Southwest Chief from Chicago to Los Angeles

We had kind of a relaxing day before boarding our train in Chicago.  We kind of lounged around but we also ran a couple of errands before leaving the hotel.  We started with breakfast in the lounge where besides having a satisfying meal, we also stocked up on orange juice and cranberry juice for our trip.  The train would provide juice with our meal but we wanted our juice for mixed drinks.  Since our trip would be just over 40 hours by train, what else is there to do really?  We also ran out to grab some Garrett popcorn for our trip.  Garrett popcorn is famous in Chicago for its flavored popcorn.  We decided to get some cheese flavored and limited time only macadamia flavored for the train trip.  Our last stop was a Walgreen’s where we picked up some toiletries, a bottle of coconut run for Jackie’s drinks and a bottle of bourbon for Chris.  We were now all set for our trip.

Our train was not scheduled to leave until 3:00.  Our checkout was 1 PM so we knew we would be spending a little time in the station before leaving.  We grabbed a taxi for the short 10 minute ride to the station.  On the way over our cab driver almost killed someone.  A young lady was texting and listening to an iPod completely not paying attention to anything around her.  She had a don’t walk sign, the other 20 or so people with her all stopped but she just darted right into the street where our driver slammed on the breaks pretty hard and laid on the horn.  The lady had a scared look on her face, and rightfully so.  When we arrived at the station we attempted to check our bags.   We found that one of the bags was overweight by 6 pounds.  We learned that there was no leeway so we had to go off to the side and repack the bags a little bit, moving 6 pounds worth of stuff from one bag to the other.  When we were satisfied with our packing job we got back in line and re-weighed the bags.  At first the guy checking in the bags thought we had missed the cutoff to check bags for our train (the cutoff is 45 minutes) but he quickly realized he was wrong.  Our bag now weighed in at 50.7 pounds and he actually had to ask his co-worker if it was ok to accept the bag that was overweight by 0.7 pounds!  Lucky for us it was fine.

We waited for our boarding announcement in a lounge.  At 2:15 they made an announcement for sleeping car passengers and we got on the train.  After finding our way to our room and dropping off our smaller bags, Chris got out and walked the length of our train and took some pictures, both inside and out.  Our train is being pulled by two engines, followed by a baggage car, a crew sleeping car, two passenger sleeping cars, a dining car, a combined lounge/sightseeing car, and 3 coach cars.  This would be our home for the next two days.

Downstairs of our sleeping car.  There is baggage storage plus a couple of rooms downstairs.

Our room, day time setup.

Dining car

Observation car

More observation car

More dining car

Hall way of our sleeping car.  We are the 2nd room on the right.

Free drinks and coffee in our sleeping car

We had taken overnight train trips five times before.  Each of our previous trips was one night; this would be our longest trip so far, at two nights.  In the past we have stayed in smaller rooms which consist of a pair of seats that face each other which fold into a bed at night with a second bed that folds down from the ceiling.  The width of that room is only about 3 ½ feet with rooms on each side of a narrow hallway leading down the center of the car.  The bathroom and shower is typically down the hall and is obviously shared.  For this trip we opted for a larger room.  Our room is more than double the width at 7 ½ feet wide, has a row of seats where three people could sit next to each other with a 4^th seat opposite the row.  There is also a shower, sink and toilet in the room so it offers a little more privacy. The shower and toilet are in the same stall, saving some space but making it so that unless you’re going to get soaked there is no way you can possibly shower and go #2 at the same time.  The larger seat folds into a bed that is sized somewhere in between a twin and full sized bed.  Another single bed folds down from the ceiling.  We did not use the upper bed as we found that the larger bed was big enough for the two of us.

One of the smaller rooms.  The two chairs fold into a single bed and another bed folds down from the ceiling.

Our bedroom - night time configuration

Shower/toilet

Sink

We were also offered free dining on board with the purchase of our sleeping car accommodation.  Since there is only one dining car for the whole train you have a choice of times for lunch and dinner and more than likely you are sitting with someone else.  We opted for the earliest possible dinner (5:00) on the first night because we had not eaten lunch.  We were seated with a young lady returning to college in Missouri after spending some time at home just outside of Chicago.  We each ordered a steak for dinner and while it certainly was not gourmet fare it was satisfying.  We also had a nice dessert of cheesecake and blood orange sorbet. 

Dessert

We returned to our room and watched the scenery go by before getting off of the train at one of the extended stops in Ft. Madison, IA.  While the train makes numerous stops, most stops are nothing longer than a minute or two for people to get off and on.  Bigger towns or cities typically have longer stops to allow a little bit of time to load and unload luggage.  Some towns have even longer stops to allow for smoking breaks or a crew change (the engineer and conductor are bound by federal hours of service laws so they strategically change them out rather than risk them running out of time in the middle of nowhere…if that were to happen the train would come to a stop no matter where we were and we would have to wait for a relief crew to arrive).  Ft. Madison was a crew change point and because our new engineer was not yet there when we arrived we had about a 40 minute wait.  This allowed us to get out and stretch our legs a little bit and take pictures of the setting sun.  After this stop we went back to our room, read a little bit and had a few drinks.  We got off the train one more time in Kansas City, as it was another long stop.  After Kansas City we went to bed.

Smoking break

Our sleeping car attendant, Joe

The baggage car

Ft. Madison, IA

The next day the scenery became much more diverse.  Sleeping on a rocking train isn't the easiest thing to do and we woke up several times in the night, mostly when we stopped for stations or when the track conditions became poor enough that the train really swayed from side to side.  As a result of waking up so many times we got to see a nice sunrise somewhere in western Kansas.

Sunrise in Kansas.  Blurry at 60 mph.

While we mostly traveled through flat farmland the first day, when we awoke we could see the Rocky Mountains in the distance.  The train turned southwest soon after entering Colorado and we crossed Raton Pass.  A large sign on the side of the tracks told us that we crossed the pass at just over 7500 feet in elevation.  The trip through the mountains was curvy and very slow going.  Once we came down out of the mountains and into northern New Mexico it was mostly flat again and the train picked up speed.  We made brief stops in a couple of small towns including Jackie's favorite, Raton (Spanish for mouse, Jackie's favorite type of rodent).

Another smokers' stop in Raton, NM.  "Downtown" is off to the left in the picture.

The next big stop was Albuquerque, NM.  Since the scheduled stop was about 50 minutes Chris had big plans.  We had been craving green chile cheeseburgers and New Mexico is THE place to get these.  Chris researched just where he would get these burgers during our station stop.  The place was about 2 miles from the station which would be no problem to get to and back in 50 minutes.  All we needed to do was grab a taxi, have the driver take us there, wait while we got the burgers, and return to the train with plenty of time to spare.  Only problem was that there were no available taxis when we got there.  By the time a taxi arrived we thought we would be cutting it too close so we didn't even attempt it.  Instead of the cab we stayed in the station area.  There were about 2 dozen or so stalls set up with Native Americans selling different kinds of things from blankets to jewelry.  We bought a turquoise ring and before we knew it, it was time to get back on the train.

Vendors in Albuquerque

The remainder of the trip was uneventful.  We ate lunch with a couple from Germany who were on their honeymoon and we had dinner with two guys.  One of the guys also got on in Chicago and was traveling from Jacksonville, FL to Los Angeles via Washington DC and Chicago.  We didn't get into it but we assumed he was afraid to fly and the most direct route from Florida to LA was up the east coast to either Washington or NY, then to Chicago and finally to LA.  The other guy got on in Colorado and was travelling to Arizona.  The train traveled pretty fast the rest of the trip and we arrived in Los Angeles about 1 hour ahead of schedule, at 7 AM.  We collected our luggage and found the bus that would take us to LAX where we were picking up a rental car.  While we were sitting in our seat the same German couple walked past us and said hello.  Once we got to the airport where we would board a shuttle bus the same German couple was sitting at a bench looking lost so we offered our help.  Turns out they were looking for the rental car company, which at LAX is off site so they needed a bus. Since they were going to the same place as us we offered to take them there, and they accepted.  Having been in a foreign country and not being fluent in that foreign language we felt bad for them and we are pretty sure that it would have taken them much longer than the 10 minutes it took us to get to the rental car center had it not been for us.  We wished them well, grabbed our car and we were on our way.

Our Walgreen's purchase.  Makes the train trip more fun.