This post I just realized I never actually uploaded (from my iPhone typed on my bluetooth keyboard).
About 5 minutes late at 7:34 the lights of a locomotive much to my surprise with Superliners.
The Consist of Train #382, The Carl Sandburg:
- P40 Locomotive #86
- Superliner Coach #34080
- Diner-Lite Conversion Dining Car #37000-just used for table seating had an unused kitchen down below where my bike and the two others that took the train were stored, upstairs there was a closed cafe counter in the middle of the car. It was where I sat.
- A Superliner Snack Coach-Forgot to write down the number, it had seats on the upper level and the open cafe counter hard to find down below.
The train arrived and the conductor led the regular passengers onto the first coach and me into the second Dining Car to simply rest my bike on one of the many counters. I than went upstairs, he took my two tickets (bikes get their own) and I sat at a table after being told that only single seats were available in the rest of the coaches. We left about ten minutes late.
Soon I saw the Illinois zephyr zooming by with Horizon Equipment. The Superliners looking over the tops and me looking less forward to 20 hours in my single seat on amfleet IIs without a lounge car. The next stop was Princeton and another RAGBRAI cyclist got on and we chatting a little bit. It was an uneventful ride with the sun setting through the farmland of Illinois. At
Mendonta another bike was getting on but the dining car didn’t platform so the conductor led him along the track bed to open a door. I chatted with the conductor a bit and he said that equipment shortages meant this train would be using Superliners through the Summer and he had no idea why the random Long-Distance Dining Car was put in the consist. He also said that Amtrak’s official bike policy was that they must ride in a bike rack but he had yet to see one, so improvising on the midwest trains is the norm. The ride to Chicago was uneventful and we got in at 9:52 bascially on time, watching the Lake Shore Limited leave 20 minutes late as we arrived. I walked my bike through the train station and to the Youth Hostel where I spent the night before migrating to my cousins.