A few years ago, I took Amtrak round trip from Tacoma, WA to Beaumont, TX and back. This trip involves taking the Coast Starlight to Los Angeles, and then the Sunset Limited from Los Angeles to Texas.

The train was supposed to leave Tacoma before lunch, and I had not ate breakfast that day. I was going to have lunch on the train. The train didn't get to Tacoma until well after lunch time, so by the time I got on, lunch was no longer being served.

Somewhere between Tacoma and California, and well before dinner time, we pulled onto a siding to let a freight train pass. As we started to move again to get back on the track, the engine derailed, because the rails on the siding ahead had pulled apart.

We sat there for a few hours while they sent out two engines, one to come up behind us to pull us back onto the main track, and one to hook up in front so we could resume the journey.

After we got going again, they said that because we were without power for much of the time we waited they had lost refrigeration in the kitchen and so out of food safety concerns dinner would be not served.

The snack car was still open, so we could at least get snacks. I was pretty pissed off that I had to pay for my snack. My ticket (which was something like $2000 each way...) included three meals a day. I would have expected that if they could not provide a meal that a passenger has already paid for, they could at least provide a complimentary snack from the snack car.

With the lateness leaving Tacoma, the delay form the engine derailment, and other delays to let freight trains pass, I was actually starting to worry that I might miss the connection for the Sunset Limited. That only ran three days a week, and so if I missed it, it would really throw my schedule into disarray. We were supposed to get to Los Angeles at something like 9PM, and we actually got in at around 5AM. I seriously considered just napping in the station instead of walking the two blocks to the hotel that had been reserved for me, since I wasn't going to have time for a good sleep anyway.

There were no more major incidents on the trip to Texas, just some annoyances. There was supposed to be a free newspaper everyday delivered to my room, but that only happened once. Some fittings and fixtures in my room were loose or missing.

The Beaumont train station was a bit of a surprise. It is just a big concrete slab in a field [1]. I found out that at one time there was a building there, but it was torn down after being damaged in Hurricane Rita. (They have since built a new station).

The return trip was largely uneventful. Still didn't get my newspapers. It was a bit scary waiting to leave Beaumont, since there was a lightning storm in the area. I really would have preferred waiting for the train inside a building instead of out in the open getting rained on and hoping the lighting didn't get too close. I should have had the cab wait with me until the train came, so I could have stayed in the cab where it was dry [2].

Everything was late on the return trip, which I gather is pretty much expected, but nothing that endangered the connection in Los Angeles.

I wonder how much more annoying this was back in the days before cell phones? With my cell phone, I was able to send text messages to the friend who was going to pick me up in Tacoma, updating him on our progress so he could do a good job of figuring out when he actually needed to be there.

[1] http://trainweb.org/usarail/beaumont03.jpg

[2] I was in Texas because I was a witness in a patent lawsuit. The lawyers were paying my expenses, and so it wouldn't have cost me anything to keep the cab there. It just didn't occur to me.