Listen Intently

Made it back home.  Due to flooding issues in Iowa and Wisconsin, Amtrak’s Empire Builder has been bustituting, detouring, and getting there some other way for a while.  And a car problem caused even further delays on my train back to Chicago.  It left Portland five hours late, so my 10 AM departure from Glacier Park turned into a 3 PM departure.  It was a rainy morning, but I sat in an Internet cafe for an hour or so and then relaxed in the Glacier Park Lodge lobby for the rest of the morning.

The Canadian Pacific railroad line the Builder uses through Wisconsin opened the day before we arrived, so were the first or second eastbound Builder that traversed the normal line through to Chicago.  Long story short, we arrived into Chicago at 9:55 PM.  My train to Toledo left at 7:00 PM, so I (and several other passengers) made a mad dash for the Lake Shore Limited, which left at 10:00 PM.  The great crew on the LSL found me a sleeper cabin on the train and I settled in for the quick journey to Toledo.

Yeah, right. Storms through the area caused a “flash flood warning” and a speed restriction on the line.  Turns out, the Capitol Limited (the train I was supposed to be on) was held up for quite some time.  We nearly caught up to it and both trains came into Toledo near 4:00 AM.  I’ve since found out that a large fire near Elyria (Cleveland) has caused further significant delays to the eastbound and westbound LSLs and Capitols.  Glad I’m not on those!  Once home, I promptly fell asleep and am now trying to get back into the right time zone and sleep schedule.

I will get the rest of the photos and some other items during the weekend.  Thanks to all for following along and your comments!  I had an incredibly awesome trip, and while I was really ready to get home, now that I am here I am ready to go out on the rails again.

Tags: Amtrak