Riding AMTRAK's "Empire Builder" - Chicago to Seattle

okay it's December 26th the day after Christmas 2017 and this is the beginning of my trip out the Seattle on the Amtrak Empire Builder as usual I'm taking the Chicago metro rail commuter service train from where I live out in the burbs down to downtown Chicago so I can get onto the amtrak Empire Builder I've spent more time on this type of excursion on my video series called a train Odyssey so I'm not going to repeat it all here but it's about minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit out here and it's supposed to be rainy and nasty the whole time I'm in Seattle and I may be going through some winter storm activity on the train out west so we'll have to see what the vent brings us and by the way it's not really green outside it's a green tinted window I've got a really old metric car here doesn't even have the automatic doors I don't know why they stuck this antique on the consist today but they did as usual I packed fairly light I just have my carry-on sized suitcase and my backpack that's primarily just my camera equipment and my Kindle and a few other things like that my airplane headphones so when we get a little closer to Union Station I'll take some more video [Music] it's bitterly cold here in this part of the station is not heated [Applause] [Music] ladies and gentlemen just a real quick announcement here for our passengers traveling if the coaches this afternoon well every once in a while on Amtrak you'd get one of the older cars and the consist this one has got some obvious wear and tear getting a bit threadbare in some areas and it's one of the older models that does not have a closet has just got a recess there in the wall where the closet would normally be and has been on all the others I've taken and this is a super liner car by the way as are all trains going west from Chicago it's got a sort of a safety belt to hold these things against the wall so definitely a little different and the trashcan is under this side instead of under this side lucky usually would be [Applause] well I'd gone down the aisle of the car at 2:15 when the trains was released so I wasn't in my room when we started to roll but we just pulled out of Union Station and gratuity not included so this older Superliner car probably one of the older ones I've been in just based on some of the details it definitely at the older style bathroom arranged a little differently still the same size I think and the amenities in the room are basically the same except for the closet obviously bein not there and replaced with a shallow alcove for coats and stuff to be hung up still has the heavy duty coat hooks which can be used for bags that aren't too heavy I have to think about you know the weight of a heavy coat and probably not exceeded by that much yeah we got some Sun coming in here very uh very directly looks like they didn't do that greater job of cleaning my windows that doesn't bode well for the rest of the trip I really can swear they called this car out of mothballs for this trip and they did say that the train was totally totally booked although not everybody's on it yet some people will get on at other stations and this is the Empire Builder going from Chicago to Seattle and Portland the way that works is the passengers are segregated into different cars depending on whether they're going to Seattle or Portland and then the Train consus stays together as far as I believe it's Spokane Washington where overnight which is the second night of the trip they take the train apart and reassemble it with just the Portland cars together and the Seattle cars together and then they take off and go to their respective cities of destination I am going to Seattle and the date is December 26th the day after Christmas year 2017 and it's about five degrees below zero out there as I probably already mentioned on my little Metra lead-in to this video so pretty darn cold out there but it'll probably be colder up in Minnesota and the North Dakota regions when we go through they're supposed to be somewhat of a weather system maybe even some storms in that area and they're going to be coming around and checking tickets presently and then the diner car stewards coming by to take dinner reservations now those people who have seen my other rail videos on YouTube probably already seen my pair of videos on riding the Amtrak Superliner type long distance sleeper cars so I'm not going to repeat a lot of stuff on there unless I see something that's exceptional or different from what I've said before I've already mentioned that with the older car I'm in here and some of the slight changes in layout so a little bit about the Empire obviously like many of Amtrak's routes they're named after very famous older routes Empire Builder starts out here in Chicago today it goes straight north to Milwaukee and then it goes diagonally to the northwest across Wisconsin to the city of La Crosse right on the Mississippi River there and on the way it goes through the Wisconsin Dells in between from La Crosse it follows the Mississippi River up more or less until it gets to Minneapolis miss Minneapolis isn't on the river so at some point along there they get away from the river and go a bit further west to get to Minneapolis and then it goes diagonally up Northwest across Minnesota either to Fargo or near Fargo stroboscopic effect here anyway so it's going across the top of North Dakota one of the notable stops is my not typical rough track here not Amtrak's fault and it goes along the top of Montana goes along the south edge of Glacier National Park and then it cuts along through the upper regions of the state of Idaho where it's in this narrow part here I suppose it's fairly close to the interstate but I believe it takes a more circuitous route seems to take quite a lot of time to get through there I believe it follows a river valley or something and then it comes out into Spokane Washington over here in the eastern edge of Washington State and that's where they take the train a partner reassemble it into two separate trains one going to Seattle and one going to Portland so if I was on the Portland one it would go down here to Portland but I'm on the Seattle one which is going to proceed west through the Cascade Mountain Range and then pop right into Seattle so that's the planned route as far as sleeping I am in a sleeper car as I always am on Amtrak trains and it's gonna get dark not long after we leave Milwaukee some were going through Wisconsin anyway I suppose we might possibly get to the Mississippi River before it's dark but I I doubt it and I believe it goes through Minneapolis fairly late like nine or ten o'clock or something like that I didn't check the schedule and then you wake up somewhere in North Dakota so it spends the night going through this part of it and we get tomorrow to enjoy the western part of North Dakota and most of Montana just a big drive through the flat Prairie land real excitement there get to enjoy the Big Sky Country and then it'll probably be getting dark just before we get to Glacier which is unfortunate but on this route unless you go through in the summer or pretty close to the summer I think it's pretty much always going to be dark by the time you get there because it's late afternoon certainly in the colder months it's probably dark by four o'clock and then it takes all night to go through here and through Spokane and you end up somewhere in the middle of Washington State in the morning and it pulls into Seattle about 10:30 in the morning on the third day so that's two nights on this train and since the meals are included that's dinner the first night three meals the second day and I think breakfast on the third day but I don't remember from the last time I did this if they actually gave us breakfast or not on that morning since they do pull into the station fairly early and I know they liked cleaning up the kitchen before it pulls into the station so they may not actually have time to do a regular breakfast meal service we'll have to wait and see on that I'm gonna have a few other videos because my entire end-of-the-year trip I use it or lose it vacation plan from my employer I'm being a workaholic I am I didn't use up all my vacation time so this was a very last-minute trip to book this and I do like the Seattle area and I've been there many times before have a few youtube videos relating to that and I'm going to be sticking to the City of Seattle exclusively this time and I plan to have some videos of the sky needle or the Space Needle rather and probably their history Industrial History Museum I forget the exact name of it certainly the Boeing Museum of Flight will be a highlight I'll probably do a walkthrough of that Museum and some other things and if they merit a YouTube video I'll be putting it up about the same time I post this video I do get a lot of people communicating with me regarding my Amtrak videos about how much does that train cost well as I've been at pains to point out before the Amtrak service just like an airline it can seem a bit mysterious about how much they charge but they don't seem to have that many hidden sneaky plans like the airline's do it seems to be more straightforward along the lines of a capacity booking plan where I've been that I've been told before that it's organized in three buckets I'm not sure if that's still true probably something similar is in effect where if you booked in before the first third of the Train has booked up then you get the lowest fare when it goes into like the first third has been booked then they charge you a bit higher fare and when you're into the last third of the Train or there abouts some percentage remaining then they charge you the highest fare this being close to the holidays it seems like a lot of people are traveling when I've taken the Empire Builder a couple years ago it cost me I think $500 from my passage and my first-class sleeper car accommodations one way this time it costs me about nine hundred so substantially higher and that is primarily because I booked it just a couple of weeks before taking the trip so I'm almost certainly in the dole art the last bucket price plan but as I've mentioned elsewhere the way Amtrak charges each person who's traveling pays a fee and that is essentially the same regardless of which way you travel if you're in coach first-class sleeper doesn't matter what type of sleeper accommodation you have other it's a real matter full size rule in the family room whatever believe you pay the same exact amount for Amtrak that take you from point A to point B and then you get charged a surcharge depending on whether you have first-class accommodations and what type of accommodations those are and to the best of my understanding if you're paying for the room then or the accommodation by the room not by the person so it should be you know if a couple were traveling they'd pay not that much more than one person traveling in the same room I don't have my receipt handy but it seemed to me that the transit fee on this Empire Builder trip was somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 maybe a bit more maybe it was 150 I don't remember but not very much and that was just for one person getting me from Chicago to Seattle and then the remainder of that bumping it up towards $900 was the fee added on just because there weren't that many rooms left on the train and I paid due to the lack of availability anyway we've been stopped here at the Chicago suburb of Glenview this is the only stop in Illinois between Chicago Union Station and leaving the state heading for Milwaukee not sure why they picked this one station to stop at but that's the way they do it so probably not gonna bother narrating too much at least until we get up around Milwaukee and as usual with Amtrak they want to have reservations for dinner but not for breakfast or lunch that's never made much sense to me but that's the way they do it with your party your reservation ticket and then wait at those doors here at about half an hour after leaving Union Station we're passing Lake cook Road which is the dividing line between Cook County where Chicago is and Lake County which is where I live and Lake County is the last county in Illinois before crossing into Wisconsin this is Lake Forest Illinois I used to use the station quite a bit when I lived enough slightly more urban part of Lake County in order to catch the train to the city but now that I'm further out in the boondocks I take a different route well it's not a different route it's the same set of tracks but it's further out than this by about a half an hour by train we're passing through a long stretch of Lake County Forest Preserve land here which is one of the things that I really appreciate about Lake County Illinois is the strong Forest Preserve District that manages to keep so much land protected from sprawl trying to keep the county with a more rural feel and we're passing through Ronde out here the site of a famous Train Robbery and this is the track going off to the left there that's the way I would have come in this morning or did come in this morning and it merged right there but now we're heading straight north and I just walked across to the other side of the car unoccupied romant if anybody is interest in the pharmaceutical industry and if there isn't a train blocking my way which sure looks like there may well be for the whole time I want to do this Oh No yeah this is Abbot laboratories here a major pharmaceutical company and I want to see if I can catch a glimpse of my workplace as we go past here just on the other side of this little bit of woods which is owned by my employer there's a couple of seconds when the place I work ought to be visible yep there it is right there and then this building that we're seeing the back of here is one of Amazon's distribution centers this is their facility I believe for things that are abnormally large like big-screen TVs and things like that that don't apparently fit well into their other distribution centers in this area just beyond these apartment buildings is the site of the former Lakehurst mall which was a significant early indoor shopping mall when the boom of indoor shopping malls took off and I seem to remember it was the first one in the state of Illinois or something it was quite a big deal at the time I had just moved from Europe about the time when they built that thing and it was all the rage everybody had to go there for everything and now it's torn down this is the town of gurney here Gurnee Illinois seem to remember cousin Eddie in the Christmas vacation movie complained that he ran out of gas and gurney although he said gurney have to talk to Randy Quaid about that sometime this is more of the Lake County Forest Preserve there's a bicycle trail right down there and this is the wodsworth area of Illinois just south of the Wisconsin border still part of the Lake County Forest Preserve District and we're just about to cross highway 173 here this is the furthest north east west highway in the state of Illinois still in the Forest Preserve District here they're attractive woods somewhere out there in the trees is the Des Plaines River and just on the other side of this tract of woods is a section of road that appeared in my catch right road recumbent tricycle video that lots of people have seen and were just seconds from crossing into Wisconsin and we're now in Wisconsin no border guards or anything so here we are in Milwaukee right over close to Lake Michigan we're in the industrial area just south of downtown for those in volved and industrial automation in one way or another the big building in the distance with the towers is the headquarters of rockwell automation otherwise known as the allen bradley building and for those people who've watched my video on using a radio scanner for trains it's worth mentioning that since the last since the last time I program my radio I decided to check the on track online website and found out that a number of the frequencies had changed from the last time I programmed my radio for the Empire Builder and I had to go in and modify it so I wouldn't be missing out rated across the river here in just a moment okay so we had a good picture of Bela Lugosi and graffiti on the side of that building all right here's crossing the river on the south side of downtown Milwaukee and make a sharp turn here as we pull into the Milwaukee Amtrak station [Applause] [Applause] right now I've seen this same set of train cars parked here before some pretty nice-looking passenger cars that says the Charter Club or charter on it not sure who really owns those it would appear that they get used but they're obviously old-style train cars that have been fixed up very nicely I don't know if these get hitched on to the end of the occasional Amtrak train or how they do that and we're pulling out of Milwaukee at 350 2:00 in the afternoon [Applause] I find that Amtrak usually does an adequate job vacuuming the upholstery and the the carpeting in the rooms I don't know if they really wipe down the arm rests and things like that but you know it's common wisdom with airplanes for example to bring some sort of a disinfecting wipe to clean off the tray tables in the armrest because they don't really do a very good job of that when they clean the cabins of airplanes between trips and I think the car cleaners with Amtrak often miss on things like cleaning windows adequately and so on I always bring a couple of packs of disinfecting wipes usually just plain alcohol ones not the ones with owl and stuff in it that just leaves gunk behind but plain old alcohol disinfecting wipes that won't leave any residue and I usually try to clean the windows and the arm rests and other flat surfaces that I'm likely to use and just cleaning the windows of this one car you can see there's quite a bit of dirt that came off just the windows so that's something I hadn't mentioned on my previous trips chip videos but we'll add that to the list of of wisdom of traveling on trains and at about 4:15 the sun's pretty close to the horizon wrote in the Pewaukee Wisconsin area right now not too far from heartland and Delafield interstate-94 is just off to the left a little ways and so now it's about 4:30 and were approaching the town of Watertown Wisconsin town I have considerable familiarity with one of my side activities is as one of the curators of the heritage military music foundation a major collection of Civil War musical instruments and its associated organization the first Brigade band the nation's oldest and original recreated Civil War brass band both of these organizations based in Watertown so I'm up in this neck of the woods at least once a week year round it's The Rock River which eventually goes down to Rockford Illinois when I come up to Watertown from where I live I always come in on the same Road which I know crosses right here flashed by train does not stop in Watertown [Music] I think well the next time we get to another town it'll be dark coming up the downtown Watertown just south of downtown actually but this is where most of the larger businesses and hotels and restaurants are located that was business route 26 a few years ago they relocated the main route 26 outside of town as a bypass exile in the very clear waters not left over to be casual and this is the bypass highway 26 and now we're past water talent out into the wilds of Wisconsin they just made an announcement that this old sleeper car I'm in as toilets that have stopped working and apparently aren't expected to be working for the duration of the trip which isn't good news although I suppose maybe when it goes into one of the longer stops maybe they'll be able to do some maintenance on them then but it sounds like at least for tonight we'll have to use those in the next car over which is a minor inconvenience this is Columbus Wisconsin 10:7 5703 and we're rolling out of town here this whole obviously be the last video I take pointing outside the car today there are some nice colors on the horizon and at about nine o'clock at night on the first day we passed through Red Wing Minnesota and I believe this is where the track departs from the Mississippi River and heads north west to Minneapolis st. Paul this is bedtime for me you know it's about 6:30 in the morning on the second day of the trip and I've been sleeping in a fetal position all night with all my clothes on and every blank that they had on as there is no heat in my room it and yet the overhead vent was blasting cold air cold air blasting on me from above all night apparently in Whitefish according to the radio my GPS says we're in Devil's Lake I presume that's in North Dakota so something is seriously wrong with the heating in my car great in reality I think the temperature in reality the thermometer on my little travel alarm clock which is the only thermometer I had handy said it was 50 degrees in my compartment that's not counting the cold air blasting on which made it feel a lot colder I'm definitely gonna be complaining about that once I find somebody to complain to I don't relish another night spent like that one thing I've never mentioned done my other videos is that when you're using the diner car and if you're staying in the first-class accommodations such as the sleepers you have to know your card number and your room number to fill out on the form for each meal on the dining cart that's how they know what to charge your meal - of course you don't pay for it it's included in your ticket price but they have to account for it so they always need you to do that so make sure you know your car number and room number before you come to the diner now I just finished a leisurely breakfast trying to warm up I go back into my barely heated car it's definitely chilly in here you know the icebox in here although I have to say it did warm up a little bit it's 58 degrees in here which is still cold it should be a lot warmer than that I'm have to wear my outdoor clothes all day in here the thermostats all the way up at least they turned the fan off so it's not blasting cold air in here that's pretty pathetic so it's about 8:30 in the morning on Wednesday the 27th of December 2017 day two of the Empire Builder trip from Chicago to Seattle and we're going through wonderful North Dakota here just passed through the town of Granville I don't know what the temperature is outside I thought I heard the conductor's say it was like -20 or something and as I mentioned before the temperature in my room last night was about 50 degrees 51 something like that and it was made worse by the fact that the overhead air vent was blasting cold air the whole night so I've gone and had breakfast but I'm just sitting waiting for the room attendant or the car attendant to show up and change the room back into daytime configuration it's interesting they haven't made any announcements about the technical issues with the heating on the train apparently the whole train is suffering a problem something is not working the way it should regarding getting the heat to the cars I don't know if it's electric or if they do it by steam or what system they have I would have assumed it was electric but yeah it seems like I went down to the lounge car and the place was packed with people who all said it was too cold in their rooms and they were hoping it was warmer down there they food in the dining car which was ostensibly served warm after one minute it was cold on the plates so that wasn't too good this is definitely rolling up very quickly to be by far the worst trip I've taken on Amtrak and most of my trips have been very good but this one has been pretty poor so far we're still on the rails can count that as a blessing I guess but you know it's it is cold out here it was 7 degrees in Chicago when we left or minus 7 degrees something on that order definitely cold but these trains I've taken them on really cold days before and they were warm so it's abnormal to have this issue they did turn off the overhead air vents throughout my car at least so at least they don't have cold air blasting in your face but I'm pretty much wearing outdoor clothes here I've got my layers on you know my light jacket and my heavier jacket over that a flannel shirt under that I'm still cold so I try to approach these things with a spirit of adventure as long as it's not actually dangerous I already have a case number with Amtrak setup I called them this morning as far as compensation for the inadequacies of this trip but I need to talk to them again once the trip is over see what they're gonna offer my way of compensation I don't think they give you your money back it may be points for another trip or something we'll see we're passing through the dinky little town of Norwich North Dakota I have a little problem with my door here which I've not experienced in other trips and I think it's just because this is a old unrestored car at the door rattles with every little vibration last night I had an old shirt jammed under it which helped alleviate most of that but right now I don't have that it does help to put the lock on that quiets most of it so today I think is gonna look a lot like this for the whole day that is one of the disadvantages of the Empire Builder is the first part of it going through Wisconsin and Minnesota would normally be reasonably attractive at least in the summer but after that it switches to the Dakotas in Montana which you know nice enough places in and of themselves but a lot of the same thing with no variety and even though I like the Empire Builder for several reasons it's not my favorite one of the Amtrak routes just because it's probably the most boring trip scenically speaking that party of four that does talk to me we have a devil ready for you party of four they seem to have a lot of problems on this particular run with people not going to the dining car they make a lot of announcements yesterday and so far this morning with people not showing up they're reminding people of the dining car exists and please come down while breakfast is still being served and people have reservations made under their name I'm presuming those are people in coach because I don't seem to remember anybody asking for reservations from people in the first class cars I just walked down there and got seated then there were plenty of tables so I just called up Google and asked what the temperature was in Norwich North Dakota and it says it's minus 23 degrees Fahrenheit it's about 8:50 in the morning and we've just pulled into Minot North Dakota there's the river that flows through town here and a few years ago it had a very famous flood this whole area where we are now I think was pretty much under water and the last time I took the Empire Builder or maybe it was the second to the last time I took it they were doing a lot of disaster recovery here from that flooding and it extended right up to the sides of the tracks so that made me think it had been underwater for a while there was just a lot of debris and sludge and mess everywhere I look ladies admin last call to get your name on our wait list if you'd like to join the wait list please send one member of your parties to the dining car at this time last call to get your name on that waitlist thank you a lot of people queued up there I suppose they're picking up people getting off the train they had disks in there like a little maintenance office and they've got the big garage door rolled up I guess it's not too Pleasant working in that office today Minot North Dakota my car attendant and the car tenant from the next car standing just outside my room down on the platform level and I can hear them discussing the lack of heat and the cars my car attendant says yeah your car the heat is quirky and in my car it's just basically not there those were pretty much his words verbatim there are several people who were getting off the train here and they're walking around with no hats and no gloves I'm thinking it's 20 degrees minus 20 degrees outside you got to be wearing something and they just turned the blasting cold air vent back on I think they may have had an engineer change here maybe he didn't know what was going on and turned it on you have to bring that their attention if they don't already know it's quite a long stop at Minot yes ma'am we need a blowtorch to the bottom sink please they've got a lot of stuff freezing up on the train they've got a something like an hour layover here at Minot they've got radio calls going back and forth or using the PA system they're all trying to get they're all trying to get the so called mechanical person or persons the various places they're calling them for my car they're calling them for the dining car the lounge car you know this sink is frozen up that toilets frozen up this thing doesn't work that thing doesn't work mostly related to the cold you've got people walking around with propane blow torches trying to free things up that are frozen so the train came up through here I don't know if it actually goes through Fargo or just near Fargo but and I don't remember if it goes through Grand Forks exactly how it goes it may go up this way across this way I'm not sure it seemed to me that it went through Detroit Lakes which is I think it's about over here in Minnesota and that would suggest it did go through Fargo in the wee hours anyway this morning when I got up we were in the area of Devil's Lake which is along Highway 2 that's this whole route from Grand Forks all the way across the state and so we've gone from here in Devil's Lake to here at Minot so far this morning and about that same distance is required to get to Williston and then after that we're in Montana for the rest of the day they just made an announcement that all the frozen toilets on the train are working again so I guess that crew did their blowtorch Madness job and it sounds like they've closed the train doors so I expect we're gonna be rolling here pretty quickly from the fairly long layover in Minot I just confirm that the Train does come in from Detroit Lakes over here and to Fargo and then it goes straight up to Grand Forks and then West so it did not go diagonally it does this jog and from the radioactivity sounds like they're gonna pull out here very shortly mechanicals done with it they're done fueling that's below negative 20 [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] there's our horn [Applause] [Applause] picking up speed here pulling out of the yard back on the the main line now PNF detector mile gps scaling her on a row I'll be back in a little while it'll stay that way until it figures out we can't possibly be on the road and it'll if there went jumped us back to being on the tracks well approaching about 10 o'clock in the morning the temperature is finally crept up to about 65 degrees Fahrenheit in my room at which means I don't have to wear my hat anymore and can unzip my jacket can actually dress more or less normally now and they just made another announcement that the showers are no longer froze up so we can use those not sure if it'll last that long the engineers said we're under a low-temperature advisory so I suppose they could freeze up again but let's just get some of the bleak yet Spectacular North Dakota winter scenery so this is not yet the pasture land of Montana it's still obviously cultivated fields I'm presuming it's some sort of grain out here but I'm not sure what the spacing of the rows they're left over there to an arrow to be corn so I'm guessing it's some sort of a grain crop I don't know if it's wheat or whatever it may be so we're somewhere between Minot and Williston North Dakota at about 10:00 in the morning Central Time I'll have to check and see where the dividing line is to mountain time we might be in it already well I don't think we are my regular clock and my smartphone clock or agreeing and the right your clock is on Central Time so apparently we're still in Central Time expected to roll into Williston around 11 o'clock about an hour from now of course that's what it says on the schedule if by some chance that's the dividing line then it may be different than I think so the boundary between central and mountain time or yellow to green on this map is right at the North Dakota Montana border at least in the northern part of the state where we'll be it's not exactly the California Zephyr is it some sort of big loop and servicing facility or loading facility for tank cars I don't know if they're natural gas or oil or what they are they don't look particularly pressurized so I'm guessing they're oil I don't know Tencent ladies of talent coming up in about ten minutes we're next season stopping Stanley North Dakota yes Stanley is your final stop now be a great time start looking around you gathering up your personal clients and in a few minutes making your way downstairs for detraining sewer on the outskirts of Stanley North Dakota I swear this train seems like it's shifting gears I haven't noticed that before on the other Amtrak trains they always seem to glide away from a start and glide to a stop with pal lashing and on this train seems like just about every time they come in in or out of a towel there's a big lurch and bang I'm not sure if there's something wrong with it or maybe it's just my particular car maybe this old unrestored car's got brake issues or something maybe it's the cold anyway here we are in Stanley North Dakota the rather sparked and looking terminal building almost non-existent looks kind of boarded up actually oh yeah that's right this train the way the consist is set up because they break the train in Spokane they have I think sleeper cars at the tail end of this train with the coach cars in the middle so they're pulling up for the tail end sleeper cars right now to get those on the platform so now we're leaving Stanley North Dakota this is highway 2 off on our left it's the major east-west corridor for automotive traffic along the top of the country not that far south of the Canadian border really when I moved to the States from Europe Germany specifically in the mid 70s I resolved to explore this country its geographical landmarks primarily and major cities and other attractions and I dedicated myself to that for about the first ten years that was what I would do with any vacation time I would head out on long road trips and just target regions of the country and I made two or three trips out to the west and northwest areas from my base in the Chicago area and I traveled down highway to here several times to that end and preferred it to the interstate which I thought was insanely boring a bit further south in the state there was something also romantic route 66 ish about highway 2 here and eventually you could start seeing the mountains in the distance once you got out to Montana of course not here and how it seemed to take all day for the mountains to get closer you could see them so far away and they just didn't didn't seem to get closer as quickly as they seem like they should and here we are just before 11 a.m. still Central Time pulling into the town of Tioga or Tioga North Dakota I'm thinking this is probably on the outskirts of Williston now but it's not it's still a ways away from Williston and we're already past it small town hmm this is the town of ray [Music] just crossed I wait - gotta slow down here for a reason that does not seem to be announced so far although I did hear them making a dispatcher announcement earlier about the crossing of one or more roads ahead where the signals appeared to be working but weren't really or appear to be working from the perspective of the train engineer but not from the perspective of the traffic something like that so they were supposed to do some sort of in-person careful observation at those intersections to make sure something bad didn't happen and there is a crossroad immediately ahead here I'm not sure which road it is maybe that's one of the ones where they have to get out and make sure things are yeah here's a train crossing ahead you can kind of see the crossing arm ahead and it's up and the lights don't appear to be working so that's apparently one of the ones they were cautioned about I heard a couple the people in the train I don't know if they were the conductor's or what but they were saying they were together in the same car and perhaps they have to get out and you know kind of guard the intersection while the train passes over that would be my guess at this point yeah that's what they're doing they've good [Applause] looks like now that the front of the train has crossed the intersection they can get back on just made the announcement they were both back on the train so the Train can take off and highball it's crossing what we are stuff to briefly these remain to keep all windows doors closed thank you yeah so that was just the tail end of an announcement that they've got another malfunctioning crossing just ahead here they're gonna have to repeat the same activity of having a couple crew members go out and kind of flag the train across the intersection and just as with the other intersection just before we got there a couple of white utility trucks crossed just ahead of us and I can see now that we're coming to this intersection that there is a another way utility truck it looks like from the distance one of those are BNSF utility trucks trying to be at the intersection about the same time we go over it maybe so they can see what's happening I don't know this was just a tiny little road we just passed that just says a stop sign but it doesn't have a crossing with this larger County Road that we're coming up on does have a crossing this is the town of Springbrook it looks like the crossing that's in question is right downtown you know I can see the remember walking down the side there so they've done their crossing check and we're gonna move ahead I presume like before they're going to stand outside until the front part of the Train is completely over the intersection and one more car there seven yeah x7 forth or we can hide all over we have to be really close to Williston at this point yeah Springbrook is just to the northeast of Williston since it's 11:30 and diner car was supposed to be open I think I'm going to take this opportunity to walk down and see about getting lunch [Music] thank you [Music] when was a turns out that's 11 a.m. mountain time that the diner car opens so I'm one hour early or half an hour early seems kind of confusing to me since according to the time zone map Williston is still in central time why they would insist on using mountain time for Williston but I suppose they meant not Williston itself but just the approximate or planned location of the Train at the time they thought they would be starting to serve lunch that they probably figured we would be in Montana by that time and maybe we will be it's 1141 Central Time which means it's ten to forty one mountain time and if we don't have a real long stop in Williston then by the time we actually cross the border it might be just about you know new ones central or eleven mountain time so that may still add up just caught me off guard got a nice Sun coming through the haze still bitterly cold outside I just asked Google what the temperature was and it says it's minus two degrees here so it's warmed up about 20 degrees since [Music] and we're just about ready to cross the little muddy river where it joins into the Missouri River on the edge of Williston so we're technically on that already this should be the little muddy river we just promised we can see that on the map here if my camera will focus just on the east end of Williston is where the little muddy really comes in failing north and joins the Missouri River going from east to west so that indicates that we're now in Williston albeit on the boring side action town proffer would be I have commented before on the family room in these Superliner cars what they're like and I don't think I've showed them in any my other videos so this is what they're like there's still about six feet from front to rear but they go the whole width of the car they have a small window on each side although it's still enough to see out of it's not the same window I'm not sure it's even half of the width of the windows and you have a small bed that's probably only good for a kid that's made out of those two seats and then you've got an upper berth here and another berth here this one's wider and you could probably fit two people on there if they want to sleep right next to each other I'm guessing that that's where you're you know parents go here and here maybe one of them can sleep with a kid another kid could sleep over here and then they also have a fold down but shorter bed here for another kids so two adults two kids maybe two adults three kids if one of them shares the bed with one of the adults down here but then there's almost no room left over to move around in here there is a closet and otherwise you've got the same stuff you've got the electrical outlet but look where it's located right in the entryway there's no good place to run the cord too and there isn't one back here anywhere so it looks like the only plugin for the whole room is right here by the entryway not the best place if you're going to plug in your chargers and things you know where do you put them copyright to all the next [Music] willest and miss the first time I bothered getting out of the car on the trip so far they're loading luggage up there you can see there's two locomotives up front and then the baggage car and then they transition sleeper which although similar to the regular Superliner sleeper car is used for the crew primarily and it's also it's called the transition sleeper because on the rear side of it it's got the crossover to the next car on the upper level but on the front of the car the crossovers at the lower level because everything ahead of that single level cars so that's how they would get from the locomotives for example into the rest of the car and we have my sleeper here one more sleeper and then the dining car and then a couple of coach cars and then you can see the one with the taller windows and the windows that go around the top and that's the lounge car or some would say the sightseer car and then there's I think some sleepers back at the tail-end [Music] all right thank you yeah 11:30 mountain I keep getting the timer on and I'm track 7 we can highball my understanding is that the Amtrak locomotives are essentially the same as these freight locomotives underneath but they have a more streamlined sexier looking facade on them but basically the same thing underneath I'm not sure which model are this thing is one nice thing about him is that he would thereby be quite overpowered for the amount of train behind them that's probably probably allows them the fairly quick acceleration and deceleration --zz necessary for passenger service and they can just start pulling hard and get the whole train started smoothly as opposed to the techniques they have to use when they're pulling freight and I don't know what the term is called but where they kind of back up a little bit then surge forward and they kind of accelerate you know cart the train one car at a time with the small amount of slop and the couplings I've heard about that I don't know the details I'm not sure if they really do that all the time or not but I don't think they have to do that on the these Amtrak passenger trains certainly I've never seen any indication of it so here we are in Williston and we're heading west and in the very short amount of time probably 15 minutes or so we'll cross over into Montana and the mountain time it's now almost exactly 12 o'clock Central Time or 11 o'clock mountain time so they've just clarified that the cafeteria will open basically half an hour from now so after we cross the border we'll go get some lunch I'll be going so we're coming up on the state line here I can hold the camera steady er my smartphone changed over to Mountain Time just a about 30 seconds ago so I think it's a little off that's the dividing line is supposed to be the border as far as I intended we should be out we should be in Montana now and most decidedly in mountain time [Music] [Music] this was treatment works for the town of poplar and the town of poplar is right here came in from Williston went through Culberson Culbertson and Brock is it Brockton rockton I think now we're at poplar here and that little bend in the river we went by there is still the Missouri River obviously a pretty small River at this point still navigable though the next town will be Wolfe point I recall in my old driving trips West that was I always head off from Chicago and I'd manage to get across Wisconsin Minnesota and North Dakota and one day and I always pull on the wolf point late in the day it had enough small roadside motels to in those pre-internet days when it was more difficult to reserve ahead of time I could always be pretty sure that if I could hold out driving that long that I could find accommodation on both point that's why that one pops out at me the bnsf detector just said of his minus 1 degrees so not the different from it was from what it was back at Williston I think it was minus 2 at that point this is wolf point tiny little and Trek terminal or Depot imagine it will be a very short stop play black here we go they had about 110 in the afternoon mountain time we're in Glasgow Montana which is right about there this is just west of Vandalia Oh somebody on the one of the engineers or somebody said moose over there and some eel said cow coming up on the town of psycho or Sacco or Sacco whatever it is blinken you missed it town we're uh paralleling highway 2 and rapidly coming into the intersection of US Highway 191 which means we're approaching the town of Malta right there here we are in beautiful downtown Malta car lengths to go and we're moving again here we are about three o'clock mountain time that's highway two off on the left just a narrow two-lane highway we just went through the town of zurich montana about a minute ago and see from the angle the Sun it's not gonna be light all that much longer maybe another hour about three o'clock we're approaching the town of chin up right here I don't know why my cameras having trouble focusing [Music] [Music] you wouldn't know it looking but there's an airport off to the left [Music] all of a sudden there is a snow or something getting blown past the car and with the sudden haze here wouldn't be surprised if we get into some snow at least now we have a river or a creek off just immediately to the right of us in close proximity it's like highway to train tracks Creek but I'm on the wrong side of the car to see that we do have this raised area that appears to have eroded down towards the creek area going this way we make two stops our first stop is a fuel stop when we are at the fueling pad ask that you remain seated keep all windows doors closed the fueling process takes about 8 to 10 minutes whisking folks in hammer we made two stops our first stop is a fuel stop but we're not the fuel stop you must remain seated keep all windows doors closed like I said then fueling process takes about 8 to 10 minutes once we get done fuel the engines will be pulling up into the station we really have just a few minutes to step off the train you're having a quick smoke you need it stretch your legs that's getting folks since we are done with our fuel stop we will be pulling into the station we're gonna have a couple minutes to get off the train stretch your legs you have a quick smoke break but in the meantime we're gonna be sitting in the siding right outside I have her waiting on our sister train the Amtrak gates that's hopefully a nation for coming by within ten to fifteen minutes so we back on our way into Havre thank you I suppose this little business down here is the hammer heaps well it goes right up to that guy's trailer home and collapsed shed anyways you probably heard the announcement we're just outside of Havre Montana that's right there on the map right in the middle almost halfway across the state of Montana and the reason we're pulling over onto a siding here and potentially for quite a few minutes is because the Empire Builder coming the other direction meeting us more or less in the middle is currently sitting at the haver station doing their thing and there's apparently only one track out here so we have to pull onto a siding wait for it to go by before we can proceed or maybe it's not so much that there's a single track but maybe there's only one track going to the passenger platform that may be the main thing deer or elk running around down here this is just regular deer [Applause] today already and right now going back and forth and it won't recover all the way the Lions will go up to its 103 pounds we're not really sure what's going on with this singleness okay I'm gonna hold of the shop see if we can get somebody over there Texan ladies and gentleman still waiting on our sister train number eight to get out of the people there just informed they're having some problems with their air brakes not sure how long this is gonna be until they get that fixed but we'll keep you updated and we'll let you know says we'll be back on the move thanks Ruby all right folks is TEM tractate just went by so we'll be open in to have her here shortly like said earlier our first stop here is that fuel stop that takes about 8 10 minutes everyone must keep all windows doors closes once you're done with that fuel stop you'll have a chance to uh once your bullet train up into the seat you'll have that quick chance to step off train driver quick spoke kiddy and stretch legs stay very very close the cardiac - do not go into the station please you're not going a station you do not want to get left in Havre today as we are running behind obviously it's gonna be a very quick stop once you do pull into the station so please stay close to the cardiac tsatsis or that quick smoke and stretch page well it's about 6:45 Mountain Time just finished dinner it's pitch-black outside I think it's snowing when they made a recent stop there was a bunch of snow in the vestibule of the car that had blown in but I can't see it outside at all they were talking about driving or riding through a snowstorm so maybe that's what's happening outside anyway we're just a little bit east of Interstate 15 and we're still paralleling highway 2 so on the red hi We're that it's east to west and probably somewhere around where it says Dunkirk or Devon somewhere in that area I think we're just about in between those two towns so should be coming on Shelby fairly quickly well it's about 8:15 mountain time in the p.m. and we're right on the outskirts of the south edge of Glacier National Park getting ready to start crawling our way through a pass through the Rocky Mountains there that'll occupy the first part of this evening and then we get to scoot across the relatively flat part of Montana remaining between that and the Idaho border and then cut through the North Thornton narrow part of Idaho and into Spokane Washington in the wee hours at which point our train gets broken apart and hopefully by the time I wake up in the morning we'll have half a train and the other half will be going to Portland and we'll be somewhere in the middle of Washington State the last time I did this we happen to be in the Cascades crossing the Cascade Mountains when I woke up but we're running an hour and a half or so behind schedule so I'm guessing maybe we won't quite be at the Cascades yet when I wake up in the morning we'll see anyway that's enough for today so at about 6:00 a.m. Pacific time I wake up to find us on the banks of I guess this is the Colorado River there's an industrial facility across the river and according to the GPS we're rapidly approaching Rock Island in actuality I didn't just get up I got up at 5:30 and went to the shower and I didn't take pictures of this but another commentary on the old Superliner car is the unrestored Superliner cars such as I'm in the shower was kind of different to instead of having a swinging frosted glass door it had just a tacky old shower curtain definitely they've made these newer restorations that I've normally been in much better and I've also noted that the toilets you know the toilet spaces are not any different from before after the restorations but in the old ones like I'm in here they face straight ahead and when you're seated your knees are almost touching the door which doesn't give you a lot of room to stand up conveniently most people kind of lean forward to counterbalance their weight when they stand up and here you're banging your head right into the door so that's not the greatest I'm glad they renovated most of these and there were some transgressions such as my car attendant was up most of the night letting people off at various places not heard him comment in the wee hours that he was finally going to get some sleep so I go down for the shower and there's no more towels so I went back up to my room and there were two hand towels and two washcloths and between the four of those I was able to make them pretend to be one towel for drying off after the shower so that's more of a service problem I suppose you might have run out but I think he probably just forgot to restock them before he went to bed anyway I seem to recall they said breakfast was going to be served about this time this morning shall we go down and see if they're actually doing that Paris mink [Applause] 6:45 in the morning going through Kashmir and where you may ask where is Kashmir and so where is Kashmir you ask me well here's Washington State and we've come over from Spokane I think pretty much along the river here but maybe it's a long highway too anyway Kashmir is right there in the middle of the screen just northwest of Wenatchee I think we actually came up along this way but I don't think we made this huge dip I don't know I'm not actually sure the route but it seems pretty clear we're just going to follow either highway 2 across the Cascade Mountains which seems pretty likely since we do come out into Seattle on the north side of the city and then go south into the city [Music] [Music] [Applause] definitely pretty here use a little more light the Cascades is definitely a picturesque mountain range that's it there there's a signal up ahead you just barely catch our locomotive on that curve we're just paralleling highway 2 here it's off to our right and this little creek is on our left and know we're in a tunnel MSF detector file post-16 97.3 no defects no defects that's highway 2 were just crossing over they're not that much of a highway here there we can see our locomotive and just right ahead here we're gonna cross over or under highway 2 again but it may be in a tunnel I'm going into a tunnel off of it that's nope that's a river I bet highway 2 is just right up there on that Ridge just over the tunnel and suddenly we popped out so quick I didn't even see it coming and now we're on the west side of the Cascades and so we're still paralleling two but it went over a bit more and we went under and it is snowing out here although not heavily there is some snow coming down as a Burlington Northern Santa Fe freight train that was apparently waiting for us to clear the tunnel good morning ladies and gentlemen this is Frank your conductor today hope all of you are enjoying your ride onboard the Empire Builder we're currently just west of Stevens Pass we transited the longest tunnel in the United States back there it's eight miles long or close to it and if you guys are on the train earlier all the way from Chicago or point east you went through the second longest tunnel back in Montana the planet tunnel just over seven miles [Applause] and from the GPS and this is one of the things the GPS does for you as you can see what's coming up ahead if there's the tracks going across the river you might expect to have a bridge and if you're doing photography or videography that gives you time to get your camera out so we've got a horseshoe here going over the local Creek should be bending to the right and then crossing it don't know if it'll be worth the video time or not and when we can't see the bridge but we can definitely see the chasm down there effects out [Music] this is the town of Skykomish unfortunately we're blocked by this freight train all right about here we should be picking up the river again on our left side this time and the moment there it is a couple of nice knobby mountains here now we've got the river on the Left than us then highway 2 immediately to our right I was ambitious I'd run back to that side of the train and take a picture of that but I'm not that ambitious today pressing crunch focus and there we've got highway 2 on our left now definitely a small highway out here although all the way across Montana for example and probably most the way since then it is only a two-lane highway as I recall driving it in the past it was just sheer boredom although it did go through a lot of pretty areas just hour after hour the things you hear on the scanner that's pretty down there [Music] nice shade of aqua the deep water in that little gully I can tell from the GPS we're going to cross the river here in just a moment it's gonna come in from the left makes a horseshoe then we're gonna cross it and then it makes the horseshoe on the right and we're gonna cross it again there's our crossing here it is well there's a nice waterfall down there too oh that's pretty it's one of the things I like about taking the train through mountain passes like this is you'll have a highway you'll have the railroad and almost always some sort of a river and they just constantly criss cross each other in unexpected ways and if you're kind of a connoisseur of that type of thing you can get a lot of enjoyment out of just the interplay of the two of them different angles different altitudes right after we cross this other river we'll be in the tiny little town of index Washington State there we go [Music] a lot going on in index you know for all I know maybe it's murder capital of Washington State sleepy town can sometimes have its secrets there's our combined River I don't really know the name of it I can't easily see it on my map and the GPS isn't telling me the name of it either the river we've been paralleling is the Skykomish river got my camera lifted up just below the top of the window because there's less rain on it there we're definitely getting into the wetter area that I anticipated around Seattle less snow more rain so this is the town of gold bar that we're just entering the outskirts of now and where you may ask is gold bar well there's the Seattle area and if we look over here we're highway 2 is coming across gold bars right in the middle of the picture so we're pretty much coming out of the elevated part of the mountains here we're having the foothills it looks like and I'd say I believe the route takes us up there past Snohomish or over that's pronounced and up to Everett and then down into downtown Seattle kind of near were highways interstate 5 is I believe and once I get there I'm just going to transfer over about two or three blocks to the Union Station and the Amtrak comes in on the King Street Station and just a couple blocks away from that is the Union Station and instead of having long-distance trains operating out of there it's now or at least as far as I can tell it's operated as a commuter station and as the Sound Transit commuter train system and also the link system that runs to and from the airport between downtown Seattle on the airport which I'm planning on taking down to SeaTac Airport and this is startup that was startup now I guess we're still within it highway 2 is just off on the right side of the train and now we're crossing this little river [Music] have no idea what this town is according to the GPS there is no town here [Music] [Music] [Music] big Eagle's Nest up in that tree there so this is Monroe Washington State [Music] [Music] MSF detector file 177 1.1 no defects repeat no defects I don't think these guys are gonna be flying anytime soon we're just passing under Interstate five and entering Everett Washington so we're leaving Everett to the west and just by the time we come to the water we'll turn and start heading south oh good not really sure with this body of water is called neither my GPS nor my road map identify it [Music] and ladies and gentlemen that fit that fits Washington now arriving at Ben and Edmonds is right up here we're still going along the very edge here and I believe the train station is down in this area so we still have to traverse from here to here it's about time to start packing up now we're about ten minutes out I'm all packed ready to go since the GPS and the scanner put away and all I have to go on is my smartphone map application there's the dot at the upper left blue dot downtown Seattle's where the red dot is so not too far to go yet it seems to me that we cross over right where the locks are somewhere in that neighborhood it isn't too clear to me from this image where the locks are exactly but they're named there and my recollection is that the train crosses over right about where the locks are so we're making that curve now away from the bay and here it is there the locks down there and we're going over part of the locks right here so now the Train angles down to the southeast to get in line with downtown Seattle ladies and gentlemen this is your conductor speaking we're rapidly approaching our final destination of Seattle but I would like to kindly request that everyone please remain seated we're not going to pull straight into the station today because we have a train right on our tail coming down from Canada so to make room for them to D train their passengers where we normally would we're going to be pulling past the station and backing on to one of the adjacent tracks so we're gonna be coming in on track eight crew frankly I haven't been on that track before like can tell you off the top of my head which side it is but we'll figure it out real quick once we get in there we want to make each and every one of you for riding with us we appreciate you choosing Amtrak and we want to wish everybody a very wonderful prosperous and happy new year so now we start to back up into the other track in the station so I've swapped sides in my room it for the first time on this trip the first time we've really gone backwards any distance [Music] so this is our safety stop folks we're going to make one more reverse move to our final position on the platform when we come to our next stop folks that'll be our last and final stop you can feel free to come on downstairs pretty training at that time again we're going to make one more reverse move and then we will come to our final station stop check luggage folks once again can be found inside of the station that baggage claim just follow the signs to baggage claim if you are connecting to a different train or bus you can talk to the ticket agents there they'll go ahead and not line out where you need to be for those connecting bus or train transfers like to wish each and every one of you oh he's safe happy and healthy New Year move into the brown for those soaps hope you had an enjoyable ride hope you come back and see it again welcome to Seattle ladies and gentlemen please watch your step when coming downstairs 4d training and that should be it all right so here we are coming out of the King Street Station and this is Jackson Street right in front of us this is an east/west Street and it's been raining but it's not raining right at this moment right across the tracks is the old Union Station so I have to do let's get across there [Music] and there's the Union Station but we're not going in there we're going up here just ahead this glass structure they have easy-to-use kiosks upstairs and also downstairs by the tracks you can pay by cash or by credit card it costs three dollars even to go to the airport from here so fairly economical and there is an elevator this is a bus depot and a train depot you can see there's tracks down there as well as paved road I'm not actually spotting any of the kiosks downstairs there were the last time I was here but I think they revised it seems like the ones you have to use those upstairs at ground level [Music] hangul Lake is down in the vicinity of the airport so that's a clue that we're on the right one here it's change will be stopping militarily pre operator change the train will remove me shortly we thank you for your patience intially Rainier Beach station doors to my left next off to phone International Boulevard station quite a walk

Channel: youtuuba

Views: 541,988

Keywords: Chicago, Seattle, AMTRAK, Empire Builder, Superliner, Roomette, METRA, LINK, Milwaukee, Minot, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Montana, Washington, Cascade Mountains, Cascade Range, Cascades

Id: rl0exmfmFV0

Length: 165min 51sec (9951 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 07 2018