Travelling Hopefully but with Increasing Impatience

Amtrak, my cross continental steed of choice introduced itself to me at Emeryville, a town across the bay from San Francisco.  It being nearly 11pm at night all I can say about Emeryville is that it's dark and not terribly well lit.  Amtrak got off to a bad start by being forty minutes late still for someone who's travelled the Lunatic Express a delay that can be measured in minutes seemed inconsequential. Remember the preceding statement, I will be paying for it.

The train itself was a big double decker thing which looked even bigger due to the American habit of designing their railway stations to look like vacant lots.  Thus rather than looking at the station from the level of a platform you peer up at it from the ground as it looms above you.  The staff were a strange combination of brusque efficiency and cheerful incompetence but eventually they loaded us up and got us rolling through the California night.

I travelled Coach (peasant scum) class to Portland and I have to say I am impressed.  There were big comfy seats that reclined, there were footrests, a little table and general comfort.  Sadly I had been placed in the brightest spot in the carriage so sleep was a little difficult.

We'd started forty minutes late, by the time morning came we were two hours late because apparently they had to nail the track down in front of us or something.  Somebody took advantage of our immobility to attach their own railway car to the rear of our train which I can only consider a piece of damned cheek.

Despite the delays the driver had obviously redlined the reactor or whatever powers the train (illegal immigrants in hamster wheels I suspect) as the train was due in Seattle, it's final destination seventeen minutes early.

And it turns out that sentence was written in a fit of blind optimism.  Apparently some clown at Union Pacific had managed to derail a freight car ahead of us.  As a result while waiting for the track to clear we waited for several hours at Salem, Oregon a town whose principal claim to fame is the fact that our train was delayed there for several hours.  I was supposed to get into Portland at 3.30 in the afternoon.  I arrived at 8.30 at night.

To derail one train might be accounted a misfortune, to derail two smacks of carelessness.  I left Portland for my three day journey across the American northwest.  I had a sleeper car and was feeling rather pleased with myself.  The train left Portland on time and made all the way to Pasco, Washington some hours up the track when the announcement was made.  Some halfwit freight jockey had jumped the tracks again and it was a doozy.  He'd actually managed to put the engine unit on its side and cranes to recover it wouldn't reach the scene for several hours when recovery work would begin.

In the meantime we were stuck in Pasco.  Amtrak rose to the occasion, they sent out for pizza.  Have I mentioned that our dining car was due to join us in Spokane on the other side of the derailment?  After four hours of sampling the delights of Pasco railway station ("an enchantingly long stretch on concrete artistically pitted with an abstract display of extinguished cigarette marks" gushed one excited critic who may have been somewhat sleep deprived at the time) Amtrak decided to take its bat, ball and train and go home to Portland.  Those of us with an irrational desire to reach our destination were herded onto buses to Spokane.

Spokane seemed nice if you take into account the fact that it was dawn, I was exhausted and would cheerfully have burnt Spokane to the ground if it put me back on time.  Kindly souls told me it wouldn't help and wrestled the lighter out of my hand.

We've all seen those anti terrorist ads about encountering abandoned parcels in public places.  Well they have them in America too.  So what did we do when we noticed an abandoned case on our bus? Grabbed it and tossed it to the driver on our way out.  In our defence if we had got Homeland Security involved we'd probably still be in Spokane.  And we're not, at the time of writing we're rocking and rolling (literally, the side to side motion on these things is a little disturbing) heading points east.  We're all grumpy and sleep deprived but Amtrak has gone one better.  They've pointed out that none of the train staff have slept for twenty four hours and could we please have some patience?  I hope that no sleep for twenty four hours statement doesn't include the driver.