Train SDY->SF July 2015

The Lake Shore Limited - the train make famous for the all-night poker game in the movie "The Untouchables" - was about 30 minutes late picking me up in Schenectady, but that was no big deal. By the time it arrived in Chicago the next morning it was two hours late. Two hours later, the California Zephyr left for San Francisco, two hours late. It was supposed to leave at 2:00pm Central Time but left at 4:45pm CT. It was 12 hours and 37 minutes late arriving at rail's end at Emeryville, California, on the Oakland side of the Bay. Instead of being a 52 hour ride it took 64 hours, roughly.

Whew!

The braking system forced two automated emergency because of a failure in the compressed air system, the On-Board Voice explained. Another time the engineer stopped the train unexpectantly in the middle of Nebraska because an air hose was ripped open by some obstruction along the track bed, the Voice said. Another time, the train sat on a siding for three hours because an electrical storm shorted out the electrical signalling system, I later learned over breakfast from the train grapevine. And somewhere in Utah, I think, the train crew "timed out" and had to halt the train while Amtrak sent in a fresh crew.

I see from the web that the average tardiness of Train 5 (Amtrak's number for the westbound California Zephyr) is about 3 hours, so mine was way, way late. Ugh. Here us the record of the California Zephyr's Chicago to San Francisco trip:

Here are some other photos, FYI: