Subject: Boston, NYC, DC trip report From: Jim Rees Date: Tue, 13 Jun 1995 19:21:30 -0400 Here's a partial trip report, written entirely on board the Lake Shore, Corridor, and Capitol Amtrak trains. I can't really get motivated to turn this into a proper report, but maybe you'll find it amusing. -- My trip to Boston started out boringly enough with a three hour bus ride to Toledo. I arrived early, at 11:30 pm, so I walked over to the Park Hotel for an egg and ham sandwich at Lou's 24-hour restaurant. I counted seven velvet Elvises and as many autographed photos of pro wrestlers on the wall. Then I went next door to Tennyson's pub for a 75 cent beer. Men with scraggly hair and beer guts sat at the bar while tall-haired gals shot pool. One wall was covered with a monumental painting of a streamlined Union Pacific passenger train. Just after 1:00 AM I boarded the Lake Shore Limited and settled in to my sleeper for the night. I woke up in Rochester, and had breakfast with a couple from Scotland. Over coffee in the bar car, the Conductor kept up a running travelogue. "And over on your right is the sludge pile from the Syracuse sewage treatment plant." The California Zephyr is often touted as the most scenic train in the Amtrak system, but I think the scenery is better on the eastern trains. The Lake Shore runs the length of the Rust Belt, from Chicago to Albany, where it splits in half and continues to Boston or New York. From this train you can see the steel mills of Gary, the old Studebaker plant in South Bend, the Etch-A-Sketch plant in Bryan Ohio, the largest grain elevator in the world in Toledo, the leather tanneries of Herkimer, the Lifesavers plant in Palatine, and the Schenectady Locomotive Works. This train follows the Erie Canal for many miles and offers views of the canal and locks. As we rumbled past all the abandoned mills and factories I marveled that the Japanese ever thought they could defeat such an industrial giant in WWII. In Boston I had just enough time between graduations and trips to cafes to take a ride on the Mattapan High Speed line, the last streetcar line in Boston to use 1940s PCC cars. It runs through a cemetary and is quite scenic. From Mattapan I took a bus to Forest Hills and rode the "new" Orange line back. I see the Arborway branch of the Green line is still on the maps even though it hasn't run in at least ten years. I had just one day in New York City, so I checked in to my favorite $45 hotel and headed straight to Chinatown to take in a couple of Hong Kong movies. Hong Kong has the world's second largest film industry, after Bombay. Hollywood comes in third. The first movie was a situation comedy about a guy who goes to the mainland to start a company and ends up with two wives. The second movie was a love story about a pair of serial killers. I had 70 minutes between trains in D.C. and decided to take a look at the new pedestrian mall on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House. In spite of the complaints by Washington residents, I think it's an improvement. It's now possible to approach the White House head on from Lafayette Square across the street. I didn't have enough time to get my photo snapped with Bill and Hillary for $5.50. I returned to Ann Arbor on the Capitol Limited, which runs from Washington to Chicago and has recently been converted from 50 year old Heritage equipment to new Superliner equipment. Amtrak no longer gives sleeper passengers a free bottle of wine, but I did get a very nice coffee cup and some shampoo. We rolled in to Toledo at 5 am for the three hour bus ride back to Ann Arbor.