From New Orleans on the Amtrak Crescent

Wednesday    I’m in car 2010, roomette five and we are going from New Orleans to New York .

Claude is my car attendant. He said he’s been doing this for 30 years.   I mentioned to Claude that the impression I have always gotten through my magazines was that Amtrak is the playground of the well-to-do since it is not cheap.    But what I saw yesterday and this morning is that everybody rides Amtrak and Claude confirmed that.    I met a lady yesterday named Wanda who’s travelled about 35 times on Amtrak. She lives in South Carolina. We shared an Uber to the train station and she’s well known at the hotel.    The Crescent departed right on time.    Claude was telling us they have problems with passengers who try to make up their own own berth and that’s how they get hurt.    The upper berth is stored about 2 feet higher than it’s nighttime configuration and if you don’t know what you’re doing you can drop this heavy upper bunk on your pumpkin head.  Since making up my berth is one of Claude's primary responsibilities, I will be happy to let him do that!

I saw a yard diesel with Amtrak colors parked close to the terminal.     It moves the cars around but in an emergency, like Katrina, they run a power cable from the diesel into the terminal and they can run the terminal off the locomotive.

      The room has a pulldown sink and a fold up toilet right in the roomette!    Seems to be more legroom than the sunset limited when the berths are made up.  

Two engines, three coaches, an observation/lounge/snack car, dining car, sleeper and a sleeper/baggage.     

I walked the three blocks from the depot to the hotel last night in New Orleans. Holiday Holiday Inn express is right around the corner from the World War II museum.   There are trolley tracks outside and the desk clerk said the trolley runs about every 15 minutes. The room is nothing fancy but the Bed was comfortable. Everything was clean and breakfast was quite good. I saw a new thing for a hotel breakfast: automatic pancake machine    Push the button, hold your plate under the end of it looks like a large toaster oven and you can watch the belt, carry the pancake batter and then flip it, and in a minute you’ve got a pancake.  Who knew?

The bad news is that sometime around 10 o’clock last night I found a bad piece of sidewalk or curb or something, but the New Orleans pavement threw me down onto the middle of the street! I skinned my knee for about the 5 millionth time in my life, both wrists hurt And I have a scrape just under the hairline on my forehead.   This morning, I am sore.      

The Sunset Limited from Los Angeles to New Orleans does not offer Wi-Fi     There is Wi-Fi on the Crescent but I’m under no illusions about how dependable it would be in the deep woods of Mississippi and Alabama.

Picayune Mississippi.    Nice name

My sleeper car has 13 roomettes, each with an upper and lower birth, a toilet and sink in the room, although I think I’ll go down the hall. Car also has three bedrooms that have considerably more room.     My porter said this train usually has 2 1/2 sleepers (the other half is baggage), but they pulled one of the cars for something else.     The end of the train is a baggage car/sleeper with 9 roomettes.    The engineer and the conductor are hour-limited by federal regulations so after eight hours or so we’ll have a crew change.   The attendant and the dining room staff travel from one end to the other and they have berths down here in the sleeper car area.

The dining car just got a new menu and while everything comes prepackaged, everyone is telling me the food is quite good     Passengers in the sleeper cars get their meals in the diner at no additional charge. Last night, as a coach passenger, I paid $45 to sit in the diner car.  The next car over has a snack bar and doubles has a lounge.   Coach passengers have to pay to eat in the dining car, and I found last night that was very expensive     Upfront, the three coaches each have room for at least one Wheelchair and a bathroom that appears to be rather accessible.   At the moment the lead coach is totally empty but my attendant tells me it will fill starting in Birmingham.  (Actually started filling in Hattiesburg).   The cars of this train are considerably newer than those are the sunset limited and the attendant pointed out to me that these cars were built for comfort.      The train is not full, so most people are sprawled out across several seats    Staff are very friendly and helpful.