Seat 2A

Day Four
Amtrak First Class ~ Enroute through Nevada & California ~ Arr. 430p
Amtrak First Class ~ Coast Starlight ~ Emeryville, CA to Seattle, WA ~ Dep. 1001p

When I awoke we were gliding smoothly atop welded rail while speeding across north central Nevada. Judging by the speed of the landscape passing by, we had to have been traveling at or near the posted maximum of 79 mph. Now I know that’s not very speedy compared to fast trains in Europe or Asia but then what’s the hurry? I love this region! The last thing I’d want to do is roll across this beautiful landscape at 200 miles per hour.

Much of Nevada is in what’s known as the Great American Basin. It’s one of the four main deserts of the American West, the others being the Chihuahua (New Mexico), the Sonoran (Arizona) and the Mojave (Southeastern California). It’s a big, broad landscape and a great place to ride a train through. Doing so at 79 mph felt like just the right speed.



The view from my bed


Good Morning, Nevada!


Dune-like mountains to the north


When I headed out into the vestibule to retrieve some shampoo from my luggage, I could see that the shower room was occupied this morning. Amtrak’s Superliners have just one shower serving fourteen roomettes as well as the family bedroom. I’m rather amazed at how often it’s been readily available on my past trips. Either my timing has been extraordinarily fortuitous or many people just don’t bother to shower regularly during their rides.

Now before anyone gets their knickers in a knot over any perceived hygienic shortcomings amongst my train riding brethren, consider for a moment that the train cars are comfortably air-conditioned and over the course of a two or three day journey you’re unlikely to be doing much of anything that’ll result in your working up a sweat. Coach passengers don’t have access to showers and I’ve rarely ever noticed any of them creating a stink. Back in the days when I would spend a couple weeks at a time riding in coach on rail passes, I did pretty well with sponge baths in the onboard lavatories and even managed to wash my hair over the tiny sinks. Honestly now, anyone so prissy that they can’t travel on a train without having a shower every single day should probably not even be reading my reports, much less riding on anything less than the $1000.00 per day Orient Express.

I was a little concerned that were I to wait for the shower to become free, I might miss last call for breakfast and so I quickly threw on a clean set of clothes and made my way to the diner where a hot cup of coffee and a chilled glass of orange juice were promptly delivered to me. The diner was surprisingly quiet this morning and I ended up with the table to myself for the entire meal.

We arrived into Reno about five minutes early – a much anticipated and most welcome relief for the smokers on the train who hadn’t had a smoke since four hours earlier in Winnemucca. As soon as the doors were opened, they leapt from the train almost in unison – like lemmings running off a cliff. Cigarettes were quickly lit, smoke was sucked down and almost magically they went from stressed out to comfortably relaxed. Pity the cycle starts all over again as soon as we depart Reno. The next smoke break is Sacramento – four hours down the line. I sure am glad I quit back when we were still allowed to smoke onboard Amtrak trains.

The California Zephyr is a popular way for Bay Area travelers to travel to Reno and back for a day or three of gambling or even a few days of skiing at one of the many nearby ski resorts surrounding Lake Tahoe. I watched as a steady stream of passengers descended the escalator and made their way onto various cars. I would estimate we boarded close to one hundred more passengers out of Reno. In the coach cars the new arrivals make an immediate impact by their presence – noisy, generally happy and excited to be headed home. Comfortably ensconced downstairs in my sleeper, the ambiance remained calm and quiet, much more to my liking. When I’m ready for a little more action, I’ll head up to the lounge car.

Just west of Reno we commenced a long, steady climb along the banks of the Truckee River up into the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The scenery is pretty though by my account not nearly as dramatic as what we’d experienced in Colorado the day before. A volunteer from a local historical society provided commentary during this portion of the trip.



Climbing up into the Sierras


The last remnants of winter persist atop Donner Pass


Spring is on full display as we descend the Sierra’s western slope


As we descended down the western slope of the Sierras, the sun seemed to intensify and the day as well as the scenery warmed up beautifully. The lower we got, the greener it became. As we rolled through the woods just above Colfax, I thought I spotted some hippies out flitting happily about the forest. And why not? It was a gorgeous sun drenched day and a big part of me wished I could’ve been out there with them.

After a long service stop in Sacramento during which we lost a substantial number of passengers (From Sacramento Amtrak Connect busses deliver connecting passengers to a variety of East Bay destinations) we continued along the shores of San Francisco Bay, speeding past a variety of marshlands, old broken down wharfs and a few boats that didn’t look like they’d sailed anywhere for a half century of more.



Speeding along San Francisco Bay


You know, there are a multitude of stories about Amtrak trains running late but hardly any – none really - about the many times that they’ve arrived on time or better yet – early. Over the years I’ve logged almost 200,000 miles aboard Amtrak. That may not sound like much to those of you who’ve spent a lot more time earning air miles but look at it this way – Amtrak trains average about 50 mph or 1,100 miles per day. By comparison, airplanes average about 500 mph so if you were to extrapolate Amtrak’s speed to that of an airliner, we’d be looking at about 2 million miles that I’ve traveled by rail.

I don’t mean to brag. That’s not my intent since who here at FlyerTalk really gives a hoot about rail miles anyway? No – the reason for me trotting out that particular stat is to present myself as imminently qualified to comment on Amtrak’s much improved record for on time performance. Today, we arrived in Emeryville about fifteen minutes early.

With a six hour layover until my connection to the northbound Coast Starlight, I stored my luggage with the station attendants and then purchased roundtrip bus tickets into downtown San Francisco. With the drop off point at the South Bay Transit Center leaving me only a three block walk from my favorite affordable San Francisco eatery, I had more than enough time to enjoy a leisurely dinner before returning to Emeryville for the 10:00pm departure of my Seattle bound train.

San Francisco has a lot of fantastic restaurants but I have always loved the ambiance, the service and the food at the Perry’s Restaurant located on the ground floor of the Hotel Griffon down by the Embarcadero. Truth be told, I also like the price. I mean, why pay $80-100 for a decent dinner when $50.00 will do the job nicely at a place like Perry’s? I love the dark wood accented interior, the bar and its TVs tuned to a generally interesting sporting and the small patio and its ambiance on the back side of the building.

Most of all though, I like the food and the service. I had a typically delicious chicken dinner, washed down with a couple pints of a delicious new beer for me – Johnny Utah Pale Ale from Seattle’s Georgetown Brewing Co. My first experience with this brewery was via a pint of Manny’s Pale Ale which I discovered in a Seattle airport area restaurant a couple of years back. It was – by my tastes at least – just about as good a pale ale as one can get. And, I’m happy to report, Manny’s is now served regularly in American Express’ Centurion Lounge at SeaTac as well as Alaska Airlines’ North Satellite Alaska Lounge. As an added bonus, Alaska also serves one of GBC’s entries into the IPA market called Bodhizafa IPA which I recently had the pleasure of tasting at Alaska’s C Concourse Alaska Lounge at SeaTac. Most IPA’s are so hoppy they taste like a bag of good bud in liquid form. This one had much more depth and character – again, by my tastes. Your tastes may vary. So far as I know, none of Georgetown Brewing Company’s products are yet available in can or bottle, so if any of you should find yourselves thirsty while laying over at SeaTac, make an effort to locate one of these beers. Take it from me – ol’ Seat 2A. I’ve drunk a lot of beer in my life and I’m confident most of youse will like these beers – even you Aussies who generally sneer at American beers.

Back at the Emeryville station, we waited an extra nine minutes for the late arrival of the Coast Starlight. When it did finally arrive, it came into the station with such alacrity that by the time it finally squealed to a stop the end of the very last car had just passed the station entrance. This was convenient for Coach passengers whose cars were located at the very end of the train but for those of us in First Class it meant a long walk down almost the entire length of the platform to our sleepers.

My car attendant tonight was Steve, a wily old Amtrak veteran with 29 years of service logged. That’s a long time! It’s hard to believe that as long ago as 29 years ago was; it was even longer – 35 years ago – that I was practically living aboard Amtrak’s new Superliners while taking advantage of its extremely affordable All Aboard America Fares. What fun that was! Over a span of about three years I rode aboard just about every Amtrak train there was over all but about 600 miles of the national route system.

Sadly, one thing missing from tonight’s train was the Pacific Parlour Car. Unfortunately, these wonderful old lounge cars simply became too old and too expensive to maintain. That said, it sure would be nice if Amtrak were to bring them back via refurbishment to some of its first generation Sightseer Lounge Cars. Still, that would involve a minimum investment of about two or three million dollars per car – something I don’t see happening under Richard Anderson’s administration. And – I can’t say I would blame Mr. Anderson were that the case. After all, how much did the Pacific Parlour Cars contribute to the profitability of the Coast Starlight? How many people actively chose to ride the Starlight due to the presence of these cars? Sadly, I suspect the answers to these questions might be painfully obvious. Even so, I’ll miss the unique comfort and class they contributed to a ride on the Coast Starlight. Here’s a picture of one for old time’s sake…



Amtrak’s Pacific Parlour Car


Interestingly, the Starlight had carried an almost full load between LA and the Bay Area. In particular, my roomette had only just been vacated at Emeryville and so Steve had performed a quick cleanup and then asked if I’d like my room set up for nighttime occupancy. Sure, why not? It only takes a couple of minutes to convert a roomette for nighttime use, so once he’d completed the conversion, I dropped off my gear and headed up to the lounge car for a nightcap.

With the retirement of the Pacific Parlour Cars, Amtrak’s First Class passengers aboard the Starlight must once again join the masses in the Sightseer Lounge Cars. There are worse things in life. It was about 10:15pm when we powered east up the tracks toward Sacramento and beyond. I arrived in the lounge to find maybe a dozen people as we rolled through the east bay community of Richmond. Downstairs in the café a group of four were having a loud and garrulous time laughing it up at one of the booths.

The café attendant was a nice guy named Ramon who was on his 18th year working for Amtrak. Jobs like café attendant or anything in the dining car are highly sought after and only the most senior employees have a chance of securing one. I asked Ramon if he knew my friend Jay who worked the Coast Starlight as a sleeping car attendant. He wasn’t sure but he thought he might know of him. A lot of these folks work with the same crews for long periods and when you consider that the Starlight is a daily train traveling over a two day long itinerary in each direction, there’s four crews right there. Factor in a couple or three days off after a round trip and there’re four more crews. Once they’re senior there’s not a lot of inter-mingling with other crews. Less senior employees are often on call and so work with many different crews but it had obviously been a long time since Ramon had done that. I requested my usual Ginger Ale and ice and bid Ramon a good night.

Back upstairs, I savored my ice cold Jack Daniels on the rocks and watched the lights of Martinez and Davis flashed by. In many areas the tracks run right alongside the waters of San Francisco Bay and on a nice evening like tonight the sight of distant lights around and across the bay was quite pretty. By 11:30pm we were about a half hour out of Sacramento, running right on time. Some of the most impressive scenery along the route of the Coast Starlight is up north of Sacramento as the train rolls on through northern California, the Siskiyous and on into southern Oregon. Unfortunately most all of this landscape is traveled through at night thus depriving us of some magnificent scenery along the way. As such, I decided to call it a night shortly before we eased into Sacramento.