Part 2
Well, Moynihan train hall is just total night and day compared to the LIRR section of the station. Such a pleasant exterior and interior:
On entering, I headed for the Metropolitan Lounge, which guests in a roomette or above get complimentary access to. This was by far the best feature that I came across in all my time using Amtrak and I suggest that anyone who is able to, makes full use of this facility. It's a decent sized, modern lounge with comfortable seating, power points, departure screens, a separate paid bar which serves cocktails, a balcony and a fairly upmarket 'canteen' which serves a great variety of pre-paid food and drinks. It's a bit like an airport lounge, whatever you want, they give you and everything I had in there was fantastic. I mainly had drinks and lemon cake slices because, well I just like cake really. But I did also have a fantastic Cobb salad and all the other food looked great. My train was announced about 20 minutes before departure, at which point I made my way down to the platforms. On the concourse I bought a 4-pack of trendy beer from a hipster liquor store, the occupants of which were impressed (or perhaps they just thought I was daft) by the journey ahead of me when they asked where I was going. I took a quick picture of the loco and went to board my sleeper car.
The Lake Shore Limited New York-Chicago.
The Genesis P32AC-DM bi-mode locomotive that would take us as far as Albany
I was greeted by the guard and sleeper host and got settled into my roomette quite quickly and I was soon given a full run down of how everything worked by the friendly sleeper host. My room was in day-mode at this point. I wanted to see the view on both sides of the train, so shortly after departure I moved into the lounge car, which wasn't technically open at this point. My presence was fairly quickly challenged, but when I explained that I wasn't wanting any food and just wanted to see out of both sides of the train, they were cool with me sitting in there. Speaking of cool, this carriage was very cool indeed, having massively over-powering air conditioning that caused some other passengers to complain later that evening, but I have a feeling it might have been deliberate to stop people loitering in there as it also seemed to be a bit of a 'staff mess car'. I was very glad to have been able to see from both sides of the train as all the good views were on the left hand side, whereas my roomette was on the right. The main views were of the Hudson river, which was quite impressive. At one point a long CSX operated American freight train was running on a line on the opposite bank and that was quite a sight. Later on, we also had an American Eagle briefly flying right along side us, which seemed very fitting. After a couple of hours we arrived at Albany, where the fun began. At Albany, our train combines with another portion from Boston and we lose our third rail capable locomotive, to switch to the diesel ones that hauled the portion from Boston. This takes about 45 minutes. After getting a bit of fresh air on the platform and filming the loco changes. I needed the bathroom so nipped up to the concourse and had a cheeky look at Albany, which was a bit dull really (or at least the section around the station was).
A video of the loco change and some shunting:
So these two Genesis P42DC locomotives would now haul us the rest of the way to Chicago, or that was the plan...
Once the train was joined, and electricity was reinstated in the lounge car, I ordered dinner. I'd already seen a few people eat, so I chose the dish that I thought had looked the best, which was the salmon and prawns. It was nice enough for obviously microwaved food and there was dessert too, which was a brownie. You also get a free beer with you main too (although I actually had mine while running alongside the Hudson earlier on).
The sun set while we were at Albany and the jet lag started to catch up with me, so I asked James -the sleeper host- to make up my bed for me. I chose the top bed, to maintain some room to faff around with my suitcase at ground level and this worked. The lady in the compartment opposite was just travelling a few more stops, so she was wowed that these rooms could be slept in too. She was originally Welsh, but had moved to the US with a serviceman and had a family, we were just getting towards the part of her life story where I felt she was going to tell me her husband had died recently, when we were interrupted by the conductor telling us of locomotive failure and that there would be a delay while a new locomotive was sourced. At this point, I went to bed. The bed was longitudinal, which seemed a bit odd at first, but after an hour of tossing and turning I got comfortable, with the occasional cackling of the conductor coming through the PA with lots of apologies and updates on what was going on. After about an hour delay, I felt forward motion and happily went to sleep. At somepoint after this, I awoke to find us going BACKWARDS! ...Although very slowly and stopping frequently with power cut outs. It turned out we'd had an additional locomotive added, so we now had three! But that still hadn't fixed the issue, so only two miles out of Albany, we'd broken down again which had forced a reversal to Albany, during which we broke down a further four times. I was very appreciative of my bed during all this, and I was half expecting a cancellation so was trying to maximise my sleep knowing the journey I had ahead of me the next few days. Somehow at Albany they must have sourced another locomotive or got things fixed, as that was the end of the troubles for this train. I think we were very lucky that this was happening somewhere with a depot where replacement locomotives were available, otherwise I dread to think what would have happened. After detecting forward motion again, I slept very well the rest of the night. I awoke to the sun rising over Lake Erie, which was nice and I opened the curtains to view it ...which reminds me; in your roomette your toilet is also in your room- remember to close the curtains before use! I then went for a shower and got ready, the shower was okay, probably the second best out of the three train showers I've had- the third placed one was a cold one while in the Arctic Circle!
Breakfast was pretty decent, and I awoke to the news that we were three and a half hours late. I had a connection of four hours in Chicago, although I didn't let myself worry as you can't change these things so there's no point worrying about it in my mind. The scenery in these parts was pretty flat, but nice enough- I liked Indiana, and I actually thought the best bit was immediately approaching Chicago, running through all the oversized decaying steelworks, it was like being in Middlesbrough!
I was also pleased to see a diesel shunter with a couple of torpedo wagons, which I've never seen in the flesh before so that was cool. Just before Chicago a time-zone change worked in my favour and gave me an extra hour connection time.
The (now 3) locomotives in Chicago:
Chicago Station is impressive:
To be continued...
The way back we did the A line to somewhere with an AirTrain connection, that was pretty cool. I think I would try the LIRR option as you did next time though.
