Day 3: Goodbye Illinois!

Tuesday, July 14, 2009
At some point during the night, the train pulled out of Mendota (a lovely farm community complete with tractor showroom, old steam train on display, and a little white church). I spent an hour or so watching out the window as the sun rose over the Illinois cornfields. Early in the morning, the train pulled into Galesburg, IL and stopped. The power was turned off once again - it was anyone's guess how long we'd be there. But since we were at an actual station where we were supposed to stop, they let us off the train. That was when we got to see the actual damage to the various train cars.

Damage to the roof of our train car. Though insulation was visible from the outside, you could only see slightly dented paneling inside the train.

The Crew Car - it suffered the most damage. Windows were broken and wires dangled on the inside of the car.

Another part of the Crew Car - you can really see where the signal tower scraped the side of the car

The outside of the dining car. A whole panel has been blown away, leaving access to an electrical system open.

Changing the engines - the orange freight engine carried us all the way to Denver. The baggage car (shown 3rd in this picture) was eventually moved to the back of the train. The first passenger car shown here was the one we stayed in.

They began the lengthy process of removing, replacing, and reattaching various cars. The conductor (who had just come on duty after his own scary, middle-of-the-night drive from Omaha) told us we'd be on our way in 45-minutes to an hour. Ha ha ha. The first car removed was the crew sleeper car (which also had some passengers). It had broken windows and dangling wires, so it had to go. It had been the 4th car (after 2 engines and the baggage car) but the replacement was now attached to the end of the train. Next, the 2nd engine had to be removed since that one suffered the most damage. It was actually replaced with a BNSF freight engine. This gave our train a rather unique look. Then they tried to reattach the baggage car/engine combo, but the baggage car connectors didn't match up with the next car's connectors for some reason, so that was stuck at the back of the train. This whole process took probably 3-4 hours.

The also had to fully inspect the train to make sure there was no more damage. For much of this, Dad and I hung out at the station, watching and talking with other people (David, of course, slept). Many of the people at the station had been waiting there since yesterday. I can't imagine spending the night in a tiny one-room station like that...

While this was all going on, another Amtrak train was heading east and about to make it's scheduled stop in Galesburg. When many passengers got wind of that, they decided to go back to Chicago and find other modes of transportation to wherever they were going. It was kind of comical watching people flock from one train to the other. I also witnessed one particularly nasty lady who went from train employee to employee demanding some kind of financial compensation for the past day. As if any of the people on the train actually have the power to deal with any of that. She was obnoxious.

They finally finish up their work and we reboard the train and head on our way. It was clear that I was getting fed up with the whole train travel aspect of the trip. My journal entry from that morning began, "I want OFF this train!" But fortunately things began pick up speed and it seemed like everything was on it's way to being normal, if about 20 hours behind schedule. My evening journal entry praised the fact that we traveled through 3 different states that day. The good part about being nearly a full day behind meant that we'd get to see the good scenery in the daylight. The trip is timed so that the less scenic parts of the trip would be in the dark (nearly all of Nebraska) and the prettier views (the Rockies, Sierra Nevadas, etc) would be during the day. As much as I would have loved to see all of Nebraska (cough, cough), I'll save it for another time.

The only other really annoying part of this day was the many hour stop we made next to a random cornfield (theme??) in Iowa, just outside of Ottumwa. Train crews can only work 8 hour shifts and instead of rotating with other engineers already on the train, they pick up and drop off the engineers at scheduled stops along the way. Since our schedule was completely messed up, this threw off the engineers, as well. Since the train obviously can't go without an engineer, we were forced to wait for the new one to drive to us. We were told it would take about an hour. Three hours later we were on our way. I do not blame Amtrak at all for the previous issues, but this was foreseeable so they don't get a pass from me here.

The day was also spent making lots of calls to Sarah to help us change plans for the next leg of the trip. Sarah got us a flight from San Francisco to Vancouver as well as a hotel in San Francisco for the night we arrived. We were now staying on the train to the end of its route rather than getting off in Sacramento. Amtrak gave us no trouble with cancelling our second train trip (Sacramento to Seattle). That pretty much paid for the plane tickets and hotel rooms.

Food onboard did not get much better. The scrambled eggs were really gross, I had to mix them with the potatoes to be able to eat them. Lunch was burger. I replaced the "flat-iron steak" (that's a laugh) with some pork entree for dinner. That wasn't much better. The General and his wife continued to be an annoyance, but fortunately they were getting off in Denver, so that was only one more night. Dad did have to keep removing his belongings from his room, though. The Amish were still with us, too.

Mid-morning naptime for the boys. Glad someone was able to sleep...

After a very late breakfast, Dad and I went to the observation car for awhile, David still slept. We finally crossed the Mississippi River into Iowa. I'd never seen the Mississippi before. It was a wide river, but I can only imagine what it must look like further south. I'll admit to Iowa and the cornfields being kind of pretty - the rolling hills, the green, etc. But it doesn't really change so it got a bit old after awhile.

Nearing the Mississippi - this was nasty and green

The Mississippi River, from the Illinois side looking west towards Burlington, Iowa.

A blurry and unexciting picture of Iowa - but proof that we are in motion!!

It was dark when we reached Omaha that night. I went out on the platform just to get some fresh air. That was a mistake. It was just plain nasty. The station, if you can call it that, smelled like a sewer. It was humid and hot and just all around gross. I didn't hang around outside for long. We were joined in our little hallway by 2 farmers, complete with overalls. They were sharing a roomette. I can't imagine how they both fit in there - they were exceptionally tall and both very large men. They promised Isaac they wouldn't be any trouble after he introduced them to the General and Irene.

With the progress made today, hopefully all of our train troubles were behind us. I was just happy we made it out of Illinois (22 hours to cross the narrow part of the state...).

Click to Enlarge - Our Journey, Thus Far