For a long time, I had been meaning to take a cross-USA train ride. Like many people, I had not visited much of the flyover states, even though I had lived in the United States for about 7 years. When memorial day approached in May, 2019 I realized that I had the time and the long weekend to embark on a cross country railway trip.
To travel the railway between New York to San Francisco, one would have to take the Lake Shore Limited from New York – Chicago and from there, take the California Zephyr from Chicago-San Francisco (to be specific, the terminal stop is Emeryville, 30 minutes outside of SF). Since I decided to go on this train ride only a few days before the long weekend of Memorial Day, I had to skip on the New York – Chicago leg.
Instead, early on Saturday, I flew from New York – Chicago and headed to Chicago Union Station. I was going to board the California Zephyr that afternoon. The California Zephyr takes closes to 52 hours to make the 4000 km journey and makes more than 30 stops in between.
For about half of my trip (Chicago – Glenwood Springs, Colorado), I was going to be in a coach seat. These seats are comfortable and recline quite a bit. They are almost like a business class seat on an airplane. For the second half, I had a small sleeping booth for myself. This booth of about 8 ft * 4ft can accommodate 2 people and for just me, it was wide and spacious.
Once we left Chicago’s Union Station, I took a short nap on my seat since it had been a long day flying in from New York. Before long, I headed to the Viewing Lounge on the train to sit back and take in Illinois’s countryside. The sightseer lounge (called the observation car by Amtrak) is a special coach on the California Zephyr. This was probably the place I spent most of my non-sleeping hours in. It’s a coach on the top floor of the train with floor to ceiling windows and lots of seating perfect for taking in all the sights we were going past.
As the sun started going under, we crossed the Mississipi River and entered Iowa from Illinois. I was speaking with a couple of public school teachers who were heading from Chicago into Iowa. One of them spoke to me about how their middle school students were programming using Python and Adafruit and that was a pretty interesting conversation. Soon enough, it was time for dinner and I headed to the dining coach.
Amtrak has a separate dining coach where a sit down breakfast, lunch and dinner are served (meals are included in the fare for those passengers in sleeper cabins ). The food served is surprisingly good, and I got myself a chicken entree and a glass of wine. Since dining space is limited, meal times are a dining-roulette and each day, you dine with a random set of co-passengers. These times were great to talk to a subsection of people I usually do not get the chance to speak with. After dinner, I headed back to my coach seat, reclined back to a very accommodating degree and started dozing off.
When I woke up intermittently in the middle of the night, I could see the outlines of Nebraska before dripping back into sleep. When I woke up to sunlight, I realized that I was in west Nebraska or eastern Colorado. I sat in my half awake state for a few hours gazing out at the vast emptiness that is the American midwest. Soon, we were in Denver and I stepped out to stretch my legs and get some coffee
As the train left Denver, I settled in to the last remaining seat on the sightseer lounge. This leg of the train ride was going to be picturesque and everyone on the train had made a beeline to the sightseer lounge. Within 20-30 minutes of leaving Denver’s stations, the train was snaking itself through the grand and beautiful foothills of the Rockies. It went through multiple tunnels with backdrops of beautiful snow-capped peaks. It was a surreal transition from the flat midlands to grand mountains.
I got lunch again in the dining coach and got to speak with an old English couple and an older American man who seemed to have travelled every country in the world for his business. After lunch, I moved from my coach seats into a sleeper cabin. I sat down in my tiny cabin looking at Colorado’s beauty unfurl past me for the remainder of the evening.
Later that evening, the mountains transformed back into flat lands as we entered Utah. After a quick dinner, I retreated once again to my small cabin so that I sip on some whiskey while Utah’s spectacle played outside my window.
When I woke up the next day, I was in Nevada. In the morning’s sun, I could see a dry desert like landscape set as a foreground to giant mountains. I sat back with a cup of coffee and stared at this for a while.
We went past Reno during breakfast where I met a German who told me about his interest in building small scale hydroelectric projects and his dream of visiting the Brahmaputra River in India at some point.
As I sat with a book in the sightseer lounge, the train finally entered into California. It would take another 8 or so hours before we reached San Francisco. The train snaked itself via the Sierra Nevada range of mountains. There had been snow recently and it almost felt like being in an East-European winter train.
Late in the afternoon, the train reached its final stop Emeryville outside of San Francisco. It had taken me 53 hours, 4000 kms. Being on a cross country train reminds you of how vast the country really is with all its different landscapes. It also demands a certain kind of patience and a distance from electronics which surprisingly wasn’t hard. I guess it helps when you have such a great show going on outside your window.
Darshan 