does have water flow on its deepest channel we arrived here early and we're really just outside of the area where the station is but because we're here early we're just sitting here fighting our time until some other trains clear out of the station and 7:50 in the morning we start rolling again [Music] right now would like to be here sometime when this canal has actually got water and it more than just a trickle and we're right where the blue dot is and the tracks have come in from the southeast and they're making this loop they were halfway through they were gonna come down from the north and into the rail yard here at Union Station so we're really close at this point yes ready for a life here in comfort [Applause] my brother shopping him and I want to chattering turn handle my friend got me for setting a junction yeah got me happy so this is Los Angeles Union Station that we're pulling into the end of the line [Music] and that's it this station is crazy busy right now and everybody's going the direction opposite the way I'm going and just since we're here we're going to go into their Great Hall well the rental-car counters are down this way off the Great Hall the last time I was here there was absolutely nobody at either the Avis or the budget desks or the Hertz desk is just abandoned even though it was supposed to be the time they were gonna be here and I ended up canceling that in calling an enterprise car but this time it looks like there's somebody here hopefully and the Metropolitan lounge for when I come back here in a few days is down this way this is just out in front of Los Angeles Union Station [Music] you you

Channel: youtuuba

Views: 376,341

Keywords: AMTRAK, Train Odyssey, Southwest Chief, Chicago, Mississippi River, Fort Madison, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Los Angeles, Roomette, Sleeper Car

Id: DV8I93QbmFo

Length: 179min 27sec (10767 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 02 2018