We're back! We took about 3 thousand photos (and got another 100 on PhotoPass. We had really GREAT moments and really NOT so great moments. We experienced about every transportation form known to man, but for the four people in my immediate family, our first form of transport was the AutoTrain, so that's where I'll start. Here goes!
"Railway terminals are our gates to the glorious and the unknown.Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! We return." - E.M. Foster
As a reminder, my mom and sister had left the day before with my two smallest nieces. My BIL, stepfather, and oldest niece were flying down the following day. Scott (dh), Kairi (dd), Nicky (ds), and I were all packed and ready to go, so as soon as we woke up, we jumped in the car and headed for the station. As the car pulled out of the driveway, it was 4:48 AM. Mom and Cyndy had called back with horror stories of the traffic around Washington, DC, so we didn't want to risk missing the train. (Which sounds pretty freaking ridiculous now, considering the latest we could turn in our car was 3:00, and we were only driving between southeast Pennsylvania and northern Virginia. Can you guess how EARLY we arrived??)
The kids were revving when we left, very excited about the trip. Scott asked them if they were ready for their very first train trip... to Chicago! Since Nicky and I are Packers fans, that was met with resounding boos and insults.
At 5:11, the sun rose. Yep. We got up before sunrise to leave on a four hour trip to a place we didn't need to be until 3:00 PM. What can I say - we were a bit excited. Around 6:30 we stopped for gas and breakfast in Dillsburg, MD. The kids were still happily playing with their DS's. According to Scott, the McDonald's in Dillsburg makes the single worst cup of coffee he has ever experienced. (No, we don't drink Disney coffee.)
By 7:30 we were starting to realize just how freaking early we were going to be. We considered taking a side trip to the Smithsonian, but since it was DC traffic we were worried about, we thought that might be stupid. Especially since we had NO IDEA how to get there. We did hit a smidgen of traffic near DC, but we were pulling into a mall across the street from the AutoTrain station by 9:00. We saw the train pulling into the station from Florida, and everyone thought that was pretty cool. We tried walking around the mall for entertainment, but it was mostly unopened food and service places, with no actual places to shop. Eventually, we got back in the car and wandered a bit farther, finding a Dollar Tree to browse around in. Scott found a book, Nicky and Kairi picked up goggles (Nick had bought some for the trip, but left them home), and Kai got a pair of sunglasses that Daddy teased her about. He said she looked like Audrey Hepburn in them. Tired of killing time, we went back to the supermarket in the mall across from the train and picked up some deli sandwiches. When we arrived at the station, we were STILL an hour early for the earliest check-in time, so we parked in the visitors lot. Here are some pictures of the station, which I thought was very nice.
The entire station used these art deco stylized palm trees as supports.
The station is only used for the AutoTrain, I believe.
There was a cute (but very little) playground area for the kids.
The train was being cleaned and serviced. This is one of the cars. They are all double decker Superliner cars.
There was a nice shaded area for parents to sit while their kids play. Scott went to the counter to ask if we could pick up our tickets yet, and they let him check in while I sat here and enjoyed the warm weather. (It has been very cold and rainy in Pennsylvania so far this summer.)
This is the car loading and pick-up area.
These are the actual car carriers that the cars would be loaded into - except that we were still too early.
Finally, after we ate our sandwiches (decent, but nothing special - basic supermarket fare) it was time for Scott to get in the line of cars that was now waiting at the check-in booth. The kids grabbed their carry-ons from the car. (See what we mean about the Audrey Hepburn shades?)
This police officer and his dog were on hand to sniff every car for explosives. But they didn't search the passengers, which seemed like weird security. Still, the dog was cute!
Once the car was checked in, the hours of waiting really started. We checked out the little gift shop. We used the restrooms (which were clean and fresh smelling, but I draw the line at pictures of bathrooms). We tried some limited edition Coconut M&Ms - yum. The station started to fill up a bit by noon. The kids colored, and killed time with their various toys.
Around 2:30, they announced that boarding was delayed due to the late arrival of the supply truck. By this time, the station was nearly full of people. We were called back to the desk, and the ticketing official explained that a family had booked separately, but wanted to sit together, and would we please move and they would give us an extra seat? At the time, it sounded reasonable, although it ended up being not at all to our benefit. (And to be honest, I was pretty sure an extra seat wouldn't do us any good anyway.) We chatted for a few minutes with a nice lady from Jacksonville who overheard me asking Scott what good an extra seat was going to do us. She said it would give us room to stretch out and then we just talked trips for awhile. She was a veteran rider and got a kick out of how excited our kids were for their first trip. Finally, we boarded the train.
We had four seats across from each other. The "extra" seat we were promised was behind us with a family of three, who had already spread their baggage over the four seats. Besides, unless one of us went back and slept next to a stranger so that another person had two seats to stretch out in, it wouldn't have made sense. Honestly, I really didn't care that we didn't get an extra- we paid for four seats, and that's what we got. But turns out we were now just about as far from the lounge and dining cars as we could possibly be, and our original seats were much closer. Oh well! The train started moving at 3:30, but the kids didn't even notice as they were playing on their cell and DS. When we pointed it out, neither even looked up - Kai just said "I know" and Nick grinned, never looking up from their electronics.
We saw some pretty scenery as the train headed out, but I don't like bridges in our car, so you can imagine how much I liked them in the train! When you look down on a train bridge, all you see is water.
The girl behind us talked very loudly on her cell phone for the pre-dinner time, but we had luckily gotten the first seating, so that was only about an hour and a half. Another train went by at speed and wigged out those of us who were riding for the first time, but Scott just shrugged and said "Mmmhmmm."
The conductor announced that our train had 4 coach cars, 5 sleeper cars, 2 lounges, 2 dining cars, 1 crew car, 156 passengers in sleeper class, 244 in coach class, and 139 vehicles in 21 car carriers. The AutoTrain is the longest train that Amtrak runs.
Soon, it was time for dinner. We had plastic plates and cups, being in coach class, but they still had nice warm rolls and wine waiting for us when we arrived. (I didn't like the wine, but I'm not a wine fan anyway - still, I'd imagine it was very cheap as they were pouring pretty freely!)
Every table had a menu with four choices. We could have Flat Iron Steak Bordelaise, Thai Curry Chicken, Lemon Pepper Cod, or Vegetable Lasagna. It was very fun and relaxing eating as the scenery whizzed by the train windows.
I tried to take some pictures of our food, but being as the train was dark and moving and I didn't want to use flash and have our fellow passengers think I was weird, the pictures came out badly. Still, they give you a general idea.
Scott and Nick ordered the steak. They said it was good, but not really a steak at all - it tasted more like pot roast. I had the cod, which was nicely done. The vegetables were very good, although the rice was bland. Kairi had the vegetable lasagna, which she loved. (Although you should probably know that Scott and I had been living on Lean Cuisines for several weeks to try to ditch at least a little weight before the trip, so this food was a step up from frozen meals, but probably about the quality of diner food. Didn't bother us, but not gourmet, either.) Dessert was ice cream for Nick, cheesecake for Scott, and the "specialty dessert" for Kairi and I, which was described to us as a chocolate raspberry cake. It was more like a layered bar cookie of some type, but it was really delicious (and not just when compared to Lean Cuisines)! Jumping ahead in my trip report, we were told the specialty dessert on the trip home was a raspberry tart - but when we ordered that, we got this same dessert! Weird.
After dinner, we headed to the lounge car for some pinochle. The evening's movie was Hotel for Dogs, which the kids had already seen, so we figured we'd just tune it out. As we sat down, we saw swimmers in whatever river this was waving at us, which delighted Nicky. He spent a lot of time looking for people to wave at out the window after that point. There were many cute things to be seen out the windows - I liked a little general store we flew by too fast to take a picture called "Squashapenny Junction".
The stairs down to the bathroom were sometimes hard to navigate on a moving train, and the bathrooms themselves were tiny. I prefered the one labelled "changing room" that had both a toilet and a tiny bench next to it for changing because it was twice the size of the other bathrooms.
We went ahead and played pinochle, to the amusement of the passengers waiting for the next dinner seating. We got comments like "No gambling on this train!" and incredulous "You know how to play pinochle?" directed to the little ones. Nicky and I won the first game 118 to 80, and then trounced them 116 to negative 14 the next game! (It helped that we took all the tricks the first hand, they went back the second, and we won resoundingly on the third.) I'm surprised we won any at all though, because Nick was completely distracted by the movie the entire time and we had to keep telling him it was his turn!
We headed back to our seats and I took a few more pictures until the light went.
Then came the long, sleepless night. The kids conked out happily curled in their chairs, but the seats Scott and I had were broken and the leg rests didn't stay up. We had to prop our feet on backpacks, and Scott gave me the seat where the leg rest at least held at halfway up. I reclined there quietly, and dozed a bit, I'm sure, but I kept feeling the train change speed, or hearing us ringing and blowing the whistle at the crossing. The swaying and rocking, especially when another train passed us, was very distracting. Finally, it was 5:30 AM and I headed down to brush my teeth and then woke the kids up for the earliest breakfast seating. Breakfast was continental and not bad, with warm corn muffins and bagels and cold cereal and fruit. I found out later there were danishes and blueberry muffins in the coach car, so that was a bit of a bummer since I would have preferred blueberry to corn.
After breakfast, we played pinochle again, getting more comments on how we must be serious gamers, and did we play all night? Kai and Scott redeemed themselves 117 to 89. The train was running early, and we pulled into Sanford station about 8:00. We still didn't get off the train for an hour or more though, because it takes so long to break the train up. It's a much smaller station than Lorton, and they're constructing a new station, so it was a complete mess. Still, it was nice to finally see palm trees out the window!
We got off the train and waited what seemed a very long time for our car. We were definitely in the second half of the 100+ cars offloaded, but finally our car number was called and we were on our way.
Next Chapter: Welcome Home
I'm glad you're enjoying it! We actually lost our uncle and inherited his house (which was in need of SERIOUS remodelling) right in the middle of our last trip report and never got back to it until it seemed too late to finish. So barring catastrophe, this trippie should get finished.
After Kairi's piano recital, we headed to the 
) and anyway, the kids got really nervous about the train when Casey Jr. was trying to get up the mountain. Fortunately, their mom is a bit smaller than Mrs. Jumbo! That movie is much shorter than I remember, though.
on the train].good thing there is a lot of rides because i hate rollercoasters.
