Chicago and the Lake Shore Limited

We lost a little time on the way between Minneapolis and Chicago, so I started to get nervous again about making the Lake Shore Limited. However, two customer service reps hopped on board on train from the westbound #7 when the two trains met somewhere before Milwaukee.

The customer service reps assured me that the Lake Shore Limited would be departing late that evening and that we would have no trouble making the train. They told other folks that had tickets for the previous day's train to head to the ticket counter or the lounge to swap out their tickets for today. I also noticed the customer service reps on the train handing out hotel vouchers to folks that were going to be on the next day's Capitol Limited, which had obviously already departed.

KFC for dinner

For dinner, the train staff pulled on subway sandwiches for the coach pax and KFC for the sleeper pax. They loaded everything into the train at Wisconsin Dells. Eric brought over two boxes of KFC into our bedroom. This was the best KFC I have ever eaten. We each got two huge pieces of fried chicken, a biscuit, mashed potatoes & gravy, and some coleslaw. We ravenously devoured it, since I had basically only bread with butter for lunch as I couldn't choke down any of the "chicken fricasse."

We pulled into Chicago Union Station at 9:15ish. We hustled over to the Metropolitan Lounge to check in. The Metropolitan Lounge is the lounge for sleeper passengers or those with Select+ Status on amtrak. It is much bigger than the Club Acela in NYP, BOS, PHL or WAS, but not as nice. The soda machine had signs on it saying it wasn't working and there were no free snacks like in the Club Acela.  In any case, we breathed a huge sigh of relief that we were going to make our train.

We were called down for the "kindergarten walk" around 10:15ish. This is when they have all the sleeping car passengers line up at the back of the lounge, and then a staff person escorts you out to the platform. I am not sure why they can't just tell you the track and have you go, but this has apparently always been the rule in Chicago.

The Lake Shore Limited train has two parts. After Albany, the first part of the train goes to Boston, and the second part of the train goes to New York City. Since we were in the Boston sleeper, we had a very long walk with our stuff down the platform. I believe the consist of this train is engine - engine - boston sleeper - coach - coach - coach - lounge car - coach - coach - coach - dining car - NY sleeper - NY sleeper - dorm. So we have to walk through a lot of cars to find the dining car!

After boarding the train, we were invited to the dining car for a wine and cheese party. This is standard on this train since it leaves after dinner. We were actually hungry since we picked at our lunch and had KFC over five hours ago, and I was really pleased with the giant plate of grapes, cheese and crackers that we got. Everyone got their own plate, and I had two glasses of chardonnay. We enjoyed sitting in the dining car with another couple (Bill & Mary) that had been in our sleeper on the #8 Empire Builder out of Chicago. They were also traveling to Springfield, MA and we became friends en route. Hopefully Bill is going to email me a video of our travels on the train!

One other interesting thing I noticed about this train is that I think they added an extra coach to accommodate some of the displaced pax from the western delays. I noted that one of the coaches is the Amfleet II style that is used on the Northeast Regional trains. This is different from the Amfleet I coaches that are standard for long distance train travel. The long distance coaches generally have a foot rest and a calf/leg rest that are sort of like a little lazy boy recliner. There is also greater pitch between the seats to allow for a deeper recline and more leg room.

In any case, after the wine and cheese party we went out to the platform to walk the length of the train back to the sleeper. Walking through the coaches proved impossible because they were being loaded and people with their stuff were trying to get settled. We ran back to our sleeper, popped a bottle of hard cider that we picked up in Sequim, had a drink, and then put our beds down and went to sleep.