Day 1-3: Making my way across the US

I’m writing from sunny Wheelock North Dakota rolling along past endless farmland punctuated by the occasional small town or piece of oil field infrastructure. I’m 3/4ths of the way through crossing the US by train and it’s been a whirlwind. Here’s some of what the past 72 hours have looked like:

Zipping through Connecticut on what will be the fastest (and only electrified) train of the whole trip, the northeast regional, which tops out at ~125mph. This view out the back of the last car is one of my favorites.

The first long distance train on this journey is the Lake Shore Limited from NYC to Chicago. The first section along the hudson is gorgeous.

In Albany the Lake Shore Limited from NYC is combined with a section from Boston. This involves spinning the NYC section around and linking it to the Boston section. During this layover I successfully convinced some guys from the RPI frisbee team to bring me food from a really good Mediterranean place near campus, in exchange for buying them some. The food on the amtrak trains is generally pretty mediocre so this was a welcome change.

 

This is what a coach seat on an Amtrak long distance train gets you! The seats are wide and recline pretty far. When you have the whole row to yourself it’s not too hard to sprawl out and get comfy.

One of the first sights of the second day: Toledo union station. Like many other stations across the US it’s a shell of it’s former self. Despite having 7 platforms it now only serves 2 trains a day in each direction.

I had a ~4 hour layover in Chicago and spent most of it with my friend Patrick biking around…

…and going for a dip before getting on the next long distance train, the Empire Builder, which runs from Chicago to Portland/Seattle.

After getting back on the train I met two guys in the observation car (pictured below) both name Danny. Danny on the right lived in one of neighborhoods I grew up playing in as a kid. We also happened to have worked on the same construction project in mid-town manhattan. Small world!

Danny on the left is a recently retired addiction counselor from the Adirondacks and regaled us with endless anecdotes about hitchhiking all over the US. If you’ve ever seen someone hitchhiking with a sign that reads “not a weirdo” it was probably Danny. After two hours of chatting he had recommended no less than a dozen genuinely interesting seeming books/movies/podcasts.

The observation car sits in the middle of the train and has floor to ceiling windows, and a cafe downstairs.

As the sun set on day 2 a huge storm rolled through and left some wild looking clouds that I could hardly capture on camera.

A few times a day there are “fresh air breaks” where they let everyone get off the train and stretch their legs.

I’ll close out this post with some cool sights from today so far