Big Trip Report, Part II: California Zephyr SAC-DEN

by Aaron Hockley

For the preceding part of this trip, see this post.

After a couple hour layover in Sacramento, announcements were made for passengers for the eastbound California Zephyr to move trackside and be ready to board. The train was running on time so I made my way to the platform. Unlike when I boarded the Coast Starlight, I wasn’t the lone sleeper passenger and was amongst a group of probably 10 folks. A few minutes after 11:00, the train pulled into the depot:

I was greeted by my sleeper attendant Curtis as he stepped off the train. He gave me directions to my room and told me to head on up, letting me know there was fresh coffee available at the top of the stairs. I had roomette 7 in car 0632, which was #32076. Like on the Coast Starlight, this was one of the cars which had been recently refurbished at Beech Grove so it was clean and functional. Curtis had prepared a very nice arrangement in the room, with two bottles of water, a timetable, route guide, and postcard. The pillows and hangers were setup neatly, and he had used a spare pillowcase as a table linen. Along with the items mentioned were a couple individually wrapped hard candies.

We began our trip east, and just out of the Sacramento depot, two volunteers from the California State Railroad Museum (Art and Frank) introduced themselves. They would be providing some narration over the PA system about the railroad route east over Donner Pass to Reno. First we passed a newer railroad sight: a light rail yard.

I went to the diner for an early lunch so that hopefully I’d be finished for some of the mountain scenery. They filled the entire diner with passengers, which is far more folks than the limited wait staff can handle, so it took a long time, probably 20 minutes, before the server even came by to take our order. I had the supreme pizza which came with a salad. The pizza was surprisingly good, with a nice crush and decent toppings. I had a seat on the right side of the train as we climbed out of Colfax into the mountains.

It wouldn’t be an Amtrak trip without getting screwed by the UP, so the dispatcher lined us up the mountain following a heavy manifest that could only make 14mph going up the grade. We ran on his yellow blocks all the way to Soda Springs which delayed us nearly an hour. East of Truckee we met our westbound counterpart, train #5, as we went through the Truckee River Canyon. The dining car steward came through and I got a dinner reservation for 18:00. Unlike every other Amtrak train I’ve been on, I wasn’t given a reservation slip, but simply told to just come to the diner when she calls the 18:00 reservations. As we made our way east, the conductor announced NFL score updates for the sports fans.

We were in Reno from 16:20-16:34, where I got a breath of fresh air in the new railroad trench. I appreciated my refurbished sleeper car even more after overhearing the departing conductor telling the new one that none of the toilets in the crew sleeper were operational. As I listened to the radio chatter, I heard the dispatcher talking to the UP 8444 which made me do a double-take until I realized it was just and SD70ACe and not a steam engine.

We got out of Reno and made our way east across the Nevada desert. Most of this trackage is normally good for 79mph but numerous slow orders kept us at a relatively slow pace. In case you were wondering what you can see in the Nevada desert, the answer is: not much of anything.

The 18:00 dinner reservations were called at 18:15 and I went to the diner. Unfortunately this train was using the exact same menu as the Coast Starlight so I didn’t have any new options to choose from. I looked over the selections and again had the lamb shank since it’s a food I enjoy but don’t get very often. I had mashed potatoes and carrots as my side dishes. My dinner companions were a middle-aged woman and her mother who were traveling to Aspen to visit her daughter. They live near Chico and rode an Amtrak bus to Sacramento to catch the train so they wouldn’t have get up for the early time the Coast Starlight is scheduled for its Chico stop.

I went back to my room and enjoyed the desert sunset. I noticed the radio was entirely too quiet and figured that my radio information must have been out of date. The conductor walked by a few minutes later so I asked him what radio channel they were on and he told me 78 which was a different channel than I had been scanning. Curtis made an announcement that it was “last call” for coffee before he would be turning the pot off for the night. It’s nice that he took the effort to keep a fresh pot of coffee available throughout the day rather than just first thing in the morning as some attendants will do. Our next station stop was Winnemucca, which had a tiny platform so we would be making two stops: first to change the head-end crew, and then a second stop where one coach door would be opened for those who wanted to detrain for a smoke or some fresh air.

We departed Winnemucca just before 21:00 and as I was walking back to my compartment they announced they’d be starting the movie “RV” in the lounge car. I decided to pass on the movie and use this as an opportunity for a shower. I let Curtis know he could turn down my bed while I was gone and he handed me something… he said “Here’s a couple good night kisses… don’t try to read anything into this.” I looked down and he’d given me a couple Hershey’s kisses and I chuckled. Little gestures like this are simple things that cost a few dollars out of his pocket but show that he’s going above and beyond, and seems to genuinely care about the passengers in his car.

I returned from my shower and studied some timetables and maps for my coming days of railfanning before falling asleep as we continued toward Utah. I woke up once during the night and saw the Great Salt Lake out my window.

I woke up around 07:15 as we were somewhere south of Salt Lake City. I went to the diner and had the Bob Evans Breakfast Scramble which is a mixture of eggs, potatoes, cheese and sausage. It comes with a half order of french toast and a fruit bowl and proved to be pretty good. We were slowly creeping our way towards Provo as I shared my table with a rather un-talkative young man traveling in coach to Atlanta. The area between Salt Lake City and Provo looked like typical urban sprawl with a Mormon twist: at one point I counted three Mormon churches within a quarter mile. We finally made a brief stop in Provo at 08:25, putting us about three and a half hours behind schedule.

Outside Provo a detector said the outside temperature was a mere 30 degrees. Our journey was taking us towards Soldier Summit, paralleling US Highway 6.

Our train went through the Gilluly Loops, a set of switchbacks helping us to gain elevation as we climbed. In the photo below, we originally started on the track on the opposite ledge, then made a turn and was on the track in the immediate foreground. Another 180 degree turn has us heading east again.

We crested Soldier Summit around 09:45 and then picked up speed as we descended the eastern side of the pass. As I took in the scenery I also skimmed through the complimentary copy of USA Today that was provided to sleeper passengers, reading an article about Howie Mandel and how he sometimes wants to strangle the contestants on Deal or No Deal for taking ridiculous risks. Boy, there sure is a lot of scenery out here:

As we got closer to Helper we passed Castle Gate, named for the peculiar rock formation. The rockwork looks better when shot from the west, but the lighting dictated a photograph from the east (please excuse the bit of door frame in the photo):

After shooting Castle Gate, I remembered to set the clock on my camera ahead one hour for the time change we’d encountered crossing from Nevada into Utah. We made a five-minute stop at Helper and as we passed the yard I noted the one remaining locomotive with DRGW reporting marks, the DRGW 5371. As we continued our trip east, near Mounds I noticed a few mountain goats on the rocky slopes.

As we passed through (and stopped in) Green River, Utah I noticed that the Green River isn’t. It’s brown. I went to the diner for lunch around 12:15 and again had the Angus Burger along with a woman who was traveling home to Flint, Michigan after visiting some family in Carson City. Since she lived in Flint we discussed the declining economy and the automotive industry… her husband works for GM. We passed into Colorado, continuing to see some great scenery out the large windows of the train:

We ran around a rail gang near Fruita and eventually made our way into the town of Grand Junction. As we passed a Krispy Kreme and a Best Buy I realized that this must be a real city Grand Junction has a depot which was probably beautiful at some point, and now it’s in a state where it looks like someone thought about restoring it, but ran out of money. As I made my way back to my seat after our stop, I noticed Curtis was discussing some riddles with some passengers. Listening to my scanner, it sounds like we’re going to meet #5 and hand something between the trains. Food? Linens? Nope. Apparently a passenger on our train left her jacket on while deboarding in Salt Lake, so we’re handing it to #5 to return it to her. We only encountered a couple minutes delay for the meet (at Rifle).

We stopped in Glenwood Springs from 15:40-15:48. East of town I enjoyed the scenery through Glenwood Canyon, nothing the number of bridges and tunnels that were used to finally punch I-70 through the canyon as one of the great engineering feats of the Interstate Highway System. The steward came through the train and I got an early dinner reservation for 17:15. East of Dotsero I took a brief nap in my roomette since it was shaping up to be a late night (we were still running about three hours behind schedule).

Instead of having the lamb for a third night in a row, I had the roasted chicken which was a bit dry but otherwise tasted good,along with broccoli and mashed potatoes. I had the Mississippi Mud Cake for dessert which was probably a mistake since I ended up too full. Our train was traveling east through Gore Canyon, and at Milepost 90.3 we ran into an interesting detector… it announced (with distinctive tones and a message) four times that our eastbound train was approaching 20mph trackage. I wonder how many trains derailed before the detector was installed at this sharp left-hand curve? I noted several elk off to the left side of our train west of Granby.

We stopped in Granby for a minute at 18:58, then passed a llama farm as we left town. We lost daylight quickly in the canyon between Granby and Fraser. Fraser was another quick stop at 19:23. I noted that every vehicle I saw in Fraser was four-wheel drive, a testament to the snowfall and wintery conditions this area gets for much of the year. As we were leaving town, an announcement was made that as we passed through the Moffat Tunnel, folks should not move between cars because opening the doors could introduce diesel exhaust fumes into the train. We were in the tunnel from 19:35-19:46.

On the east side it was much darker and I really couldn’t see much of anything outside the train. This was a bit disappointing since I’d be railfanning here in a few days and had hoped to do some scouting from the train if we’d been near on-time (scheduled into Denver just around 19:00).  Radio chatter indicated we were going to get stopped at Crescent for about 30 minutes due to a track gang ahead which hadn’t yet cleared.

We pulled down to Plain, where I got my first view of the lights of Denver.  We stopped around 20:30, and about 10 minutes later slowly crept down so we were sitting west of Clay.  Sitting there I could see numerous pieces of equipment on the tracks near the Big 10 curve… there were probably 20-25 different trucks down there.  From radio traffic and announcements made by the conductors, we found out we’d be stopped for a while.  According to the track foreman they would be clear by 22:00, and around 21:40 they started moving equipment.  We didn’t actually start moving until 22:33, and it was about 11:40 by the time we came to a stop after the very slow backup move into the depot in Denver.  I tipped Curtis and made my way through the tunnel into the station.
Our lateness managed to mess up my transportation plans (the last bus runs at 11:25) so I had to take a taxi to the airport to pick up my rental car.

Photos from the subsequent railfanning will follow…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006 at 5:10 pm and is filed under photos, trip reports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.