The Amtrak Coast Starlight, September 2008
Between the cost of airfare and the abysmal treatment travelers endure in airports and airplanes, I've been looking at alternate transportation possibilities for vacation trips. I decided to check out the train. I longed to go see my aunt in Victoria, and I also wanted to visit friends in Portland and Seattle, so I booked a trip on Amtrak's Coast Starlight.
The northbound train trip had its problems. Because an automobile had stalled on the tracks near Hayward, the train was 90 minutes late at my pickup point in Martinez. It was well past midnight when the train finally arrived. As I'm normally sound asleep before 10 p.m. I was bleary and barely functioning when I boarded the train. Unfortunately, I'd been assigned a train seat that was already occupied and I had to stagger about the train in search of a staffer who could point me to an available seat on the nearly full train.
The entire train was non-smoking (yay!) so smokers had a limited number of station stops where they could exit the train and light up. A passenger who was intent on taking advantage of a smoke-break stop in southern Oregon stumbled on the stairs, fell onto the tracks and broke her arm. It took about 45 minutes for the police and paramedics to assess the passenger's injuries, summon an ambulance and cart her away.
About 75 miles farther north, another station stop had us waiting without explanation for nearly an hour while police cars came and went from the station's parking lot. The conductor finally announced over the intercom that police had been busy escorting a difficult passenger off the train. Apparently there was a fist fight in the snackbar car!
The train was nearly six hours late by the time I disembarked in Portland. The woman sitting across the aisle from me had told me she'd boarded the train at Union Station in Los Angeles. She'd taken an Amtrak bus to the station and during the bus journey, the elderly passenger sitting behind her had died. So I suppose by comparison, the other difficulties the train passengers experienced were much less dire.