SAN JOSE, California – The sun is out here in the Bay Area, but I can’t help opening this post with a tinge of melancholy.
California is the last of 17 states and my native District of Columbia that I’ve traveled through over the last seven days. While there are still 12 hours to go here on the Coast Starlight before we reach Los Angeles, it’s sad to think that I’ll be flying back East tomorrow night.
For now, though, let’s wander through the Coast Starlight a bit.
It’s Superliner rolling stock, so the Lounge and Dining Car are the same as you’ve seen before. But the Roomettes are different, as are the restrooms. Specifically, the features seem a lot older. There’s no closet in the room, the double-shelf carpeting looks worn out, and the upper bunk has that same carpet-style material on the outside instead of the hard plastic that’s in the newer roomettes.
In the bathroom, the equipment is definitely older – especially the sink and the toilet. The toilet is a lot boxier, and flushes when you put the lid down instead of by pushing a button. The space is also laid out differently, with the sink on the left as you enter instead of the right.
Here are some photos of the roomette. I’ll spare you photos of the restroom.
After all the similarities, there is one major difference between the Coast Starlight and Amtrak’s other long-distance trains: the Pacific Parlor car. Unfortunately, it’s out of service right now, apparently because the air conditioning is on the fritz.
There are a lot of photos of the Parlor Car on Flickr, but the rights rules don’t allow me to display them on the blog. You can see them on Flickr.com by clicking here.
We have a substitute car, which is basically a souped-up lounge. It’s more modern, but it doesn’t have the swivel chairs. It looks like this:
It also looks a lot like one of the cars Amtrak showed off at National Train Day in Washington this past May.
It’s not bad, and there are power outlets at the seats – a major advantage over the lounge car. I’ve basically spent the whole of this train ride in here. I missed out on the Trails and Rails commentary between Seattle and Portland, but this space is really nice for just chilling out.
The Parlor Car (I’ll call it that for convenience) is also a much better place than the Lounge Car for taking pictures out both sides of the train. While the Lounge Car has bigger windows, it’s jammed full of people almost all the time. The Parlor Car is not, so I’ve been able to move back and forth easily.
As we head for San Jose and points further south, here are a few pictures from stops thus far on the Coast Starlight. We’ll start in Eugene, Oregon, which was the first rest break after Portland. It’s a town that Bally knows well, as one of his best friends spent a few quite formative years there.
From Eugene, we headed south towards Chemult. If the sky was light gray in Eugene, it got really dark and gloomy as we climbed through the Cascade Mountains. It was a pleasant 44 degrees out when we got there.
The next stop we reached where I could get outside was Klamath Falls, Oregon. It was warmer there, but not by much – the temperature when we arrived was 52 degrees.
Between Eugene and Klamath Falls (and a bit beyond), we rolled through the heart of the Cascades. I’ll leave you with two photos from that stretch: one of the Lookout Point Reservoir and one of some trees higher up in the mountains.
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