The Silver Meteor: DFB - NHV

Tri-Rail car at the DFB station

After a wonderful wedding for our dear friends Torrey and Jenny, my husband and I decided to head north on the train.  We left from Deerfield Beach, FL (DFB), which was a cute little station. We arrived at the station about 45 minutes before our train, and I watched several tri-rail trains go through. Tri-Rail is a commuter service that serves the Miami - Fort Lauderdale - West Palm Beach area.

It also looked like there was a little train museum at the station, but that wasn't open yet. I was walking up the platform when an older gentleman with a tri-rail jacket on asked if he could help me. I told him that were taking the Silver Meteor up to NYP, and he told me exactly where to stand on the platform for our sleeper car. He also told me about the consist of the train and let me know that the train was sold out north of Orlando. It was very busy since it was the Monday before Thanksgiving, and we would be arriving in NYP on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.  The gentleman stood and chatted with us for a while - and we learned that he had gone to college at Providence College. What a small world! At one point he had been a stockbroker and also worked on trains out west. He had long since retired and helped out at the station just to keep busy. I was very impressed with how nice, helpful and friendly he was.

The train arrived just a few minutes late, and we quickly boarded our sleeper car. This time we had bedroom B. The Silver Meteor runs with the single level trains as the bi-level cars that they have out west do not fit into the tunnels that go into NYP and also into Baltimore. The viewliner sleeper has the bonus set of windows at the top of the car. We boarded and were immediately greeted by our attendant, Ed. He told us that they were still serving  breakfast in the dining car, so we immediately went down there.

Railroad French Toast with Sausage

We were seated with an older couple that was on their honeymoon and who had already ordered. We both ordered the french toast, which never fails to disappoint me! The service in the diner was incredibly friendly. There were two female servers (SA) and a male LSA.

After breakfast we headed back to our room to relax and watch the scenery go by. We had a few points where we seemed to stop for quite some time and then wait for a train to rumble past us going in the opposite direction. They also appeared to be doing track work throughout Florida, and there were many points in the day where we crawled through areas at what seemed like 10 - 20 mph.

Angus Burger for lunch

By the time we got to Orlando, we were over two hours late, with all of that time being lost after we boarded the train. We headed to lunch in the diner around 1 pm, and both Tim and I got the steak burger. We enjoyed a lunch by ourselves as no one was seated with us. We noticed a woman in the diner with her service dog - he was so cute!

At this point we were pretty full as we didn't even have that much time between lunch and dinner, but what else are you going to do on the train other than eat and watch the scenery?

One thing that I found interesting about the countryside in Florida is that we appeared to pass several residential developments that were only half completed. I would see streets with streetlights and a fancy sign for the development, and then maybe only a handful of houses and then empty cul-de-sacs. I assume that these were all casualties of the real estate boom and bust.

We had dinner reservations for 7:00, and we headed to the dinner a few minutes early. When we got there, the staff were all sitting at booths in the back of the diner. They asked us to either wait in the lounge car for a few minutes or come back in a few minutes. We headed back to our room and then came back promptly at the scheduled time. We were seated with a lovely Cuban couple from Coral Gables. We saw that they had the ribs on the menu, which we had enjoyed immensely on the Empire Builder this past summer, so we both ordered them. Our tablemates also decided that they wanted ribs, so it was ribs all around.  We pulled into Jacksonville towards the end of dinner, maybe around 7:30 or 8 pm. Our table mates were astonished that we were hours behind - they hadn't noticed until then.They said that it would only take 6 or 7 hours to drive to Jacksonville from Miami - and here we were arriving there 12 hours after departing Miami.

By then it was dark, so after dinner we headed back to our room to put our beds down. Ed offered to put our beds down at 9 pm, but we weren't quite ready yet so I told him we could do it ourselves (which we could).

I started to get a little concerned about our connection in NYP. These connections on amtrak will give me an ulcer! Tim started to get a little cranky, and I think in the future we might limit our long distance trains to ones that do NOT have connections. My biggest concern about missing our connection was that we might get stuck in NYP, as it appeared that many trains heading north later in the day were already sold out. This was of course because it was just two days before Thanksgiving. I don't think this would be be a problem during a less-busy travel season.

We woke up and I noticed that we were in Virginia. We headed to breakfast in the diner and ate with a couple from Georgia that was going to New York to see the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. We had the french toast again - it is just pretty good!

I decided to book a later regional on amtrak.com, just to hedge our bets. I knew that there was a possibility that our original reservation could be cancelled, but I wanted to make sure we could hold the seats so that they wouldn't become sold out. Once we got into DC, I asked Ed when he thought we would arrive in NYP. He suggested that we board our regional right there, rather than waiting until NYP - and our regional was literally across the platform from us, also getting their engine switched out. All the trains get the diesel engine removed in WAS and switched to an electric engine for the trip up the NEC.

Ed popped out of the train and chatted with the conductor for the 172, and he came back shaking his head. Apparently the 172 was sold out between WAS and NYP and there was no way he could accommodate us on that train. We decided to cross our fingers that we would make it to NYP in time for our 2 pm train (we were originally supposed to arrive around 11 am).

It was a nail biter up the NEC, but we finally arrived in NYP at about 1:55 pm. We were the first people off the sleeper and dashed up the stairs to the Club Acela. We were buzzed in and we breathlessly checked in at the desk, only to find out that our train was running 10-15 minutes late. We secured a redcap and waited patiently in the club acela for the redcap to take us down.

Our redcap had to drop off some folks at the Crescent first, but he came back as soon as he could and grabbed our bags. We had tickets for the BC car, which was at the front of the train. By the time we made it out of the Club Acela, they were in the process of announcing the track for our regional and the hall was very crowded. Our redcap headed down to the NJT level so that we could take an elevator to the platform. The elevator was crowded and he rushed us to the first car. We were among the first people to board and got the last pair of seats together in the car, all the way at the front of the train. We breathlessly collapsed in our seats, thankful that we had made another tight connection with minutes to spare.

The ride up to New Haven was uneventful, and we arrived about twenty minutes late.

Another amtrak route to add to my ever growing list, and again, it was thanks to our AGR points. I have over 25,000 points still in my account, so I am now busy planning our next adventure by rail