Tie-ing One On

Because of the bad weather this weekend, I did not go to Fernley, and a good thing too, as chain controls were up, and (as I write this) continue to be in place all the way from Truckee to Colfax. However, I did talk with Lisa via Skype last night and she sent me some photos taken recently from the front porch of Fernley House.

( Cut for those who don't care about train pictures )

Lisa also shot some video of the the trains here at Fernley that I will post when I get a chance.

Amtrak Schedule Change

When I posted about Amtrak's Sunset Limited schedule change and mentioned that it would have some effect on me, some folks wondered why Amtrak hadn't contacted me directly. This morning, I got e-mail and an automated phone call advising me of the schedule change.

As it happens, the change does have a bit of a negative impact on us. Originally, we were scheduled to arrive LA Union Passenger Terminal at 8:30 AM on the Sunset Limited, riding a through sleeping car switched in from the Texas Eagle at San Antonio. Thanks to the improved timing (and shorter layover at SAT), we now arrive LAUPT at 5:35 AM. Hm. That's not really an improvement from my point of view. I wonder if they'll allow sleeping car passengers to stay aboard until, say, 8 AM or so, or if we get turfed out into LAUPT before dawn. We were planning on spending two nights in LA and I have a hotel reservation to do so, but it seems unlikely to me that we'll be allowed to check in if we arrive that early.

I guess one advantage of this new schedule is that allows one to connect directly into the Coast Starlight to the Bay Area and Seattle rather than having to lay over a day, which was why we booked the hotel room. We haven't bought our trip back to the Bay Area yet. Maybe we should consider just heading back home rather than staying in LA for a couple of days.