A seamless checkout saw us arrive at South Station Boston just after 7am. The taxi driver unloaded our bags onto the sidewalk as Diane went in search of a ‘red cap’. I stood guard over the bags in typical freezing weather, commuters pouring out of the station on their way to their city office well rugged up, almost of all of them sporting beanies on head and coffees in hand. The red cap arrived, loaded our bags onto a manual trolley and wheeled inside. When he found out we were going to New Orleans on a sleeper, he took us straight to the first class lounge where we had complimentary juice, coffee and cinnamon rolls for breakfast. I snuck outside for a short look around and grabbed a few quick pics of the station...
We stayed in the warmth of the lounge until he came and grabbed us for pre boarding. Because we were travelling to New York on a regional train, we couldn’t check our bags thru to New Orleans unless we were happy to receive them a day late. This meant we had to take all our bags onto the train with us, but using the red cap made it easy. He had secured our luggage whilst we were in the lounge and when we left with him to go to the platform, it was just us and other people who were using red caps allowed to board early. This gave us our choice of seats so the red cap took us down one car past the cafe car, loaded all our luggage onto the train for us and then suggested we sit on the left hand side because it is a better view. Thank you sir, here’s your tip.
I may go on about it, but this red cap thing is just a great service and complimentary, although it is one service I’m more than happy to ensure a good tip. In essence, we never touched our bags at any time from the time we left our room until the time we got to New York. The porter at the hotel in Boston collected our bags from the room. Loaded them onto the taxi, the taxi driver unloaded them, the red cap picked them up from the kerb and put them on the train, straight behind our seats. Too easy.
The trip to New York was more or less straight down the coast, leaving Massachusetts and travelling thru America’s smallest state, Rhode Island, before travelling thru Connecticut before arriving in New York City. The ocean, wealthy homes and countless marinas housing boats big and small are the main points of interest as we travel the Boston/NY corridor. As we got close to New York, after travelling thru the Bronx, the train crosses the East River over the Hells Gate Bridge. This bridge was completed in 1917 and allegedly was the model for a larger bridge of similar design familiar to all of us back home...
When we got to New York it was a bit of a shitfight to be honest. The platform where our carriage stopped was very narrow, I’m talking 2 people wide narrow!! With 90% of the people getting off (a few were travelling on to Washington on the same train) it became very congested and a slow disembark. We waited until last because we had a fair bit of luggage, but fortunately there was a red cap close by waiting to load a family onto the train. Diane grabbed him and after he finished loading his group, we were in business. He loaded our bags onto a trolley, we all went up an escalator together and headed for the check-in counter. The red cap found out we were travelling on a sleeper to New Orleans, so we just skipped the long line, he took the bags thru and checked us in himself. After he gave us our tags, he directed us to the ‘Acela Lounge’ where we were able to have a drink and relax and wait about 30 minutes to board. We originally had 2 hours between trains, but the regional ran about 30 minutes late and all the farting about on the platform and checking in ate into any time we had to make it worthwhile to step outside. I did manage a few shots of the escalator to Track 12 Penn Station and our waiting train...
We boarded ‘The Crescent’ and it left on time at 2:15pm. Immediately upon leaving Penn Station, the train travels thru a tunnel and you pop out into the state of New Jersey. I took a quick video of the sights from the train, but it wasn’t until I started to take that video that I realised just how fast we were moving. Here’s the vid...
We were fairly flying, running side by side with freeways with cars doing well over 100km/h and just leaving them for dead. I later found out why it seemed to be going so much faster than either of the other trains we had been on so far.
We were now travelling thru areas of mostly housing and factories, a far cry from the mile after mile of desert we encountered on our trip across from LA. That said, I was pretty amazed at just how many factories just appeared vacant or desolate. Every window broken and many just sitting there disused. It appeared from the train that only about 1 in 3 was functioning, but looks can be deceiving I guess and perhaps the street facade told a different story.
Our SCA on this trip is Michelle, a 31yo African American who resides in New Orleans. Before you ask how I know she is 31yo, I heard her telling another passenger who asked...lol. She is very accommodating and at this early stage looks like she is light years ahead of Bill. It remains to be seen if she can match Cindy.
We arrived in Washington about 20 minutes early at about 5:40pm and were due to leave at 6:30pm. It is here in Washington that they change locomotives from electric to diesel powered. It was at that point I realised why we were going much faster on this train than on the SC or the LSL. I wandered up to the station concourse to get a bottle of soda water, or ‘Club Soda’ as you have to say here or they have no idea what u are talking about. I had a few Campari and soda’s between NY and Washington, but the cafe car doesn’t stock many cans of club soda, only using it for mixers for the cash paying coach passengers. I managed to get one can off him, but I got the impression that it was a one off. I got back in plenty of time, even though Diane was panicking. We waited and at 6:30, nothing happened. After a while, Michelle came thru to tell us that one of the coach cars has mechanical problems and they were going to have to change it. To make it worse, it was in the middle of the coach config, so they had to move all the passengers out of the car, plus their luggage and relocate them temporarily whilst they found a new car from somewhere. We finally pulled out of Washington at 8:10pm, almost 2 hours late. We had 8pm dinner reservations, but they were thrown in turmoil because whilst cars are getting changed and the train shunted about, all the power goes out, thus the dining car had a large downtime as well. As we pulled away from Washington, I wandered down to see what the situation was like in the dining car. It was only about half full, so they told me to grab Diane and come down straight away. Before I went back, I had a quick #1 in our rooms communal dunny, but the flush wasn’t working properly. Yet another reason why these are a BAD idea...lol I saw Michelle in the dining car picking up some dinner for somebody in our car who wanted to eat in their room and told her about the toilet problem. She said she’d go fix it.
Diane had ribs and I had the steak, done rare. This was no problem as the hotplate had obviously not reached peak temperature as yet and it came out still mooing. Fortunately it’s just the way I like it so it was all good. Desert was a sensational Peanut Butter Pie...
The staff in the dining car appeared very inexperienced and a world away from the smooth talking, sharp attendants we had on the SC and the one and only dining car meal we had on the LSL. But in fairness, it was a tough set of circumstances they faced and things may improve by tomorrow, we’ll see. After dinner we both ‘visited’ the coach car, just to check that their restrooms were working OK. Fortunately they were.
When we returned to our room we were met by Michelle who told us she needed us to change rooms because the toilet problem in our room could not be fixed and she needed to run it past the conductor. We told her not to worry if they had to upgrade us to a bedroom or family room, we wouldn’t complain. Her laughter suggested that wasn’t going to happen...and it didn’t. We moved to another roomette and prepared for our one and only overnight stay on ‘The Crescent’. It will also be my last night in the clearly superior Viewliner top bunk, the next 2 trips are back to Superliners.
That's all for now.
Later...
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