Day 3: On the Empire Builder in Washington State

After having taken a little stroll through downtown Seattle on a beautiful spring day, the Empire Builder was ready for boarding. I settled into my room - bedroom A in sleeper #32005. This was one of the refurbished Superliner sleepers - looks still pretty new and very nice. Although I had no experience with the pre-refurbished deluxe bedrooms, so I couldn’t really compare.

Before departing Seattle, we had to wait for the connection from Cascades train #506 which was a little late to arrive. That train finally arrived at 4:56p and after everybody had a chance to make the connection, we set off on our trip. For the first segment up until Everett, the track is right on Puget Sound (for the most part) and since it was just the time for sunset, it was a very beautiful and enjoyable evening. The car attendant even came by with some complimentary champagne, which I thought was very nice.

I took a reservation for the last seating for dinner - which was a good thing. Just after everybody had gathered in the diner for the first seating, the head-end power went out on the train and it stayed out until we pulled into Everett about 20 minutes later. Then they obviously fixed it because the power came back on. The whole thing caused a bit of a delay with dinner service - but that’s not really a big deal. I mean, what’s the big rush …

When the time came for my dinner session, I went over to the diner and ordered the salmon (that was the special for that evening). It was pretty good - a bit on the dry side I would say. I ordered some wine with dinner and would you believe it, the waiter even asked to see my ID …

By this time, it was already dark outside so I didn’t get to see very much of the eastern part of Washington state. By the time we got to Spokane, I was already asleep …

Train consist #8(20):
Seattle - Spokane
- P42 #91
- P42 #183
- Baggage #1235
- Transition Sleeper #39046
- Superliner Sleeper #32005
- Superliner Dining Car #38059
- Superliner Coach #34137
- Superliner Coach #34117

Spokane - Chicago
- P42 #13
- P42 #91
- Baggage #1235
- Transition Sleeper #39046
- Superliner Sleeper #32005
- Superliner Dining Car #38059
- Superliner Coach #34137
- Superliner Coach #34117
- Sightseer Lounge #33044
- Superliner Coach #34111
- Superliner Coach #31019
- Superliner Sleeper #32023

Schedule and actual times:
Seattle - 5:07p (4:45p - 0:22L)
Edmonds - 5:39p (5:17p - 0:22L)
Everett - 6:05p (5:44p - 0:21L)
Wenatchee - 9:11p (8:42p - 0:29L)
Ephrata - 10:12p (9:42p - 0:30L)
…

Posted in: Uncategorized | March 20, 2006 8:43 pm