It was the best of times...
Amtrak Train 20, The Crescent from New Orleans to New York, arrived in Birmingham, Alabama 15 minutes early on Sunday, June 26th 2011. I used to be somewhat of a frequent rider on The Crescent and in my experience, punctuality was never its strong suit. So when Birmingham's cramped little station started to rumble with the weight of The Crescent's 9 cars and 2 engines 15 minutes before it was scheduled to arrive, I thought that was the start of a great day.
However, the time that the north bound train had built up was quickly lost. Our 2:24pm departure time came and went as we sat on track 6. 2:30, 2:35, 2:45 came and went too. Finally we got word that there was freight traffic ahead of us, so at around 3pm, the train for New York set out from Birmingham...going backwards towards New Orleans. We only went 2 miles back in order to switch to a bypass track, but little did we know that that maneuver would foreshadow how our trip on train 20 would end.
It was an annoying time...
Prior to boarding in Birmingham, a frantic woman caught my attention. I had just helped a man headed for Alexandria to procure his ticket from Amtrak's Quiktrak system so I thought I would continue my "helping my fellow passenger" schtick and ask her what her issue was. Her response was a mixture of arm flailing, gesturing and accented english that ended up meaning she was trying to get a seating upgrade. That was a little above my pay grade so I excused myself...but this is not the last we hear from Ms. Frantic.
Two hours or so into our journey from Birmingham, after stopping in Anniston, Alabama, train 20 came to sudden stop on a wooded enbankment about 15 minutes from Anniston. Being in backwood Alabama, getting a gps lock on my phone was tough so I have no idea where we were at that time...it was hard keeping the signal to send text messages even!
After about 15 minutes of no news, the word came down that there were trees on the track. At the time that meant to me that ahead of us were trees and we stopped to avoid hitting them. This theory was reinforced in my mind by the double red signals I could see that we had stopped in front of. Turns out that was a coincidence and that we had actually hit pieces of a tree that had been damaged in the storm that we had ridden through for about an hour. So we sat there for almost 2 hours waiting for the crew and rescue people that had driven out to us, to clear the track of the debris, soder the cowcatch off (it was damaged by the tree pieces) and check the brake lines before proceeding on to Atlanta and points north.
During this time, myself my great aunt and cousin (removed a few times or something like that) went to the dining car for our 6:30pm dinner reservations. We were seated on the left side, the same side my coach seat was on allowing me a good vantage point to see the Amtrak people milling about on the track. No one seemed frenzied or worried so I wasn't especially worried about our situation. Shortly after sitting down to dinner my not worrying paid off and we started rolling north towards Atlanta again.
It was the worst of times...
Snaking through the backwoods of Alabama requires the train to crawl along at 15-20 mph instead of the normal 65-75. I only know approximate speed thanks to a feature I accidently discovered on my phone's built in map application. Going so slowly probably did us some good because about 10 miles after we started rolling again the brakes were applied rather quickly and all of a sudden our diner was bumped and thudded by the trunk of an Oak tree.
Just saying that doesn't do the experience justice. The noise of wood scrapping against metal and branches clanking on windows is both a shock to the system and quite scary as the train rocked side to side from the impact. It was somewhere around 7:15 when we came to a stop on a road crossing either in the backwoods town of Heflin, Alabama or Edwardsville, Alabama.
At this time, we in the dining car did not know the severity of the damage, so when flashing fire rescue trucks came to rest near our engines we became a little alarmed. Didn't help when an EMT came bounding through the train looking for people to treat...my year as an RA has taught me what that look looks like. Soon a Hefling police car joined us, as well as an unidentified car with flashers, in addition to the Amtrak truck/train vehicle, a Bob the Builder machine and the random car that hoped we would move relatively soon. Well we ended up sitting there for about 3 hours in total.
In that period, us merry people in the dining car let the jokes fly. "This train is the biggest thing to happen to Heflin, Alabama since it was incorporated"..."no, since the Civil War"..."I bet the Mayor will come shake our hands soon enough." We were such a big deal that the dogs from nearby backyards came up to check us out!
Joining my family in trying to laugh the situation off was a family from South Carolina that was trying to get home just like we were. In between our jokes and grumblings we got to know each other. The Mom is a writer with a great sense of humor that she clearly passed on to her teenage daughter. The Dad was dressed in a polo and jacket combo to make NCIS' Gibbs proud...paired with shorts once he emerged from behind the table. Mom's parents were also there and clearly were the genesis of the family funny bone, taking the situation best of all. But we eventually had to part company around 9pm.
Around this time the severity of our situation began to come to light. We were told that some windows had been punched out by the tree that had walloped the dining car...but thankfully hadn't sprayed anyways dinner with glass garnishing. We were informed that overall we were in no state to continue our trip on train 20 and that we would be backing up 4 miles to buses that would take us to places unknown.
After backtracking those 4 miles we sat for another 3 hours before the buses showed up around 1 in the morning. During those 3 hours I sat in teh cafe car with the displaced sleeping car passengers...one of whom was my "friend" Ms. Frantic who had succesfully upgraded to sleeping car accomodations. Thank goodness she did because she proceeded to drive the entire car crazy with her repetitive misinformation and insights into our situation. Her voice filled the car as if she was using a mega phone and one wished for a football helmet to combat the gyrations that accompanied her oversized lungs. She finally fell silent around midnight, but soon would rise again to cause consternation and confusion where there needn't have been any.
Times got a little worse...
So our salvation arrived in the form of 3, no 4...no wait its 3...no actually it turned out to be 4 coach buses from Atlanta from Friendship Tours. No one seemed to know where the buses were going, Atlanta, DC, Timbuktu...we just didn't know. Eventually we were informed we were going to Atlanta where people would be shuffled onto buses to various places.
However, in the confusion, there was a flash of comradarie and brotherhood. When the Amtrak people asked for assistance in getting the checked baggage off the train and onto the buses, close to 30 able bodied men willingly got up and muscled 150-200 bags onto our buses.
In the process of backing our buses up to line up with the baggage car we saw the severity of the physical damage to that sleeper car. Every window in that first sleeper was either punched or broken in. Not to mention there were visible dents and scratches all along the train, with the odd hydraulic line hanging uselessly.
Afer surveying the damage and loading the bags, we finally got on the road by 2am central time and arrive in Atlanta around 415am eastern time. Once in Atlanta we were informed that our bus would be going straight through to DC with one or two rest stops to stretch our legs and get some food. However, in Greyhound like fashion, our bus was taken our of service and the DC express was shuffled onto the bus ahead of ours. Once we started rolling I pretty much fell asleep until our first rest stop at a McDonald's in South Carolina. Nothing interesting or out of the ordinary really happened until we got about 20 miles outside of DC later that afternoon.
Times got a little frantic...
When I said nothing interesting happened until DC I was telling the truth, although some annoying things did happen in the interim. Unfortunately the human megaphone Ms. Frantic was on the DC express. More than a few times she would freak out after reading a passing read sign and ask repeatedly if we were where the sign said we were...as if she would get a different answer from the tired and stressed out refugees of train 20. She became particularly animated when we rolled throug downtown Richmond. She went on for a good 5 minutes about how "pretty" it was, and "that was really Richmond" so on and so forth. I distinctly remember hearing 7 mumbled "shutups" from the rest of riders of the DC express while we rolled through Richmond too...I wonder why.
Things didn't get really bad until we got 20 miles outside of DC. Again she saw the sign and turned to everyone around her asking if we were near DC. Once she was satisfied she decided to tell the bus drivers that she knew "the best way to union station, the 14th st bridge!" She then proceeded to tell how she learned all the streets of DC when she moved there 30+ years ago from her native Panama, in the anticipation of becoming a cab driver. Can anyone tell me what could possibly be wrong with a wannabe cab driver trying to direct a 55 seat bus through Washington DC? If not let me answer that question for you, a cab driver does not typically consider the space available on a given street or possible restrictions.
Of course, listening to Ms. Frantic we ran into a restriction in front of the Capitol Building. WHO DIRECTS A MOTORCOACH THAT ISNT DROPPING OFF TOURISTS TO THE CAPITOL BUILDING IN THE FIRST PLACE? Yes we did get to DC Union Station eventually, and yes I eventually got home on Northeast Regional #178, but we would have gotten to the train station 10 minutes earlier if Ms. Frantic hadn't opened her big mouth. But of course, what did she care if we got to the train station, she lived in DC anyway.
Times get a little smoother...
After all this, the refugees of train 20 got to New York just 6 hours late. It was smooth sailing through DC Union Station as we got off the bus and were shuffled onto the 4:02pm Northeast Regional without a moment to lose. 3 hours and roughly 20 minutes later we were in New York. This trip will go down as one of my worst ever...but I will stay a loyal Amtrak customer, because I can't imagine what would have happened if we were in the air trying to gain altitude through those storms.
Posted via email from Diggs' Posterous
