A Train Odyssey 6, Train 1, AMTRAK "Capitol Limited" Part 1

all right it's saturday may 15 2021 and i'm embarking on another train odyssey starting as i usually do on a chicago metro rail commuter train from the northwest suburbs down to the city to catch my amtrak train there will be more information on this later on so from chicago i will be taking the capital limited dense amtrak's train from chicago to washington dc and then the same day i arrive in dc on that train i will take the amtrak silver meteor uh from dc down to miami which arrives at around 6 p.m the following day then i will enjoy southern florida hopefully um as i do this there's still the issue with the colonial pipeline hack and possible fuel issues that might impact my plans for automotive travel down there but hopefully it'll be resolved by that time and uh after kind of making up an agenda i don't really have much uh other than visiting some friends in the keys and exploring key west for probably one day i'd like to take a trip out to dry tortuga but all the options for getting out there were booked so i probably won't be able to do that but who knows i might still get a uh a standby and that might still happen then i'll be taking the silver star from miami back to dc whereupon i'll have another rental car and uh visit some friends and see some more attractions in virginia and that neck of the woods before flying home so a three train train odyssey and who knows what other stuff will happen in between the train trips as usual this is one of the metra double decker commuter train cars i always like to sit on the upper level so so so so oh they're doing a lot of maintenance down here at union station redoing some of the tracks that's why this chain-link fence is here [Music] [Music] [Music] so um okay oh hmm so [Music] hmm [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] boy it's amazingly quiet down here in the city today [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] i'm gonna try to get lunch at pomp bellies assuming they're open i guess they're open [Music] [Applause] so [Music] it's closed all right [Music] so so [Music] all right i've had my lunch a late lunch at the lux sandwich shop famous place and uh i'm back over by the train station just came back here for a pit stop because there's practically no place that you can go downtown the restaurants don't have theirs open uh back here to the sears tower which and uh i've got tickets to go up on the ledge [Music] see if i can stabilize this a little [Music] more so we just go down to jackson boulevard here across the chicago river and only one and a half blocks in this direction brings us to the south side of the tower which is where the sky deck excursions start from we're crossing wacker wacker drive which is on the west side of the tower [Music] whacker of course is famous for being a dual lover dual level street there's another one just just like it below but that one is pretty dark and industrial in nature [Applause] and it's often portrayed in movies lots of movies so i'm not sure if i'm just supposed to walk in there or what we'll find out there's a nice little food court in here and you have to go downstairs and down another level lower level two [Music] there's general admission and expedited entry i have expedited [Music] you're on your way to the top of the tallest building in the western hemisphere along the way you can watch as we pass by some of the tallest buildings markets and structures in the world soon you'll be enjoying what we like to think of as the best view in the world on a clear day you can see for miles and into four degree states be sure to check out the ledge four glass balconies that extend out from the west to skydeck make you feel like you're walking in mid-air 103 stories above whacker drive in the chicago river you're riding up this 1450-foot modern marble in one of the tower's 104 elevator cars your trip to the sky deck will only take about a minute and a half that means your elevators are coming at a speed of more than 16 feet per second the tower opened its doors in 1973 and held the title of the world's tallest building for 25 years the west antenna reaches seventeen hundred thirty fights with the chicago streets we're now passing 850 feet at san francisco's transamerica 970 feet at the yokohama tower stunning eiffel tower completed in 1889. it is higher than the eiffel tower [Music] hello okay [Music] come on [Music] oh is that's pretty nice [Music] our parents didn't care [Music] foreign [Music] chicago he wants to be here [Music] um [Music] [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] uh [Music] i don't know what it is [Music] um is okay [Music] [Music] no [Music] okay um our hotel what is um i started to write [Music] [Music] um [Music] [Music] oh my god [Music] man i've been here before so so i'm gonna give you guys a i'm gonna give you a limited time here and when you have like 20 seconds about time yeah it'll just be a minute [Music] oh hello i'm done yeah thank you thank you oh thank you thank you it may not be apparent but you can see how the floor slopes up here that's because from about that point to this point is where they build up the floor at a slope so they've got room under the floor here to retract for the mechanisms that pull those ledge compartments back inside the buildings for maintenance and other reasons you only get about 30 seconds or something in the ledge boxes so a quick look around get your picture taken if you want and then you're out so it's a good thing that i bought the expedited ticket [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] wanted thanks for visiting the sky deck we hope you enjoyed your time at the top and the best view of chicago and landmark and an yeah icon since it was completed in 1973 when your visit ends you can take your skydeck memories home with you there's a photo station just outside the elevator with great shots from your skydeck visit and take a piece of chicago home too our gift shop has hundreds of fun and happy dinos for you to choose from from skydeck souvenirs to some of the highlights of chicago's history arts and culture when you're done with your skydeck experience take a ride with big bus tours to visit a few of chicago's other most popular sites like the world-famous shed aquarium the natural wonders of the field museum man-made marbles at the museum of science and industry and the site sounds at unmatched shopping along the magnets willis tower is one of the world's most amazing structures and there's always more to learn about it's rewarding for example did you know that the tower has more than four and a half centimeters worth of space inside complete your skydeck experience by exploring catalog at willis tower an evolving five-level urban destination featuring dining specialty retail and entertainment if you have questions or just want to learn more be sure to ask one of our friendly and we hope to see you again soon thanks for coming [Music] excuse me [Music] exit through the gift shop [Music] this is actually the third time i've been here to the sky deck since they offered expedited tickets and every time i took them of those three times but uh i have been here a few times before where we didn't and it could be anything from you walk on and get right up to sitting around for a long time so my recommendation if you don't want a lot of heartache and standing around for an hour plus that you coughs up the extra money uh oh um [Music] bruh [Music] um [Music] all right back on to jackson excuse me i'm sorry [Applause] crossing whacker again us and again the union station i mean the grand hall is one block west but the part where the trains are is essentially uh right under this building here that's where the concourses are and then of course the uh the platforms extend for several blocks in that direction and this is the level right there where it's dark you might even be able to see some of the metallic sides of a train there so the tracks are down there and that's again the north concourse [Music] [Music] the uh [Music] south concourse is i think right about right here right under where the street is on the other side of the bridge more or less and then the south tracks that south platforms are just below street level and again you can kind of see the dark areas down there that's where the trains going south or coming from the south are lined up down under there i've never taken one of those boats i should do that sometime they also have segway tours of chicago [Music] and i should mention now that i'm standing down here this train odyssey and everything that goes with it is part of a long anticipated but barely planned train odyssey and vacation to celebrate my retirement after about 44 years of productive engineering work but i am not retiring from my other job as a professional musician that's going to continue although it hasn't been doing much lately because of covid but i've already started getting gigs signed up for the summer so there will be some playing not as much as usual but some so i'm hoping to have a nice kickback and celebrate the freedom of retirement this time i'm gonna keep the camera running normally there's a down escalator here too but it's under maintenance so when we go down one level from street we end up at the food court level [Music] a lot of the shops are shut down at this time but there's still a lot of them down there and it's all over here and it's way down there in the distance too this is the main convenience store although there are several smaller ones scattered around this is the one i always use before a train trip okay continuing on after i filled up my snack bag with drinks and some chips and stuff we continue on the food court level until there's another escalator going down and by the way what's here is pretty much mimicked on the north side of the station arrangement's slightly different but it's pretty much the same idea escalator down from street level then you're on the food court you take another escalator down or stairs to the concourse level so now we're at the south concourse they're all the tracks and their associated platforms please notify you police or personnel or call 1-800-331-008 [Music] continuing there's a little ramp that goes up here or stairs if you feel like doing it that way i always take the ramp and then we're kind of up to amtrak level here this is baggage claim for amtrak and if you don't already have a ticket you can buy a amtrak ticket here and this is the set of doors coming out of the metropolitan lounge for all passengers heading to the trains from there and here's amtrak's big route map so the empire builder takes this route and then it splits and either goes to seattle or to portland and then you've got several different trains that run down the west coast in various parts of the uh but you can take trains all the way from san diego up past l.a all the way on up to vancouver the next east-west train is of course the california zephyr that originates on the west side of the bay in emeryville goes across nevada utah crosses the rocky mountains in colorado of course it already crossed the sierra nevada mountains in eastern california and then it continues up that away to chicago if you take the southwest chief then it comes down pretty much the same thing to galesburg and then it takes a slightly different route and comes down here dips down to albuquerque goes west your flag staff and ends up at la or you could take the texas eagle which comes down this way down uh through arkansas and then west of fort worth then south to san antonio or to del rio up to el paso across the bottom of new mexico to tucson does not go to phoenix continues on up to la from the southeast then you could take from chicago the the city of new orleans which comes down this way right to new orleans and then i think they call the sunset limited goes across that way and when the texas eagle goes west of san antonio it's merged with the one from new orleans now there's a former route that went across here but it's showing us suspended then there's the crescent which goes from new orleans all the way up here and goes on up to new york or wherever it ends up terminating then there are several short distance trains up in michigan and there's the lakeshore limited which goes along here and then continues up the lake shore and goes up through northern new york state to uh to albany and then you can either it splits and it continues to uh boston or it comes down along the hudson river to new york city so i've done all of those trips the uh capital limited that i'm taking today also starts in new chicago and follows the same route as the lakeshore limited but at cleveland it branches off and goes down to pittsburgh and uh it needs to go to uh washington dc so then it comes down this way to washington dc i forget what train does this that may just be a relatively short distance train like the uh keystone or one of those i forget uh then there's a whole bunch of regional trains around here but there's the uh what they call the um i can't remember the name of it but it's a route that goes all the way from pretty much from boston all the way down by this route they have quite a few trains that go that way the train that i'll be taking tomorrow the silver meteor starts in washington dc and follows the same route down here and it takes one of these two routes through north and south carolina down to savannah to jacksonville down to orlando to tampa and then down to miami then when i come back i'm taking the silver star which is pretty much the same train as the silver meteor but i think in this stretch it takes the other track from what the silver meteor did not positive of that i got a little bit confused with the route charts but i will be taking that back that'll be the third train of this odyssey and it'll get me back to dc i am not taking a train home from there i will be taking my rental car down to richmond and flying home from there so with all of that exposition it's now five o'clock and the train leaves about 6 40 so i still have lots of time to chill out in the metropolitan lounge [Music] [Applause] this is what the chicago union station metropolitan lounge baggage check is like [Music] [Music] [Music] anyways and we'll continue to encourage our colleagues will be made available even if it's limited to the testimony of just what is publicly available report he can be this 14. here [Music] [Music] [Music] okay part one of the train odyssey sitting here in union station on train number 30 the capital limited service from chicago to washington dc it's an overnight train and continues into the morning through the morning tomorrow with a uh estimated arrival time in dc of about 1pm and then i have about two and a half hours to sit around union station in dc and wait to pick up the silver meteor which is train two of this train odyssey this is something i this particular train is something i was generally aware of but wasn't sure of until i got on that the conventional wisdom is that amtrak trains west of chicago are all super liner type passenger cars whereas ones west of chicago or east of chicago are view liners but on this particular trip the capital limited we are indeed on a super liner train and it's my understanding the way that the type of train gets determined is by the route and a lot of the railroad routes in the east are older older right-of-ways and the tunnels tend to be lower and bridges and other things are not set up for the taller trains so that mandates the use of the shorter viewliner cars but apparently the route that the capital limited takes is such that the higher super liners can run that route and there is a another super liner i don't know which train that is but [Music] it's sitting there since it's on the south side of the station uh it could really be almost any of them the only one that departs north of chicago is the empire builder this is the second train odyssey i've been using my newer uh uniden it's the bearcat or bc 125at i have it programmed for every train on this trip so um it's on scanning bank six now which is set up for the capital limited and bank 7 is for the silver meteor and the silver star which are later in the odyssey as usual i've got my [Music] airline carry-on overhead carry-on size suitcase that's my only suitcase and it fits up here nicely on the top step for the upper bunk which i won't be using wedged between the wall and the headrest of the opposite seat so it's not going anywhere and uh my backpack here will get hung up shortly there it is up there i hung it on hung it on the coat rack or the coat peg there only seems to be one oh no the other one's here there are all these variations on where they put the the hooks as long as there are two of them it's enough for my needs and since this is sort of a refresher course while i'm just sitting around here waiting for us to leave i have my short cabled uh outlet strip from the only outlet that's in the room at and i've got my my power pack for the garmin say a command the stupid thing always thinks i'm talking to it i hate that and you can't turn it off garmin you know what to do with yourselves and then the power adapter for the scanner and then my kindle is being recharged with its usb charger and then i have a battery i depleted and my camera shooting around chicago so that's being recharged and i can still fit one more charger in here if i need to and then finally i have another charger here this is the one i use to charge my my cell phone or my mobile phone so it's good to bring an outlet strip because it's very easy to start finding a lot of things that need to be charged at once if you're one of the minimalist types that just uses a smartphone for everything and brings nothing else with you fine i don't like doing it that way anyway so i'm just waiting for us to leave we should have pulled out of here at 6 40. it's now 7 12. they did say that the train that we're on came in late but i think we must be all boarded by now so i expect we'll be pulling out of here any minute i think i already mentioned that i have my bag of soft drinks and snacks not so much for tonight because it's where we are gonna have dinner on the train i don't think i'm gonna want much in the way of snacks after that uh but i do have my trusty road atlas here which i bring on all of these train trips it's a little mangled because this is the one i usually keep in my car and it goes in a pouch on the back of the passenger seat and as i've been hauling my mother around to her various appointments since i retired giving her paid helper a break every time i put the wheelchair in the back seat it catches the atlas and kind of folds it around funny so it's taking some abuse for those interested i often mention which book i'm reading on the trip i don't have a hard cover or a paperback with me this time i just have my kindle one choice of things to read although i do have a couple other books on here i have a book called the operator which i haven't started yet by robert o'neill i have a fairly recent book a biography of wendy carlos one of my musical heroes which i have not started yet and i'm currently reading from f4 phantom to a a10 warthog memoirs of a cold war fighter pilot and i believe it's mostly about his time flying the a-10 which is a plane i really love which is why i got the book by steve ladd us air force mark a bit seeing as i'm waiting for the train to leave i am in room 13 here right next to the family bedroom which is right across that wall i normally go for the upper level on super liners whenever possible in this instance even though i booked a couple of months in advance the trains all of the trains on this route for this odyssey were essentially booked up there were very few slots available on them and i had the jockey days a little bit forwards and backwards to be able to get on the trains and have it work out and on this train i they said i literally got the last round there were no others available after i booked the trains to florida were even worse that those are the ones i had to move around the most resulted in me staying an extra couple of days in southern florida more than i had originally planned just because there were no trains coming back that had room on them so i think a combination of amtrak's reduced routes most these long distance trains they're not running every day of the week now they're running maybe four days a week or some of them only three days a week uh so that fills them up plus people are starting to travel again there was a bit of a squawk there about amtrak 30 that's us [Music] but i didn't quite make out what they said i suspect by the time we get out of the chicago area the sun will be setting the train goes through pittsburgh in the wee hours of the morning i think it's supposed to be around 5 a.m or thereabouts and uh that's one reason why i took the capital limited besides the fact besides the fact that it goes to dc which is where i need to be for the other train sounds like they closed the door anyway i was interested in the trains route in the vicinity of pittsburgh and i thought it would be a nice bit of river running and valley uh crawling and bridge crossing that could be pretty nice unfortunately it's scheduled to be about five in the morning maybe we'll still be running a little bit late as long as there's some light it'll be sufficient for my desires but i would like to see something hi what would you like for dinner now i pre-ordered it so that doesn't carry through uh it didn't it didn't come on she didn't come on and she didn't print out seriously for somebody this day hadn't gone right for me i don't remember what i ordered it was probably the pasta and meatballs okay i think that's what i got i'm just gonna drink my coke okay you don't want to know drinks are you doing no okay sir uh okay you know i don't know what time but i'll i'll be bringing this up whenever it's opened up i'll bring it i'll bring it then okay all right thank you leroy so i just uh placed my dinner order which is kind of a an amtrak screw up here because uh even though i booked my tickets all at the same time over the course of several weeks leading up to this trip i was getting emails from amtrak for this trip for the next train trip for the next one not in order either you know i assumed i would get one email that said okay pick your meals for all the different you know and uh they just sort of came in randomly and i you know i picked place my order online they said okay you're confirmed but now my car attendant says nothing came through on his roster or his uh charger so um i had to reorder it hi um we have a passenger by the name of mighty johnson i don't know if he got on the train or not but he left his uh backpack here with his id and everything in it rolling up on almost an hour late i don't think i ever recall being on a train except my very first one that left union station late and that one was due to bad weather it was a it was the california zephyr and uh a lot of people were coming in from different trains coming in from the east that were going to be on that train to the point where they were all running late and uh you know if we took off without them we would hardly have any passengers so we waited about three hours i think before leaving on that particular instance but yeah this guy is running late all right 30 uh let me know when you want me to switch it over i don't know how close you are to being done also you must wear your mask at all times again you must wear your mask at all times just a little job formation all restrooms are located on the lower level of the coaches that you are seated in again the restrooms are located okay finally we got our go ahead but now they make this general thing saying that you have to have your masks on at all times well you can't have it on when you're eating your meal for example [Applause] this is when bureaucratic morons [Music] are allowed to make announcements without more intelligent people vetting what they say i don't usually want to come down that severe but i think that's the truth in this instance way too much of that stuff i for one do not plan to wear my mask when i'm in my room with my door closed and i will not be wearing it when i'm sleeping so there plus they just have the big announcement saying that people have been vaccinated do not have to wear their masks of course that doesn't mean that some local authority can't say no we still want you to wear your masks that's fine but i'll play the game as far as when i'm out in public [Applause] that's right okay so we've been rolling for a few seconds here half a minute 20 seconds whatever it was at 7 40. so we basically started rolling one hour after the normally scheduled time [Music] it might still be sort of light when we get out from underneath the buildings here [Music] yep it's twilight but at least we can see something hopefully my gps picks up some satellites soon so [Applause] ah uh okay so the only other time i've taken this route at least as far as cleveland was on the lakeshore limited a couple three or four years ago now i forget exactly when it was and it was dark i think when we left uh union station there i don't remember seeing anything when we pulled out i've had a lot of people sending me messages by various means and the preponderance of them say when are you gonna do another train video please do them again the longer the better so i don't i plan to make these i plan to make this set of train videos this train odyssey video set fairly luxurious in that regard that's where the tracks curve if we're going um out west the trains that go diagonally down through illinois towards galesburg go that way so i've done that route many times i think the city of new orleans goes this way for a little bit before it i think it waits till we just cross the state line and then it starts going south but i may be confused with that city of new orleans may go a bit west before it goes south i don't recall the route exactly [Music] maybe it was the cardinal i forgot to mention the cardinal when i was looking at the route map earlier [Music] but the cardinal i think yeah that's it goes down more or less this way until it crosses into indiana then it starts going south [Applause] i think this is still the chicago river here [Music] but it would be the south branch of the chicago river if it is so so uh interstate 55 begins just on the south end of downtown chicago right at lakeshore drive which is also us highway 41 and then it goes due east and west until it hits i-90 then it starts angling down and we're going to be crossing under i-55 here in just seconds probably no more than a mile from lake michigan here's a plane overhead coming into midway airport [Music] [Music] so [Music] we're just sailing along due south with the dan ryan expressway which is i-90 just on the left side of the train where i can't see it it's not really much to look at though looks like we're coming into a big rail yard [Music] [Music] so [Music] good evening ladies and gentlemen welcome aboard amtrak train number 30. the eastbound capital limited a few announcements for you here this evening the cafe car will open when he makes an announcement and not until then again you will hear an announcement from the cafe car attendant when he is ready to start serving and 10 o'clock eastern time the lights will be turned off it will be quiet hours on the train and once those lights go up in this quiet hours we do ask that discover phone conversations be kept to a minimum when you are watching a movie reviews headphones and your first fresh air break this evening will be approximately 12 30 p.m eastern time in toledo ohio we are just about to pass i think under the dan ryan expressway or over it yep there we go so now we're starting to head you are going the wrong way down the street stupid gps you know it's really funny when they used to have a product that you could tell that you're not in a car and the new ones that are supposed to be so smart you can't tell them that and they can't figure it out for themselves that's why as i've gotten older i become more cynical and these days everything is marketed as being smart and as often as not it's dumber than it was before we should have the chicago skyway coming up on our right here any second now [Music] that's right here where i 90 which was the dan ryan continues this way but the chicago skyway goes that way actually it's i-94 going south and i-90 is the one that's the skyway yep there it is i'm just gonna sail along next to it for a while nothing to see here folks [Music] there used to be an interesting artifact on the skyway not too far from here actually not too hard far from this spot there was a mcdonald's right in the middle of the skyway um they had what was not much more than a kind of about a three car wide maybe four car wide left turn lane essentially uh in between the opposing lanes and they sandwiched a narrow mcdonald's with a little narrow parking lot on the north end and another one on the south end and you could pull off going either way and run in and use either the restroom or you know get your breakfast your dinner your lunch whatever it was super convenient i used it all the time when i was heading out of the city going eastward on the skyway and then for whatever reason they decided to close it up it always seemed like it was doing plenty of business so i never quite understood the reason for that didn't have enough information i guess but i was sad to see it go [Music] the speed on the skyway is pretty low it's like 45 miles an hour but it's an interstate and it's straight as an arrow um at least until it gets down closer to the state line and so everybody goes about 80 on it but there's a high bridge kind of a local landmark on the skyway we should come up on it in not too long hopefully there will still be enough lights there's a great big school there i think it's a high school i always notice it when i drive by just really a vast place chicago skyway toll bridge 1.0 track two no defects [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] we should be getting up on the bridge very quickly here the uh the highway goes up over a high bridge but the train tracks remain close to ground level because i think there's a lift bridge for the tracks yeah now the highway's starting to gain some altitude is starting to ramp up thank you that's the beginning of the bridge structure there you can get a nice view from the bridge though going over it of the surrounding industrial areas it's not really that high but when you're going up over it it feels like you're way up in the air i'm not sure what this is it may be the calumet river some grain silos here [Music] so [Music] yes there's some pretty interesting scenes off to the right it looks like the opening scenes of the blues brothers with all the uh refineries and steel mills and things that are down here in the vicinity of gary indiana which is about where we are but lit up some of them belching flames and so on but i think my video outdoor is about done for the day it's getting too dark well it's um 11 13 p.m eastern time 10 13 central time so as usual it's early for my bedtime but there's not much more to be done on the train once it gets dark i usually find the reading lights when i'm seated are somewhat inadequate to the task but i do better when i'm laying down so i'll resume in the morning

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Id: U-8z7WFoa44

Length: 100min 2sec (6002 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 14 2021