As I wrote in a previous blog entry, our short trip from our hotel to Cincinnati Union Terminal in the middle of the night was uneventful... and very quiet. Catching this train in the middle of the night was a piece of cake. It was still about 90° outside in the middle of the night but it was nice and quiet with absolutely no logistical problems.
The only remarkable event on this night was that we had to check our large rolling luggage... four pieces in total. There were four of us and we had packed for a two week trip anticipating sweaty clothes everyday so we had quite a bit to pack. We each had a rolling piece of luggage and a small carry-on bag. Fortunately, we planned for this possibility (needing to check our big luggage) so had already put everything we might need on the train in our carry-on bags so this was a painless change of plans.
We had already planned for this because we knew that these new Viewliner II train cars had very limited luggage storage in the sleeper cars. These new Viewliner sleeper cars are definitely better than the original Viewliner models but they are still quite poorly designed and the lack of luggage storage is one of the big design flaws.
Since we already knew that luggage storage is a problem on these trains, we had planned to simply put our luggage on one of the racks in one of the coach cars and then lock the luggage together with a long cable luggage lock. The Conductor had other ideas though. We would have settled for any option though as long as it wasn't overly complicated for anyone.
In a previous cross country Amtrak journey, we've had someone accidentally grab one of our pieces of luggage and we don't want that to ever happen again. Now, if our luggage isn't in our line of sight, we lock it. This incident was an accident (this person left their own luggage on the train and simply grabbed a look-alike piece of luggage) but we didn't get that piece of luggage back until around midnight on the following night so it wasted some of our time and caused some undue stress.
One of our complaints about Amtrak on this trip out to Ohio was that the windows were consistently filthy (as seen in the photo above). We have other complaints worth mentioning and discussing with Amtrak but I'll write about that in another blog entry. When I say that the windows were filthy, I mean they were completely covered in dirt as well as having marks and scratches from brushing against tree branches. This really impeded our views significantly and made photography from the train very frustrating.
These Amtrak routes are almost always very scenic and having filthy windows makes seeing this beautiful scenery an exercise in futility and frustration. Riding through scenic routes is a huge Amtrak selling point but the filthy windows makes this selling point an absolutely ridiculous exaggeration or even an outright lie. Seeing anything out these filthy windows was difficult.Needless to say, these filthy windows significantly impacted my photography through these windows. I had to search for the cleanest patch of window, hold the camera in that one spot, and then shoot photos hoping for the best. This cleaner spot was never in a place right in front of me. It was always in a spot over my head and away from my seat which was a pain in the butt since I enjoy capturing photos of our journeys.
As you can also see in the photo above with the filthy window, Kenzie and Lukey were quite comfortable in their own roomette for this entire journey.
On this leg from Cincinnati to Manhattan we rode through many small and dying coal towns. We saw gorges, rivers, waterfalls, mountains and rural countryside on our way to Washington DC. The northeast part of this Cardinal route from Washington DC to Manhattan provided more cities and suburbs with a few glimpses of the Atlantic Ocean and various bays.
Our roomettes were located at the beginning of the row of roomettes in the sleeper car so we were right next to the large rooms and the coffeemaker, which is in a little cubby to the right in this photo below. Lukey and Kenzie shared a roomette right across the hall from our roomette so we could see each other all the time and talk to each other...
The photo below shows our view from our roomettes looking the opposite direction down the rest of the sleeper car past all the roomettes...
It is a fairly long story but Sheila calls Lukey "Bob" due to a funny incident that happened when Lukey was around three or four years old. In short, back then when Lukey heard "Bob" for the first time, he thought the name was hilarious and couldn't stop giggling so she still calls him Bob.
At a certain point during this trip, I looked over into their roomette and Lukey had placed his neck cushion on his head, perhaps out of boredom. After capturing this photo below, I yelled over to their roomette, "Hey Sponge Bob Square-Head, what are you doing?" He just smiled back at me with a huge grin on his face...
I had hoped to get more photos of this town, Thurmond, West Virginia, in the photo below. The railroad tracks run through the center of "town" right past old storefronts which are now abandoned. There is no roadway here and there never was... just railroad tracks and a sidewalk. So, rather than a main thoroughfare roadway as we see in all downtown areas (usually called Main Street), we have no roadway and only a sidewalk and railroad tracks instead of a roadway.
This is a true dying coal town. Even today, coal trains pass through here often.... perhaps too often. And, because of the location, the coal industry of a hundred years ago, and the railroad that moved that coal, this was a relatively major railroad hub for the C&O railroad until the 1940s or 1950s when the railroad made the transition to diesel locomotives.
For a long time in recent years the population of this town had been surprisingly low at less than 20 or so. Today, the population of Thurmond is 2.. yes, 2. There were more people at the train station than the number of those who live in this historic town. Of course, these people were probably from neighboring towns.
Time for a short nap...
We are now in Charlottesville, Virginia where our good friends, Perry and Kerri live. (We're overdue for a visit down there with them!) We had a 15 minute stop here so we got out to walk around for a bit and get some fresh air...
Lukey chose to stay in the roomette while Kenzie, Sheila and I got out for a bit in Charlottesville. You can see part of the station out his window behind him...
We are in Washington DC now...
At Washington Union Station it was time for another short walk and some fresh air...
At this point, nightfall was fast approaching so capturing photos out the window from our roomette was done for the day. These windows are a bit tinted and, although they were perhaps the cleanest we've seen on this journey so far, they were still a bit dirty and that makes taking photos at dusk even more difficult.
The rest of this leg to Manhattan was uneventful. We arrived in Manhattan on time and then grabbed a car outside Moynihan Hall at Penn Station to get to our hotel in midtown Manhattan. This was a nice leg on Amtrak and we had a good time! I just wish the windows were clean!
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