Category: Trains

Casmalia, a healing beauty

Just off of the Vandenberg Air Force Base reservation we turned inland and rode through this hidden valley of oaks and sycamores surrounded by rolling green hills. I’d never been through Casmalia, and it looked like a hidden gem.

But this beautiful place has a rough past. It had been a railroad boomtown when the Southern Pacific first came through, then an oil boomtown when the oilfields nearby were still producing. Finally, just over the hill in the background somebody opened a toxic waste dump in 1973 that wound up polluting the groundwater. The EPA shut the dump down and took it over in 1992 as a Superfund site, and the effort to remove some 4.6 billion pounds of toxic waste is still underway.

The town is starting to return to normal, but I can see a time in the future when, the ground water once again clean, more life will come to this beautiful little valley.

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Southern Pacific Caboose

Superseded by advances in technology and railroad management, the noble caboose no longer rides the rails in the United States. Southern Pacific #1886, shown here, has not only been saved from the scrappers by the San Luis Obispo Railroad Museum, who have spruced her up to like-new condition inside and out from the wheels to the chimney.

Riding past this, I added the museum to my bucket list.

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Train Dinner

The first time I had dinner on Amtrak, I asked Dan, the car attendant, to bring dinner to my room. I am not normally so precious, but I was traveling alone, feeling a bit like Shreck, and was not yet comfortable with the idea of dining with three strangers (note: I was over it by breakfast.)

I wolfed it, no pun intended. Train travel is hungry work, especially when you go REAL SLOW through the picturesque beach and farm towns filled with tempting diners and taquerias. But, as I have said here before, the food on long-distance Amtrak trains compares favorably to the best airline business- and first-class fare, and even when I wasn’t terribly hungry, I could not resist the temptation at mealtimes.

Note to self: always bring plenty of (healthy, protein-laden) foods on the train to supplement the meals. I did okay this time, but it never hurts to have a little extra boost, even on a trip as short as four hours.

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Hong Kong Cuisine in Shelby, Montana

In the frigid reaches of northern Montana four years ago I looked out my train window in Northern Montana to behold…a Chinese restaurant! I could not help but smile.

Update: I hear this one has now closed. But don’t fret: Kowloon Restaurant on Main Street in Shelby is open every day but Monday.

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Reasons to Love Amtrak: Service

They gave these to me for free. Portland station for the win again.

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, domestic US airlines had a culture of service that they extended to everyone regardless of whether you were flying first or coach. That sentiment is mostly dead unless you are seated in the front of the plane, and even then, its a crapshoot.

Amtrak, on the other hand, has a service culture that harks back to the golden era of air travel. I will choose Amtrak over any domestic US airline, and this simple gesture on the part of a Portland baggage handler is just one more example of why that is the case.

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Catbird seat

Occasionally, people who know that I lived in China for two decades will ask me what I miss about the place now that I have been living in the US again for nine years.

I miss the people, of course, but I still keep in touch with a lot of them. I missed my in-laws very much, but over the last year, they have both passed away.

And I miss taking the train everywhere, especially High-Speed Rail, the G-trains.

That is almost enough to convince me to go back. But the idea of sitting through a thirty-day quarantine simply to deal with the compound challenges and red-tape that now enwrap domestic travel in China carries little appeal. Sadly, my next high-speed rail journey will either be Acela or EuroStar, and I don’t know when – or if – I will ever find myself on Harmony again.

But those were good times, and I want to tip the hat to David Feng and all of the wonderful people on China High-Speed Rail. Thank you all for helping me rediscover my love of rail travel.

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If I owned a locomotive…it would be an EMD SD38-2. I like road-switchers, and this is the classic.

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Feeling old: having to explain to your son that Pacific Electric is not a power utility.

Feeling ancient: Having to explain the same to a group of retirees who grew up in Southern California.

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