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| Re: PHOTOS from my Recent Travels, Part 7: The California Zephyr (1354816) | |||
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Re: PHOTOS from my Recent Travels, Part 7: The California Zephyr |
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Posted by WMATAGMOAGH on Tue Jun 2 15:55:51 2015, in response to PHOTOS from my Recent Travels, Part 1: An Afternoon in Chicago, posted by WMATAGMOAGH on Wed Aug 6 14:53:07 2014. I think it is a bit of a stretch to say that photos I'm posting nearly 10 months after the fact are recent by any standard, but that is the way life has rolled since last August.In my last installment, I shared photos from my time in Denver. Now it is time to share photos from the last leg of my journey last summer. The rebuilt Denver Union Station had its soft opening just days before we were scheduled to leave on the westbound Zephyr. On the evening before our departure, our train was on time when we went to sleep, but it lost a few hours over the course of the morning. After persuading my traveling companion that we didn't need to be at the station by the scheduled departure time and that we could sleep a bit longer, eventually we had to return our Zipcar which was a few blocks from the station, so we headed in to town to do that. We then left our luggage in the baggage room and went for a walk through the new bus tunnel and in the surrounding area.      As you can see, they did a great job with the station work, though I don't have a real basis of comparison. The stub terminal with the mix of high and low platforms is a bit odd to me but I guess it meets the needs of Amtrak and the RTD. The bus terminal is quite large but impressive and provides a convenient way to get from one end of the complex to the other. Our train backed in to the station about 3.5 hours late. However, the schedule gives about 60 minutes for the crews to change and for the train to be serviced and washed and we needed only about 30 minutes for all that, so when we left at about 11 AM, we were only about 3 hours late. Unfortunately, they have rent-a-cops in Denver who set up shop at the front end of the platform and don't permit people to go past to get photos of the locomotives. Passing Coors Field just after leaving DEN (we saw the EB Zephyr go past on time from the ballgame we went to two nights before):  It wasn't long before we began our ascent in to the Rockies, although for much of it, we were having lunch in the diner. I'm not a big fan of all the photos people now feel the need to take while eating, but in the dining car on Amtrak, I think photographing the passing scenery is socially acceptable.     Smoking stop in Fraser-Winter Park, CO    At various points along the trip you can see people flyfishing:    Rear RFW   Skyward RFW   At other points you can see rafters:  Some of whom like to "salute" the train as it passes          Passing under and along I-70     Glenwood Springs, CO:     Our HEP at Grand Junction, CO:  Naturally, one has to wear an Amtrak shirt while riding an Amtrak train!  The day is starting to come to an end:     We ran about 3-3.5 hours late all day, and as a result, would not get to Salt Lake City until about 2 AM. My travleing companion, having never been to Utah before, asked our sleeping car attendant to wake us up for the Salt Lake City stop so she we could take a walk along the platform and "visit" Utah. The attenant obliged, it was probably the only useful thing he did for us over the course of the trip (I ended up giving him the smallest tip I've given an Amtrak attendant, especially after he reminded us several times that tips were highly appreciated). We got to Salt Lake City at 1:49 AM and I snapped these photos while we were there:    I'm pretty sure I was asleep before we even left Salt Lake City again, and slept through the rest of the night. By the next morning, we were in Nevada.  Winnemucca, NV:      Truckee, CA    Donner Lake:    UP yard near Sacramento, IIRC:     Sacramento, CA    The rest of the trip is not nearly as scenic as it was up to this point, but we still enjoyed the sights as we got ever closer to the city by the bay. Davis, CA   Martinez, CA     View of San Francisco from the train:  We arrived in Emeryville 2:22 late   We then spent the weekend in the Bay Area before flying back to the East Coast. However, we lucked out with the weather when we went to the Golden Gate Bridge and as a result, I can offer you this BONUS PHOTO of the bridge in SUNSHINE!  I hope you've enjoyed all the various parts of this series, even if it took me much longer to post than I had originally intended. Thanks for looking! |
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