So far, Amtrak had exceeded my expectations. I had slept well, eaten reasonably well, enjoyed some great scenery, and even arrived pretty much on time. The service had been good, too. So, since I had read that it was one of Amtrak’s best trains, I had high hopes for the Coast Starlight. The train runs from Los Angeles to Seattle, although I would just take it from San Francisco to Portland.
Unfortunately, since the train starts out from LA in the morning, you don’t leave San Francisco until 10:00pm. Another time I’ll try to arrange things so that I take the train on a day when the Kabuki spa is open for women, then I could have a late afternoon massage and soak, eat in Japantown, and then board the bus. As it was, I just had dinner in Japantown, a reasonable version of the okonomiyaki I had liked so much in Japan.
Things started out well enough, with the bus from the Ferry Building to Emeryville leaving pretty much on time, but when we got to Emeryville there was no train in the station, and no solid information about it’s arrival. It finally crawled in at 11:00, already an hour late.
My attendant showed up to turn my chairs into a bed as I was in the middle of getting my boots off, but I was glad enough to lie down after spending an hour in the cheerless and comfortless waiting room. Sleep, however, proved elusive, as I kept waiting for the train to start moving, and it remained obstinately motionless. We finally left at 1:00 am, three hours late. i talked the next morning to a couple of unfortunates who had boarded in Sacramento, and spent three hours in the waiting room there.
The problem? Turned out that one of the locomotives wasn’t working right and they had to find a substitute. We made the rest of the trip with the sleek Amtrak coaches headed by a freight loco. And we stayed three hours late.
Since I only ate breakfast and lunch on the train, and they aren’t up to the standard of Amtrak’s dinners, and my attendant effectively disappeared for the rest of the trip, I was not impressed by the Coast Starlight. Aside from the scenery….
Running late turned out to have one big advantage. On a normal schedule, regardless of direction, passengers see Mt. Shasta by moonlight or starlight. We saw it by daylight, for hours, and very nice it looked, too. Although you only see the coast on the run south of San Francisco, the views were arguably even better than those from the California Zephyr, although even harder to photograph without intrusive trees and telegraph poles.
I was doubly excited to finally arrive in Portland, which had, after all, been the goal of the trip. Maybe this would turn out to be the place I moved to? Plus, I was staying with my eldest ex-step-daughter, KC. She even picked me up at the station, a rare luxury.