A Train Odyssey 4, Part 2 (Day 1), AMTRAK "Crescent"

well here it is when the 25th of and I'm here in New Orleans train passenger terminal it's not called Union Station and I'm a little early there isn't a metropolitan lounge in this station or anything like it really for first-class passengers there is the Magnolia room which is down in that corner but it's really just a very small room I've been told it only has about a dozen seats in it for first-class passengers who want ramier plusher chairs but it doesn't have a apparently doesn't have soft drinks or refreshments doesn't have its own restroom doesn't have an attendant it's just a way to get away from the throngs if you will in the in the main passenger terminal and what I understand it's not open yet but my understanding is you have to go into the main Amtrak check-in ahead and then they give you a code which you use to open the door and go in but you know if you have to leave for any reason then you pretty much gotta you know bring your stuff with you and it's definitely a long way from the metropolitan lounge experience that I've seen in other stations so I think I'm just gonna chill out here in the main lobby today we'll be getting on the Amtrak Crescent train it's a two-day train its departs here in New Orleans at 7:00 a.m. so I'm here just a little bit before 6:00 because I was uncertain of travel time from my hotel to the terminal wanted to make sure I didn't get here late I always like to get to the station at least an early or an hour early so as of course the the taxi showed up early and took hardly any time to get here so I'm here plenty early it's not mobbed with people sleeping on benches or anything just a bit of a look around here you've got your gates over here a b and c nothing on there makes it look like all the train gates are right over in that corner and i only see the three of them and that's one exit at that end the exit here and the exit there three sides this is the one that goes out what appears to be the front of the station to the circular driveway over in that direction are the restrooms and some vending machines again the gates are over here there's a so-called charging station over there with a lady sleeping in our wheelchair in front of it the big Amtrak ticketing booth area there's a almost as big Greyhound ticketing area and I think that must just be administration or something over there and then over here is a convenience store and a subway and some video games and more vending machines and that appears to be about it not that big of a terminal really [Music] so I usually do the wrote or review on the train but often the lighting is so bad I'm going to do it this time in the station [Music] so we start out here today in New Orleans and then it pretty much just follows I fifty nine up here to Hattiesburg it crosses over into Mississippi of course very soon after leaving New Orleans and to Hattiesburg and then appeared at meridian along I 59 then it starts following I 20 and I 59 up to Tuscaloosa and Birmingham and then it branches away from my 59 and follows I 20 over to Atlanta and it goes up this way along i-85 up to Greenville South Carolina it continues up here to Charlotte and greens boring all of this in North Carolina and then it gets away from the interstate and follows i-20 inward this highway 29 up here towards Lynchburg Virginia and then continues up here to Washington DC and then up to Philadelphia and I believe it ends in New York City but I'm getting off in Philadelphia just a little bit short to the end I wanted to take the Crescent as far as possible but I still have a dinner appointment tomorrow evening way back in Virginia in the Richmond area so I have to take in to account realistic driving time from wherever I get off the train back to here in time for my dinner appointment and I figured if I went all the way to New York it would be too long you know I would probably add another 45 minutes or something to the train trip and by the time I get the rental car and get out of New York and drive all the way back it's gonna cost me a couple hours that's too much but it'll work getting off at Philadelphia and driving back and then I have some additional I'm gonna be all through this area driving around after the Train Odyssey is over so there will be some videos on those things as well anyway that's an overview the Crescent is a very straight train pretty much just straight up like that [Music] [Applause] [Music] so I'm just getting set up in my room here and unlike the city of New Orleans the Crescent is on a view liner type car so it's a single level car and I have done a more in-depth coverage of view liner rue Metz and my video on the Amtrak Cardinal train but and I'm not going to repeat all that here but I did use the sink already and this is the way the sink deals with drainage you just tip it up and all the water just runs to the back and you lock it out of the way and there is a toilet in the room which I've currently got with all the stuff I have to plug in I normally only use the the sink in the morning and at night when I'm you know brushing my teeth and so on so my outlets trip it's not as handy to do as it is with a super liner where the outlet is over by the window you have to get your outlet strip over to the other side somehow so what I usually do is just kind of tuck it up like this so I can use the toilet if I have to and then the sink will still come down more or less it's a bit of an angle but it still works and then I don't have to unplug all my stuff and the toilet lid will still rise up it works pretty well so now I have to go and set up my GPS and my scanner so this is the hallway down from the the entrance those are the three bedrooms that are available here and then it's all romance down this side so again the rooms about the same size as a Superliner room at the door is just the same the latch is just the same except the this party swings in a little differently like that you get your room light and turn it on there we go I'm not sure what it doesn't need to turn it up but turning it off come on light there we go and then you've got your mirror eh which is way up high I think it's there partially so if you're in the upper bunk you can use that too it's just like a 3-way switch so if you're in the upper bunk and you want to use you have to use these the lip below the sink and the cover of the toilet as your steps to get up and down and so you want to light up there so you can see what you're doing that's why the light switches up there as well but you don't have to reach up there if you're down the lower level you just turn it off that way and the upper bunk doesn't swing down from the ceiling it just lowers down from the ceiling with this lever here so my room attendant just stopped by to introduce himself and say that breakfast will be served after we get out of or get past Slidell about another 50 minutes or so I presume that will be long past the New Orleans area by that time although I don't know exactly where Slidell is I'll have to look that up but it is now seven o'clock which is the published departure time for this train and I did think I heard a whistle sound just a few seconds ago my GPS knows where we are here at the station there is another horn sounded oops there we go so one full day one full night and half of tomorrow on the Amtrak crescents going past the smoothie king center New Orleans this is my current default thinking for baggage stowage in this room now I can't actually stick things up in the overhead there but I find it's really hard to get at it so I don't put my stuff up there I just sit in my suitcase there although if it gets in the way of my feet or something there is the storage area to the left of my seat that I can clear it in if I wish to and I might choose to later on or maybe just my backpack to clear up the toilet make it a little easier to access but I think this is a good working arrangement for one person and a view liner Vermette and while I was yakking we passed the Superdome so we're just passing under interstate ten here drove right on that ramp late yesterday afternoon coming back from the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway I have a separate video on that there's a lot of streaks on the outside of this window hoping that they don't show up too much once the Sun is up a little bit more might actually help too cut off the extra light coming from the hallway might make a little less lawyer accelerating up through 30 miles an hour adult will get a whole lot faster than this within the city that we'll see so here's our position within New Orleans at this time Alpo the biggest problem I have right now with photography is I'm getting a lot of reflection from light colored objects in the room that I can't do anything to hide all that light beige wall and toilet and sink areas showing up as reflections that should go away somewhat once the angle the Sun changes this is also part of i-10 here we've been running pretty much underneath it for a while and we've still kind of are I'm sure I'm gonna be able to get a view of this or not our train is curving along up there this is u.s. highway 61 that we just crossed under I believe there's only two sleepers on this train I'm in the one towards the rear behind this is one or two baggage cars so we've got the two sleeper cars one in front of me and then die on I believe the diner car first and then the lounge car which I don't plan to use on this trip and then the coach cars in front of that kind of backwards from the way most of Amtrak's long-distance trains are set up where the coach cars are towards the rear and the first class is up front big above-ground cemetery water tables too high here to be planting people's Six Feet Under [Music] they just tend to Bob to the surface again so everything is in above-ground structures of one kind or another just a lot of these little almost looks like cinder blocks maybe they are these above-ground crypts can't be very pleasant places to being as hot as it gets down here monthly no living person has to tolerate that trains curving around up to the front of course as we go past Lake Pontchartrain gonna be looking right into the Sun which is not too great we're just coming up on ten here where it intersects at 6:10 and then goes west I presume we're gonna go continue to go north here okay we've proved around a little bit here well I was incorrect from my pre-trip study of the route I'd seen one map that showed the train going around this way to get out but now it appears we're going to exit the city going east and therefore not go around the north side of Lake Pontchartrain Slidell is up here and that's our first station stop on the trip and breakfast should be served starting around the time we get to there so my guess is we're gonna go up this way now [Music] those streaks on the window are gonna be a problem although they will be less apparent once the Sun gets at the right angle a little bit more overhead it's gonna up the photography it's very apparent that Amtrak doesn't clean the outside of their windows anymore before a train starts when I first started traveling with them I could see them cleaning the windows going through major stations and things they had contractors come out doing that you know it's important to them that the view was good that's apparently one of the things they've had to deal with due to funding cuts from Congress this looks to me like a little dust on the windows maybe some overnight condensation running down the windows drying and just leaving those streaks somebody went over it with a little Windex or just a squeegee and some water in the morning it would have probably been a lot better [Music] [Music] [Music] we're going to be passing under interstate 10 again here shortly as it hits out east of the city we already went past the junction of interstate 10 and interstate 610 at the west end of the city and now this is interstate 10 coming up from our right that's coming up from downtown and it's passing up to the Northeast here as we go under it and just to our left is where it intersects with 6/10 they're coming in from the West that's the bypass but we're not going to go right under the junction due east Oh so now we're going to go due north joining up of East tracks coming from the south look sick will pass under interstate 10 again and here's interstate 10 again you know we're accelerating I drag 23 twenty-nine and I would thank you and we are trained 20s only hear things on the scanner referring referencing Amtrak 20 that's us okay now at 7:30 the tracks are finally up along the south end of Lake Pontchartrain so in order to get a view of that I'm going to leave my room [Music] [Music] [Applause] the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway is off in the distance there but of course we can't see it because it's already over the horizon and we're fairly down to close to ground level wanted to dig Pig juice every to across the event gave no until later tonight every tune so great which was moved into the vacant room across the aisle from my room the car attendant said I could do that nobody's gonna be getting in here till later on today it's a lot easier to sit here comfortably and do this than to stand there in the vestibule lurching around at some point up here the trains got to go across pause other pose one date 1.6 no defects and colorful together so we're rapidly approaching the point where we run out of land and have to start crossing the water and there is just a faint line showing the causeway will be on and it's just right next to the causeway that interstate 10 goes across okay we're on the causeway that's the interstate 10 causeway off to that side there's another causeway which is US highway 11 causeway not sure I'll be able to zoom in on it enough to get it lost in the jitter but you can see a lower cause with it's a bit closer it's the highway 11 causeway the the map shows it is closed and I don't see any traffic on it so I presume that's the former highway 11 cause wait you can see the the high part of the interstate 10 causeway there or goes up to a higher level to hello taller ships to go through into Lake Pontchartrain but this is such a narrow causeway that we really just get no idea that there's anything under us there's nothing like a single track causeway that's so narrow there's no structure visible from the Train you can kind of see some sort of pilings that are down there occasionally going by so you can see that that's the I think the lift bridge there and this is the highway 11 causeway here we your coaches forward of you sleepers towards the center of the train they are now open and serving this lydell's coming up real quick here I'm gonna go back to the other side one more time definitely nicer on this side of the train this morning and we come to the end of the causeway okay we're pulling in this Slidell it's our first station stop No mo and that's the conductor giving instructions to the engineer how far to pull ahead after to line up with the platform properly so right here shortly after Slidell we cross into state of Mississippi again of course we spent most of yesterday going through Mississippi coming down from Chicago but we're gonna go diagonally across Mississippi switch over to my Mississippi map so from Slidell we're just gonna kind of cut the corner of the state of Mississippi going up through Hattiesburg here and then Meridian and then going out this way but for a while a few hours we're gonna be paralleling highway 59 which apparently starts right here in Slidell interstate 10 goes along here they show twelve-year I don't know where that's coming from but certainly interstate 10 goes along the coast and we're gonna be oh I see 12 comes in this way 10 comes up from New Orleans and then it's 10 going out of this direction I believe interstate 12 ends at Slidell 59 starts at Slidell so we should be hearing a breakfast announcement here any moment this is still Slidell just north of the station not sure if my camera was actually recording video I cried when we pulled out of the station or not I thought it was but then I just looked over and saw that saw wasn't recording so hopefully I got some of that we had our breakfast call some hitting forward I wish that based in Pittsburgh at 7:37 and before them a few rares wait a minute he was to work at somebody important US Air Force Oh humans there was a reasonably new airline actually was he hold out remember Allegheny ICU that's what I mean 1979 they changed maybe I see nobody you have no record of mass tourism to go anyway guys wrapped in foil with decorating different spelling of different ways besides although we're adults and we're just had the biggest screw up here anyway and they they do everything they do nowhere else to happen there's a company Commission they have expensive dogs for people in nursing homes which ours they're like comfort dolls then we given to some of these misspelled some people with Alzheimer's abusing this in the 1990s for Oliver Hazard blow electronics and the processions but you had to in input certain things that certainly Edwards three legs just returning from the snack cart got a couple of drinks for a later back through the dining car all right so it's 952 I'm back in my room after a long breakfast they didn't have a lot of people taking advantage of breakfast not that many people in these two sleeper cars and nobody coming back from coach I ended up at a table with a couple and a single person as usual its community seating and turned out we were all musicians and everybody had experience at the military so a lot of stories one time and we were there for quite a while but the scenery was pretty much just like this we were just going through some tracks in the woods so there wasn't really much videoing to do it would have just been the same scenery so I didn't take much but I did learn that this is the last run of the Crescent train where they're going to be having the the meal service and not hot meals necessarily but chef prepared meals henceforth on the Crescent they're going to be keeping the dining car but it'll just be like box lunches and maybe some things that you can nuke to warm up a little bit but just as I mentioned on my other video from this train Odyssey where on the city of New Orleans they announced that that trip which was leaving on the 23rd from Chicago was the last run of that train that was going to have the the waiter and the chef and the hot prepared meals so it just seems like on this trip I'm seeing the last of all of them very sad and I got caught up in conversation so I didn't take a picture of what I got but it was an omelette with some bacon and potatoes one of the normal breakfast options and that was quite good but I didn't get a picture of it sorry people who look forward to that kind of thing so I did take a bit of video when we were going through Hattiesburg so I don't know where we are now I've got to figure it out train came to a stop here because the engineer says he's got a marker out for an indicator saying that he has to stop he's talking to the dispatcher about why is that when can I go go dragons have a bad day feeling that gotta stop it's north dragon after availing myself of the toilet in the room I just get a kick out of these sinks so I'm going to do that again having is kind of funny they have a a light on these that lights to say the sink is down I'm not sure what the point of that is the fact that the sink is down is much more obvious than the light but that's the way they do it we're still trying to relocate things so they're out of the highly reflective areas that are going to get on the back picture it's the first time we've been out of the woods so to speak since we Mississippi on declaring a failure baby that ain't got me restricted signal status unknown oh yeah highway 11 parallels i-59 there's some reason the engineers conversations are much fainter I just probably don't have the ideal antenna the little rubber ducky or it may just be that for some reason his radio is set to a lower volume for transmit no idea right about where the middle of the screen is there were 59 goes north and south before it starts angling to the northeast again so in between Easter Bucci and Moselle it looks like there's s Tabuchi so the tracks were on our Norfolk Southern we came down on Canadian RCN tracks was a Canadian national all the way from Chicago all right so we'd come down on C n tracks all the way from Chicago to New Orleans on the city of New Orleans train but so far we're on that Norfolk Southern here and I don't know if that applies all the way up to our destination I don't imagine it does but we should be able to tell from the scanner when we change territories got some ice from the cafe car so my coke can be a little colder so we're just whooping along here at slow speed 12 miles an hour I think we're still in that restricted speed zone that the engineer doesn't know why it's an effect you know we've still got the Sun coming in at a unfortunate angle here making for bad photography not much I can do about it we still have a lot of reflections to I was just checking the schedule to see when we're getting into Meridian which is the next station stop this is Ellis Phil were in now at 10:26 so I think we're a little bit behind schedule I have about 40 minutes to get to Meridian according to the schedule and I'm not sure that's possible to do at this point so we were looking at the map here and there's Hattiesburg and then up here is Laurel and just south of Laurel is Ellis ville and that's where we are so we're pretty close to Laurel and then we have that'll probably be about a little after 10:30 by the time we get to Laurel and the schedule says versus to be up here in Meridian at 11:00 so I don't know if we can do that distance there in half an hour or not if they get moving maybe they can we're learning time the thing that's rattling here is the upper bunk I believe if I stand up and push against that it stops rattling but the track is kind of Jhansi here you see they could get through some of that [Music] [Music] okay so this might be Laurel here it's the next town along the interstate and I fifty nine just off to the west the train here the left side of the Train [Music] coming up here to cross [Music] under or over under i 59 59 is something we've been paralleling but right here in Laurel it jogs to the east a little bit before continuing north which is why we crossed it right there great at the jog so the essence of that is that the interstates now on our right side instead of the left side Oh for cars deadly Oh I'm correct x7 131 22 minutes on all right let's leave all cylinders and we're rolling out of Laurel all right training you've got a half an hour to make it all the way to Meridian see if that's possible [Music] [Music] at 11:47 Sandersville another milepost for upon the fourth hole they attract we're under a speed restriction again that moving along air at 16 miles an hour it's safe to assume we won't be a parade Ian by eleven o'clock because it's three minutes short of eleven o'clock so we're behind schedule at this point well the Train the train car filled up with a noxious odor here I'm not really sure what it is maybe we're close to it well there's a smelly ditch there but I don't think that's it maybe we're close to a paper mill or something one of those does not incur in nature kind of stenches [Music] they just announced that we were cleared from the speed restriction but we can only go up to 44 miles right there we and started going faster yet though now we're starting to ramp up party at 20 it's another thing that gps's are good for [Music] [Music] that white thing that's so obvious in the picture is the side of the toilet seat I think I'm gonna try to put my sweater over there to try to tie some of their reflection that got rid of one of the principal reflective objects and we're up to we're going past 45 now we're heading towards 80 75 miles an hour 11:08 5.9 i'll be back at 11:00 elite we're passing Vosburgh mississippi must be a pretty small town [Music] look 40 decelerating again it's kind of sweet up slow down and 11:36 were just south of Meridian Mississippi they've been talking on the scanner about which track they're gonna use for this train to come in on and we are just bit less than 80 miles an hour here or the horn blowing it's a swamp pea-soup and it looks like we're coming into the south and the Meridian now based on GPS Oh like the airport just on our left side the Sun is finally almost overhead players some roll motion on one foot one high 20 and here's where Meridian is high 20 comes across from Jackson so we're just about there then we should be following that out to the east get into Alabama that's i-20 I think the train is going to start bearing to the right a little bit we shift onto the surprise there it's to the Northeast we're certainly come in by downtown Meridian now the New York seven three four five behind after job you now want to be updated about every 45 I was just closing the upper blinds because the suns are just the right height to be streaming in up there and getting in my eyes now Finney Arthur's 45 yeah man alright alright understand i ensemble now this train is supposed to have been into Meridian at 11:02 we pulled into here about 11:50 so roughly 50 minutes late it is supposed to be a five-minute stop here so I'm not sure why five minutes unless they're expecting to Buffalo to unload a significant number of passengers but I mentioned they're gonna get going as soon as they can to stay on unschedule or get back on schedule Evon [Music] it's a nice-looking station building so they are getting some people off from cart 2010 so there are three full-size bedrooms here two of them have doors on the aisle and the other one has right here to make it easier to get in the wheel [Music] one three eight answer everything kind of conversation between apparently a locomotive engineer and a dispatcher here they're arguing about the engineers says that he's dead silent knowing you when you track your own is showing you love that you're on that southbound track what this is showing you a powerful anyway he's finding that there's some sort of a discrepancy between the track that he's I hear it's supposed to go where he thinks it should be going [Music] terminal do an attempt to log on or initialize once again and select okay under the cup meetings that's a 20 helping ride space work with far greater speed okay we got the go-ahead dispatcher the horn is blown and we're moving and I hope they can make up the our labor at 20 I ever [Music] I'll three going on oh there's also my yesterday [Music] our next stop will be Tuscaloosa Alabama we're supposed to 1244 before dear friends so the water sad little combat stress and that's the metal filaments desert about yeah [Music] all right it's 120 in the afternoon the woods have opened up a little bit but we're still in the woods I had a very enjoyable chat with a couple from Liverpool England talking about our various travels and train trips and places they live this is one reason why I really enjoy the dining car experience on these Amtrak long-distance trains because with few exceptions you get seated with other people you've never met but we're very interesting and have good stories to tell and you know unless you're totally introverted you can really enjoy the experience it's not like I'm making friends for life but people tend to open up and just tell good stories and you find out you have a lot in common we're not as close to I 94 I 50 9 920 is I thought we would be we're kind of hanging off to the South a little ways and we're only now just past Akron so we're about that far away and that means when we crossed the Black Warrior River it was probably right about here in the middle of the screen so not quite as close to Tuscaloosa as I thought it would be Norfolk Southern 1:40 in the afternoon flip out it's like we're in my own deville all right there if the camera will focus Moundsville coming up on Tuscaloosa I'm crossing some sort of a creek here there's a moment perfect southern milepost to 12.7 no effect with no dry and now we're curving northward come right in Tuscaloosa [Music] Norfolk Southern milepost to zero two point three no defects Norfolk Southern milepost to zero two point three no defects we're ready to cross under eye 20 and here it is and that's goodnight a nova jelica praise coming here this is gonna be Tuscaloosa you're just about an hour late and with this [Music] [Applause] apart from nap time this whole theory has got a landfill kind of stink to it area that we're passing through that was a 359 we just passed under [Music] they're in the movies ahead for cars or not now they're moving and he says to get pass the coach cards to the sleeper cars meanwhile we're holding up traffic there's always a few of these towns along any of these roads where the street folks in conveniently close to a road that people have to wait at one more I'm gonna do the self storage place doesn't look to happen in doesn't think so anyway we are here in Tuscaloosa it's actually 2:05 in the afternoon all right pulling out of Tuscaloosa next stop from Tuscaloosa is Birmingham supposed to be in Birmingham like in ten minutes but that isn't gonna happen imagine that's gonna take a good hour to get up there unless we get slowed down even longer at 2:20 we're meandering around here actually going south at the moment we're about ready to cross under i-20 curving around starting the head east again paralleling us highway 11 here this is calling Alabama this is Vance Alabama at 231 Norfolk Southern I'll host all right so at 2:40 were just east of Abra not which is right there more or less in the middle of the screen we're just over a bit east of the interstate there so slowly creeping up on Birmingham [Music] [Music] we're in bessemer which is just over here on the west side of Birmingham folks other milepost all right this is Lipscomb or Lipscomb and lips comas all right there northeast of Bessemer I've won there's there's something kind up here on the right just a moment it looks like it could be a cemetery but maybe it's something entirely different [Music] that's cured by another train for might resist personhood I assume this is Birmingham we're in now [Music] so I think we're getting ready to pull into the station we should have arrived to 15 it's now 3 o'clock so we're 45 minutes late we made up 15 minutes of our lateness between Tuscaloosa and Birmingham and this overpass up here is i-65 i-65 [Music] [Music] introduced above the station [Music] I'm sure that would be Birmingham perfect I love it Birmingham will serve without first slopes without you like the snip off the train have uh some overstretch leading this because about the news though we happy please remain inside here for breakfast our work we'll be on our way to ask you to please remain and you Thunder any mom you would like me as her whatever you would like hey Bob in a topography [Music] whoo it's warm out here holy cats in the air-conditioned comfort of my room it's hot out here Birmingham station and all its eroded glory some of those tracks don't even look like you could roll stock over them I'm not sure those are going concern on the far side so it doesn't take too much neglect them it is chunking out everything up in there holes in it so on all right at around 325 we've pulled out of Birmingham we're still in the city and comparing that to the schedule 224 so almost exactly an hour late pulling out of Birmingham so he came in 15 45 minutes late we left an hour late I figured they might stop for like five minutes but they had a fairly long station stuff they might have had a crew change they might had you know empty tanks fill up water or something but anyway at least we haven't dropped more than an hour behind schedule and really an hour behind schedule is not that unusual for Amtrak long distance trains anyhow you're only an hour late it's no big deal alright so from Birmingham the next stop is Anniston Alabama but should be see the Coosa River at Riverside we should still be going along i-20 so Aniston along i-20 all right so Anna stand his way out here roughly 2/3 the distance from Birmingham to the Georgia state line and we're supposed to be at Aniston around 4 o'clock so imagine it'll be 5 o'clock so an hour and a half from now should be there [Music] the Birmingham train station as you probably saw in some of the earlier footage our car Tennant says the actual terminal is very nice and modern but the actual platforms are really old and obviously have had very little maintenance the concrete's chunky now the roof is leaking and big cracks and some sort of mineral stalactites hanging off of them and look like there's only one rail that goes through there that's in regular use at least next to the platform the other two platforms I saw had obviously non-used rails and one of them was well he said he's only seen maintenance little like Cushman maintenance Kurt's going on it no trains nice nice place so playful it's like they're doing steel scrap processing here that is for each one take home over 74 pleases you a little bit only here Birmingham we're about ready to pass under I 20 here we go which although it's generally going to the east at this point it's going somewhat southeast just meandering around a little bit on its way out of town or we're out of Birmingham now and we're in the small town just to the east iron Dale because it shot well it's shown as part of the greater Birmingham metropolitan area but iron deals right there in the middle of the screen we still have to pass 459 there is never anything oh yeah that's a winner there makes you wonder when there's one of these neighborhoods where there's a total wreck of a dilapidated collapsing house and right next to it's a nice well-maintained house of the good yard and everything we wonder are those people constantly complaining to the city about that eyesore next door you know people complain when you don't mow your lawn but when you've got a disparity like that if it seemed like it'd be a real problem for the neighbors I didn't get my camera out quite quick enough we or along this river here I don't know which one it is anyway it's rather picturesque we had actually crossed over to even though the map doesn't look like we crossed over what we did rather Highbridge and then down below the bridge was the remains of another bridge at a much lower level just abandon in place it is very photogenic but it happens so quick I didn't get my camera out in time this looks like it has some Rapids in a rather stony bed a lot of the time of course the glare on the windows not again my friend at all but we're going to cross it up here again so maybe that'll be good [Music] [Music] various inside 20 yeah four o'clock were right in between the town of Li the towns of Leeds and moody just on the south side of I 20 [Music] now we're in the town of Leeds don't poke other milepost 791 that way date no defects [Music] no defects so we're more following us I weigh 78 here then we are the interstate but they're all more or less going the same way Crossing US Highway 78 here their code [Music] you know here little Alabama old country here wait the drop-off here reports I've got tons of reflections dispatcher called the engineer said when you go by the fire tell me how bad it is I'm sure which fire that is yeah apparently there was a fire back there on the left side but I was too late to get over to see it before we passed it made it sound like it might have been a vehicle fire either on the interstate or on US Highway 78 both of which we were close to on the left side your folks southern milepost 77.72 O'Keefe xb2 special mrs. Deborah 164 guy you know come on in case bell stops hold defects I just want to get laid that's why he just made you jealous robbers placed a small dose in a bit of a tunnel here first one on this trip so far [Music] looks like we're coming to a stop here the engineers sing something up about a belt that needed attention I'm not sure what that would be something in the locomotive I'll be able to shorts and trying to get onto a short siding [Music] all right I have no idea what they were just talking about they will help so I don't know what that was all about but we're moving again must have sat here for 10 or 15 minutes pretty enough of spot to be sitting in kind of a pass through the hills here having just come through that tunnel a little ways back [Music] [Music] five miles an hour just west of old city so at 4:47 we're here at pail city right in the middle of the screen it's roughly halfway between the outskirts of Birmingham and Aniston and then about that same distance from here to there from Aniston to the Georgia state line so we're only getting further behind schedule [Music] this is still part of Pell City just like a pound that's about five blocks why [Music] [Music] [Music] about another 10 minutes it's gonna be time to go to the dining car again for dinner should have been crossing into Georgia around this time we've been scheduled under stop alright they just made an announcement saying that the reason we're stopped is because we're following a freight train and for some reason it stopped so we're just sitting here patiently waiting for it to get it to move on and don't know how long it'll take but it is five o'clock so I should be able to start heading down presently and now we're moving again and get much to you out the window from the styling part so I came down for dinner and there's nobody here as I was leaving after lunch a woman who was sieved at the booth behind me because I did this with the camera challenged me and said I shouldn't have been including her in my video I said well I'm gonna edit you out I got you in it at all but you know you're not immune from being in people's videos when you're on planes and trains and airports out in public but nevertheless I planned to edit her out she acted like she'd never had a picture taken of her before so we're passing through the town of Riverside now which is along at Coosa River some be crossing over our bridge so ah so there's the boo server it's a pretty part of the country [Applause] wanted to go to [Music] all right after another good dinner on the train I had the most expensive meal they give us almost $40 if you just bought it outright and it was kind of like the Amtrak signature steak which is usually I think their most expensive meal but this one had that sort of surf and turf meal that was even more expensive and basically I think it was just the signature steak green beans salad baked potato dessert but they also put a crab cake on top of the steak and that was very good and the steak was quite good I heard that it was but now I have tried it all right well it's 6:17 and we're just almost at Edwardsville I can find it there it is more or less in the middle of the screen Edwards fields on US Highway 78 just north of i-20 and pretty close to the Georgia border still generally hilly around here although I don't think as much as it was bit further back but the train can't seem to get any speed and the track kind of twists and turns around [Music] no straight shots here it's just a small tin the Ender we're doing about 45 miles an hour I think we have been for the last hour you can see on there on this particular image how all the roads are so twisty turny something you don't normally find when the ground is flat the next town will be fruit Hearst and it's not too far from there to the state line I just kind of wondered what's going on with the dining car here because we have two sleeper cars and while I don't think they're completely full seems like that seems like most of the rooms in the sleeper car in front of me are full most of them anyway but every time I've gone to meal here they call for seating and nobody shows up and I'm there by myself you know there's been a couple times when one or two people were there people are me but it's the first time I've taken an Amtrak long-distance train when they didn't have a rapid migration of passengers to the dining car as soon as they said you could come and even today you know we were sitting there it was me and this other guy across one table nobody behind us two people in the table next to me on the other side and I think three people on the table across from them and none of the other tables were occupied and that was for a very leisurely long dinner taking our time nobody else came in I'm thinking all these people in the sleeper car have paid for their meals don't they understand that do they think they have to go spend extra money I just don't get that okay we're in the town of fruit Hearst here first thing we come to is a lumber operation looks like fruit Hearst is about 10 blocks long about four blocks wide and we're way out on the south end of it well we're not in Georgia yet but they just announced that we cross the time zone and now it's one hour later I kind of assumed that might be right at the state line but apparently not or maybe they just did it now because they had an opportunity a wall on the action and we're getting a jump on it by a few miles nope I just missed the mighty Tallapoosa river it looked like a dry Gulch actually we went over it I was thinking that was just a tributary to it but that was the whole river [Music] I think I'm getting better results further away from the window and we have left muscadine they give us all on the other side of us looks like a town of about two blocks by two blocks this pose [Music] so we are now in the fair state of Georgia doesn't look much different it's 8 o'clock after having changed to time zones it would have been seven o'clock otherwise and we're in Western Georgia we're due to get into Atlanta between one and a half and two hours late I think it's gonna be you're there about another hour from now it should have been there more like 7 o'clock I think but the Amtrak app says that while that's true it says that they're expecting to make up the delay and supposed to arrive into Philadelphia which is might get off point slightly earlier than scheduled so I don't know if they just don't wait so long at one of the stations or how they do that but assuming it's true hopefully I'll still arrive where I'm going on time but there's not much else to do here because it's dark outside I'm gonna make another comment here I've been kind of gently belly aching about this issue and it's why I don't like I'm gonna have to turn some lights on here's to her to see what's going on there we go why I don't care for view liner train row Mets a much preferred Superliner train through Metz this complaint does not apply to full-sized rooms because they're nearly identical between the two types of train the issue is cleanliness one might argue that this toilet in the room is handy but of course if you're traveling with more than one person in the room then you have to shoe the other person out while you use the toilet most likely and but even for one traveler the fact of the matter is half the people who are in this room are guys if you know I'm sure it's approximately half the people and most guys stand when they take a leak that's the fact of the matter and you know it doesn't come out straight necessarily so you can only imagine how much urine has gotten on the carpet down there and on the side of this seat and you know that they're not shampooing these after every trip and I imagine it's not a lot but it's still you know these trains have been around for decades and I and so far every time I've traveled in a view liner roomette I stay in the upper bunk I don't really want to but I consider it much more likely to be clean there than it is down here it's not too bad to just to sit in the seats but I don't really want to be sleeping on top of a thin sheet on top of well there is a mattress grant you but you know they turn the mattress over one way or the other depending how they decide to put the sheet on it so put quite potentially you've got a mattress that's been sitting on to not put too fine a point on it pissed on a poultry pissed on a poultry there we go with a thin sheet on top of it and then your face or whatever right on the other side of that is it gonna kill you no is it sanitary no is it desirable no so yeah I I don't care for it that much and I would much rather have toilets be where toilets are supposed to be and not two inches from the side of the bed I'm gonna be sleeping on and at the same level and on a rocking rolling train where it's just gonna make the situation worse as far as hygiene and things like that so I'm not letting it ruin my day but I really hope Amtrak goes through with what I heard they were going to do and that was when they refurbished these make them more like super liners and take the bathrooms out and convert one of the room mats into a public bathroom like they would have on a super liner to me that makes infinitely more sense the rooms themselves would be more comfortable and cleaner and I hope they go and do it that way anyway that's my little spiel on the subject I'm gonna stick it out for another hour before I go to bed but the track is relatively smooth now at least you're just enjoying absolutely nothing out the window at this point [Music] we're between the towns of temple and Douglasville and this is the town of Villa Rica are the few lights you can see moving by outside [Music] so right in the middle of the screen as villarrica and Douglas Phil is now in the middle of the screen so we're roughly halfway between them so actually we're on the outskirts of Atlanta at 8:20 in the evening as it is here and according to the schedule we're supposed to be into Atlanta at 7:30 so we're only really about an hour late at this point we've somehow improved things from being an hour and a half or more late to being only an hour late so that may be how they help make up the schedule it's supposed to sit in Atlanta for an hour or half an hour so they obviously even if they arrived right now they would be late but they may not sit there for half an hour before continuing that may be one of the ways they make up their schedule because they could you know immediately off load and unload passengers and if they have to change engineers or something things like that they could do pretty quickly and then just get going again and thereby help out a lot with the schedule I'm looking at the schedule here to see what other points they Terry and Atlanta is one Charlotte has about a 20 minute layover Greensboro only has about five or ten minutes or something washington-dc does not have a layover yeah so if it seemed like they would have to make up a lot of it right away in Atlanta if they're going to get back on schedule so anyway I'm actually just sitting here watching YouTube videos waiting till I'm tired enough to go to bed this is Douglasville I keep getting glimpses in the distance of something that's kind of off to our right a little bit and a lower altitude is if we're up on a Ridge or something and maybe we are but I get what appears to be a lot of lights in the distance and lower down than we are and considering that we're heading kind of northeast and we're fairly close to Atlanta on earth those lights I get blimps is over part of the you know outer extremes of Atlanta and that's is Atlanta at a lower altitude than douglasville maybe we're still up in some Hills cruising along at just over 50 miles an hour one no defects so this green area dark green area is supposed to be the Greater Atlanta area and yeah so that's all Atlanta and here's douglasville so the angle I was seeing would have been off this way towards like East Point and it's not that far away so I suppose those could be the lights I was saying all right it's a couple minutes past nine o'clock and we are in Atlanta right around the downtown area [Music] it seems that my smartphone is a little better for this and the GPS is just because I'm trying to look at a a taller map at the moment than I am a wide map the GPS is optimized for telling you how to get places or to see where you are locally there are times when I find that the well this is Google Maps on here it has a different level of detail which is not as good as the GPS but it also shows some things that the GPS doesn't show so I do occasionally use this now we're right here and here's downtown Atlanta and I'm guessing the train station somewhere right around here so we're kind of close to it well maybe not this up here looks like a train station doesn't it imagine that's probably the union station and we seem to be progressing on a northeasterly course and are quite close to it I can see a couple of low skyscrapers there and the lights yes so we have arrived here at 9:12 at Atlanta Peachtree Station which is station that the Crescent train uses so I'm gonna get up and walk around a little bit try to unload some trash [Music] this by the way is the shower room down here the next car is the baggage car looking for the trash [Music] and the dragon 20 only traded things in the trade with Iran that lady form Oh we train this evening you may know [Music] [Music] you're [Music] yes 924 I've got you pull out they definitely expedited the turnaround here they got the first-class passengers boarded in the luggage on an off as quickly as they could then they hustled the coach passengers out out to the Train and the very moment the last thing I was happening really was getting this one passenger in my car who needed the wheelchair lifts and once he was on there they blew the whistle and I was the last passenger on the train because I was outside and couldn't get back into my car until the wheelchair lift was out of the way suffice like as soon as you're on the train we're pulling away [Music] Oh the radio has been dodgy on this for the whole trip the engineer has been very faint like it's not really putting out and they obviously noticed that here too that they were having a hard time understanding what the dispatcher is having hard time understanding the engineer so they switched to a different radio channel and I don't know that that's one of those in the bank that I've got programmed in my scanner so I may not be hearing much of the engineer possibly until they change again but I'm gonna be shutting the radio off here shortly anyhow for tonight okay I think that's enough of shooting in the dark here today okay here's just a quick recap of my other videos showing what the view liner roomette is like at night so the you could certainly sit here unless you're very tall people much more than six feet are gonna be bumping their heads but otherwise people of average height consider comfortably in these seats here you know and one person can be up in the upper bunk and another person sitting down here you can put you know keep your luggage down here during the day I keep my luggage here but I just move it to the seat at night so I can use these steps here to get up into the upper bunk and the upper bunk does have this cutout in it it's narrower at this end and much wider at this end so you pretty much need to have the head end be where I'm at unlike in a super liner you can have the bed oriented either way and you could do that here but most people are narrower at the foot end than they are at the head and shoulders end so you're gonna feel really cramped if your head end is down there where the bed is much narrower and so I've got that set up they do have the safety straps to keep you from rolling out of bed at night hooked into the ceiling and you get all the privacy you need and of course the upper level does have its own shades so you can either have those open or not whatever floats your boat and of course there's separate ventilation for the upper bunk as well as separate control of the room lights so the ceiling lights you can turn on and off the wall light certainly there's a reading light up there we can turn on and off so I can turn the room lights on and off from this button sirs you can turn the room lights on and off from either seat or the upper bunk or the switch by the door and of course as I mentioned before you can turn the mirror light on from here or from down here so either up or a lower bit can turn the mirror light on and it is nice to have it for for a better illumination of the stairs if you're coming down the rest of the room is dark but it is very narrow here so you have to make sure you don't stand up and bonk your head into the wide part of the bed so I think we're good to go here the other thing that I'm not too keen on with the view liners and I'm sure I mentioned this in my other video on the room liner or the view liner romantic tour I probably jumbled what I just said is that the blinds are attached with the top and bottom rails it's a little hard to see that but see if I can yeah so the blinds are attached with rails at the bottom and at the top which makes them fiddly to close because one side is always binding and not wanting to move properly whereas with the super liners they're just regular curtains and they hang from the top rail the bottom just floats around it just works so much better but the big deal about it is if you've got something stuck on the windshield like people who put their GPS is on there because the curtain can't just flow out and around the GPS you have to take it off the window if you want to close the blinds for privacy which when I when they renovate these things I hope that somebody there is smart enough to realize that these aren't a great idea and it's inferior to lay the Superliner does it in several different ways

Channel: youtuuba

Views: 84,785

Rating: 4.8607445 out of 5

Keywords: AMTRAK, Crescent train, AMTRAK Crescent, New Orleans, Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Birmingham, Viewliner, sleeper car, Viewliner sleeper, Viewliner Roomette

Id: LEWo66BHjGE

Length: 190min 48sec (11448 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 03 2019