Train travel – Barb's True Stories

This is day three of four for us in our trip from Whitefish MT to Ottawa ON.

We arrived in Chicago last night with about 20 minutes to spare before we were called to board the Lakeshore Limited Train overnight to Buffalo, NY. The dining car on the train was nifty. The food was prepackaged but not as nicely presented as it was on the Empire Builder.

We had a 12 hour train ride and arrived in Buffalo around 9 am local this morning.

Herman the Buffalo (at least that’s what he told me his name was). Buffalo, NY

The train depot is in an industrial area some distance from downtown. There is one other person sitting in the waiting room that holds about 100 people. We are on a main rail line and it’s a pleasant day outside so the train watcher in our family is out there watching trains go by.

After sleeping two days and two nights on the train, my take on it is: treat it as an experience, be prepared for delays and for the waiting times between trains. There are +’s and -‘s compared to other modes of travel. It’s great to have a ticket where your meals are included and you just need to weave your way through cars to a dining room. A ticket in a sleeper car let’s you get into your pj’s and into bed for overnight travel however once the porter has made down your beds (either a double bottom or double on the bottom and single bunk at the top), there is little room to manoeuvre, to get to the sink, to get out the door into the hall (without crawling on the mattress) and to get into the bathroom. If you don’t have some degree of flexibility getting up the ladder and into the top bunk would be a challenge. That said we both had very good sleeps last night as the train hurtled along at speeds up to 70mph. The shower set up is only for the brave. Packing light and in a small suitcase makes things easier.

There is a quietness about train travel. The station is quiet. There are fewer announcements and no oxygen mask demonstrations. As far as carbon footprint, the train trumps air travel. You get to see lots of countryside and if the train doesn’t have WiFi you get to remember a world where you weren’t always connected.

We are about six hours out of Chicago and will hopefully be only three hours delayed rather than five hours (our original delay yesterday). As we walk back and forth to the dining car we pick up all manner of conversations. Today the seasoned conductor was speaking to a couple who were bemoaning the delay and what would be a missed connection to their next train. The conductor, in a voice that carried most of the car, said “The secret to train travel is to leave a day early.”

The food and service in the dining car have been very good. The accommodation (a bedroom) is compact. We have our own bathroom and if you don’t mind having a shower while sitting on the toilet (lid closed you know) then you could shower too. There are bunks for sleeping and thankfully no pictures of a 70+ year old climbing up to the bed above. Sleeping in a rolling, rocking train is it’s own thing.

We’ve chatted with a rodeo cowboy who checked his saddle with the luggage (on his way to a big rodeo in Fargo). He was the real thing and sported luggage and jacket that said he’d been in the finals in a rodeo at another time. There was a couple from Iowa who flew to the west coast of USA to catch the train and ride it east, a younger man who worked for a non-profit who was paying for him to go to college, and a retired man who had ridden trains all over the US and visited 20 countries. Most of the people we’ve sat with (communal sitting) in the dining car are doing this for the experience.

We just went by Red Wing MN. If you own a pair of Red Wing shoes, this is where the family company started and is business to this day.