[PRCo] Re: train travel

[galtfd at comcast.net]

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "Dennis F.  Cramer" <dfc1 at windstream.net>
> 
> I have over 20,000 miles on Amtrak over the past 25 years and do not regret 
> doing it once.  I was born too late to enjoy the glory days, but then again, 
> so were all of us here.
> 

Hmmm,,,

Not sure how you define "glory days" or "all of us here", Dennis.

But here's an old geezer who as a college student crossed the continent many times - nearly always sitting up - over a great variety of routes, viz:

Directly from Seattle to Chicago - Great Northern, Northern Pacific, Milwaukee, thence New York via  NYC, Pennsy, B&O
Via Portland and UP to Chicago, then onward as above
Via Vancouver and CPR or CNR to Toronto, thence onward via DL&W or Lehigh Valley
(once only) via CPR to Montreal, then south via CV.

As best I can remember, ticket prices were competitive over any of these routes - a serious consideration!.

Judging by quality of train alone, and by no other factor such as scenery, my hands-on favourite was the Empire Builder, with the Phoebe Snow and B&O's Columbian competing for first place in the East.

May not have been the glory days, but I didn't know that. Every night you dropped off to sleep knowing that hordes of other people were travalling like you, a few miles or a few hundred miles to the north or south. Who knew that it would come to an end?

And few things better represented the excitement of train travel than the midnight marshalling of the Seattle & Portland sections of The Builder at Spokane. Not even the change of corporate rails at St. Paul or Omaha.

Don G