Jack May visits New Orleans

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daveklepper

Member since
June 2002
20,013 posts

Jack May visits New Orleans

Posted by daveklepper on Friday, April 5, 2019 5:16 AM

This is the first of a series of reports covering the trips taken in 2018, which was chock full of traveling. The first was a short excursion to New Orleans, while it was still cold up here in the northeast, so here goes:

A little over a year ago Clare and I broke the monotony of a cold winter by spending some time in New Orleans. I've attached our itinerary, which involved flying down to the Crescent City on Delta via Atlanta, returning on Amtrak's Crescent, and staying in a centrally-located apartment, arranged through Booking.com.

I am not going to provide a blow by blow narrative of our visit to this tourist-oriented city of just under 400,000,* as I don't think it would be particularly interesting, so this report will be more a vehicle for displaying my traction photos.

* The population of New Orleans began dropping in the late 1950s, after it had peaked at over 600,000, but it saw its steepest decline right after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The metropolitan area is home to about 1.3 million.

Here is a brief summary of our trip.

There were several reasons we selected New Orleans. One was the fact the streetcar system had been expanded significantly since my last visit, which was in 2007 with Phil Craig and Steve Siegerist. At that time I rode the Canal Street line, which had been replaced by buses in 1964 and reopened 40 years later with a new branch out North Carrollton Avenue to City Park. Since then tracks were installed in both Loyola Avenue (2013) and Rampart Streets (2016), and the Canal line was extended a short distance across City Park Avenue to the Cemeteries (January, 2018), and I was anxious to ride and photograph the new lines, not to mention the older ones.

Additionally, we enjoy good food and good music, and New Orleans is noted for both. As per the attached itinerary we would spend evenings trying out various restaurants and attending performances. Finally, we wanted to do a bit of post-Katrina sightseeing, with a special emphasis on a visit to the new World War II museum.

Our flights on Delta were uneventful and actually landed early in both Atlanta and New Orleans. Service was good and it was nice to find out that Delta still provides underprivileged coach passengers with decent snacks and drinks, whether they are paying for the seats or flying on frequent flyer mileage, as we did. I spent some of the 2½ hours between flights riding the elevated people mover at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport that carries people to the rental car center. The airport also has a 1980-built underground Westinghouse Skybus operation within the security area connecting all the terminal buildings. Almost everybody rides it to and from the gates, as I did.

Above and below: Atlanta's SkyTrain was opened in 2009. These views of the automated, rubber-tired people mover were taken from its principal station across the airport's motor vehicle pick-up area from the main terminal. Mitsubishi built the elevated line, which is equipped with platform screen doors, and has one intermediate station along its 1½-mile length. The roster consists of 12 Sumitomo-built Mitsubishi Crystal Mover cars that have a maximum speed of 40 mph. The right edge of the lower photo shows the elevated structure that brings MARTA Red and Gold line trains to the airport.

It was $36 by taxi to our accommodations, which was perfectly located on Magazine Street, just one block off Canal Street. Our fourth floor apartment was quite modern, so much so that we never figured out how to work the TV. The weather during our stay was changeable--it kept changing. It was sunny on Sunday afternoon, so while Clare rested I looked over the Canal Street streetcar, walking between the riverfront and St. Charles Avenue and watching lots of cars pass me. It was cloudy on Monday, so I felt really comfortable doing sightseeing with Clare, which included visits to the National World War II museum (https://www.nationalww2museum.org/) and the Aquarium (https://audubonnatureinstitute.org/aquarium), as well as a self-guided walking tour of the French Quarter.

It rained Tuesday morning, but cleared up by the afternoon with the sky turning blue, and continued that way on Wednesday. On our last full date we visited the cemeteries and the Art Museum, which are at the ends of the two streetcar services that run up Canal Street. I spent Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning catching up with the streetcars, using day tickets that were easily purchased from retailers. Passes are even sold on the streetcars--click on https://www.norta.com/Fares-Passes/Purchasing-Options-for-All-Fares-and-Passes for the fares charged by the city's transit operator, the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (NORTA or RTA). As you will see ride-at-will passes run for 1 day, 3 days, 5 days, 7 days and 31 days, but only the 1-day ticket is sold on vehicles. The driver/operators do not make change, but if you pay more than the selected fare because you don't have exact change, you get an electronically coded refund card that can be used for future fare payments aboard vehicles. That's what happened for Clare's streetcar travels on Wednesday afternoon. I paid her senior fare with a dollar bill, got a 60-cent refund ticket, then used it on a second trip and received a 20-cent refund ticket; I finally used that form with 20 cents cash for the final ride. Complicated, but it works (especially for RTA finances, as I suspect many of the refund tickets are never used). All these forms are issued by the "fare box" located behind the operator.

Food: Our apartment was across the street from one of New Orleans breakfast landmarks, the Ruby Slipper Cafe. But whenever we ready for our morning repast, a line extended around the block. So each morning we walked to Canal and had our breakfasts at the Creole House, which I suspect, serves that regional cuisine only for lunch and dinner. We hadn't made any dinner reservations for our first night, so we walked to the nearby Mother's (https://www.mothersrestaurant.net/mothers_menu.html), a Southern/Louisiana "institution" that is somewhat like an old-style cafeteria (or soup kitchen considering the way it is decorated), where customers get on line to order and then are served at the table they eventually find. The food is a good popular-priced introduction to New Orleans-style Creole and Cajun cuisine.

On Monday we had dinner at Muriel's in the French Quarter, probably our best meal of the trip. Everything was well-prepared and delicious, and oddly enough, it is one of the settings for a "haunted New Orleans" tour, because it is said ghosts occupy the second floor (https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/muriels-ghost-at-jackson-square). We heard noises, but that probably could have been just our imaginations. On Tuesday night we ate at Brigsten's way west near the outer end of the St. Charles streetcar line, which, of course, was our transportation to the restaurant. It was a slow ride, as the operator seemed to want to make sure she never arrived at an intersection when the light was green. The food and service were fine (although nothing to rave about), and we decided to return to the apartment by Uber--it was the first time we tried it. It was quick and reasonably priced, but I haven't used it since, but that is because of having no need when public transportation is reasonably fast and reliable.

On Wednesday night we realized we had eaten to our heart's content and took it a bit easier, having dinner a few doors down at the Bon Ton Cafe, which features Cajun cuisine. Unfortunately the food was so good that we filled our stomachs again. Earlier in the day, before we went out the cemeteries and Art Museum, we attended the jazz brunch at the Court of Two Sisters in the French Quarter. The food and music were good, but the latter not as sparkling as our Monday visit to Preservation Hall for one of their quintessential concerts.

My taste in jazz is not necessarily traditional New Orleans, but when in Rome . . ., though I must say I did enjoy the music throughout the TV series, Treme-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treme_(TV_series) --and especially appreciated the acting of Khandi Alexander, John Goodman and Melissa Leo (Melissa is the daughter of one of my high school friends). Anyway, we tried to take advantage of as much music as possible.

At the time of our visit, the 5 foot 2½-inch gauge RTA streetcar system consisted of five routes: 47-Canal-Cemeteries, 48-Canal-City Park, 49-Loyola-Rampart, 12-St. Charles Avenue and 2-Riverfront.* I've placed a table of the streetcars routes with their length, frequencies and equipment at the end of part 2 of the report. Also see https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/New_Orleans_Streetcar_Map.svg for a map of the network at the time of our visit. I rode all of the lines, but I only had limited time for photography. I've split the photos between this portion of my report and part 2, which will also contain the narrative of our trip back home on Amtrak's Crescent.

* Since September, 2018 the number of routes is down to four, with the west end of the Riverfront line (about 1 mile) shut down for a real-estate construction project. The east end of the Riverfront route is currently served by extensions of the Canal Street lines.

Here are some scenes along Canal Street from its foot to the cemeteries. Note that almost all have more than one car in the frame, showing how much service is being operated. The mainline is 3.6 miles long and the spur to City Park is another 0.9 miles.

A New Orleans RTA streetcar pauses for the photographer while it lays over at its terminal at the foot Canal Street. The glass-enclosed Audubon Aquarium is in the background. No. 2024 is is the last of a series of 24 cars built by the company in its shops in 1999 (the prototype) and between 2002 and 2003. Under the tutelage of retired rail manager Elmer von Dullen, the cars were equipped with modern propulsion machinery and trucks from Pennsylvania's Brookville Equipment Company. Planned to be replicas of the historic Perley Thomas cars from 1924 that run on the St. Charles Avenue line, they have substantial differences to meet the requirements of today's ridership, including air-conditioning and wheelchair lifts. Their pseudo deck roofs hide much of this equipment. (Note on my previous trip in 2005, Phil Craig and I rode a trip on the Riverfront line with an especially accommodating operator. Further conversation with him at the end of the line revealed that he was the son of Elmer von Dullen. We told him he was very clever in picking such a remarkable father.)

Above and below: Two more scenes on the lower portion of Canal Street. The trackage from the junction with the St. Charles Avenue line (lower view) to the Riverfront line actually was returned to service in 1999, in order to create carhouse access when the latter line was converted from standard to New Orleans' historic 5' 2½" gauge. The upper view is at the intersection of Canal and Peters Streets. At left is the upscale Canal Place shopping center and the high-rise at right is Harrah's hotel and casino. The lower photo shows the track connection between the Canal and St. Charles line, which uses the third track at left as part of its downtown loop. Note the sign directing riders of the St. Charles line to its Carondelet stop.

Above and below: Two views looking southward at the intersection where the 49-Loyola Rampart line joins Canal Street briefly between Rampart Street and Elk Place. The switch that allows route 49 cars heading for New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal (Union Station) to turn off Canal Street is prominent in the foreground of both views. Two blocks to the right Elk Place becomes Loyola Avenue. I found it interesting that these two pictures, taken at virtually the same spot, provide such different backgrounds, with the lower one showing a bit of the city's high-rise skyline, consisting mostly of chain hotels. The Saenger theater at left was built in 1927 and was converted for motion pictures soon thereafter. The advent of TV eventually caused the owners to split it into a multiplex, but it was later restored to become the Crescent City's prime Performing Arts space in 2013.

The neutral ground on Canal Street turns from concrete to grass north of of downtown. The grass isn't as green as it could be because of the large number of joggers turning up the soil. This leafy area is at Miro, just north of Galvez. The tracks are located in the median only on the Canal and St. Charles lines, but run in the pavement on either side of the neutral ground of the Loyola-Rampart line and the City Park branch of the Canal line.

The new Cemeteries loop is north of City Park Avenue, and provides a safer access to New Orleans' famous above-ground burial plots and easy transfers to connecting bus lines. The facility opened in December, 2017.

Another view of the neutral ground showing the wheelchair lifts of the 2000-series cars.

Lastly, a reflection of a 2000-series car on the Canal line as it approaches Galvez.

Part 2 will contain photos of the St. Charles, Riverfront and Loyola-Rampart lines, as well as the narrative of our trip back home on Amtrak's Crescent.

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daveklepper

Member since
June 2002
20,013 posts

Posted by daveklepper on Sunday, April 7, 2019 6:33 AM

This is the last part of my report of our trip to New Orleans during March, 2018. It consists of photos of the Riverfront, Rampart-St. Claude (Loyola) and St. Charles Avenue streetcar lines, and a description of our return trip on Amtrak.

But first a table derived from a NORTA map/brochure that was readily available during our trip.

Rt. Daytime Length Rolling No. Route Name Frequency Miles Stock Notes 2 Riverfront 15 1.4 457-463 (7) Frequency 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. 20-25 12 St. Charles 9-10 6.5 900s (35) 47 Canal-Cemeteries 10 3.8 2000s (33) 2.8 duplicated with rt. 48 48 Canal-City Park 20 3.8 2000s (33) 2.8 duplicated with rt. 47 49 Rampart-St. Claude 20 2.2 2000s (33) 2000-series equipment shared between rts. 47, 48 and 49; 6.7 minute combined frequency rts. 47 & 48.

Above and below: We transition from Canal Street in Part 1 to the Riverfront line in these two photos of RTA car 458, first as a pull-out heading southbound crossing Canal at Baronne/Dauphine, and then running westbound at the foot of Canal Street. The 1.4-mile long line was originally built in a quick-and-dirty manner in 1988 by using surplus freight trackage along the east bank of the Mississippi River. In effect wires were thrown up over some standard-gauge New Orleans Public Belt Railway rails and operated with former Melbourne, Australia W2 cars and previously regauged New Orleans units.

Above and below: Standard-gauge New Orleans Belt Railway rails can be seen to the right of the pair of electrified New Orleans broad-gauge (5' 2½") tracks that carry the Riverfront line. With the need to bring the successful tourist service up to modern-day standards, but at the same time desiring not to eliminate its charm, the line was converted to regauged double track in 1997. Replicas of New Orleans Perley Thomas cars with wheelchair lifts were constructed in the Carrollton Shops, and after some false starts with the trucks from former Philadelphia PCC cars, all 7 cars (458-463) were equipped with PCC trucks and controls acquired from Tatra in the Czech Republic. The upper view shows a westbound car after it has left the Ursilines stop, while the photo below portrays the line's French Market terminal, where a crossover allows two cars to be reversed concurrently to preserve a the line's 15-minute midday headway. Apparently used more by tourists than commuters, morning rush hour frequency is only every 20 to 25 minutes.

The New Orleans Public Belt Railroad operates freight service alongside the Riverfront streetcars. A freight train being pulled by an EMD GP40 is shown at the streetcar line's western terminal at Julia Street, adjacent to the city's Cruise Terminal.

We now move from the Riverfront line to the RTA's newest route, that mostly traverses Loyola Avenue and Rampart Street.

Above and below: Officially called the Rampart-St. Claude line (or route 49), this east-west crosstown line was opened in two segments over a route perpendicular to Canal Street. The first portion, running from Canal westward along Loyola to the railroad station, was placed into service as the Loyola-UPT (Union Passenger Terminal) route in 2013. The upper photo shows car 2017 leaving the eastern terminal of the second and final segment, on St. Claude Avenue at Elysian Fields Avenue. This segment of the 2.2-mile line was completed in 2016. Shown directly below is car 2007 about to make the jog from Rampart onto Canal, which separates and connects the line's segments on Rampart Street and Loyola Avenue.

Car 2007 is shown at the bumper block adjacent to the multi-modal Amtrak station, officially the New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal, which was built in 1954 to consolidate six separate stations used by varnish to connect the Crescent City with the rest of the U. S. The streetcar line's western terminal consists of only a single track, so on occasion cars must wait for their leader to depart before they're able to discharge their passengers.

Car 2022 is but one station short of the line's terminal at the railroad station. In general the tracks are located in pavement surrounding the "neutral ground," but here is a brief section laid on private right-of-way. The 39-story Energy Center and the older First Bank and Trust Tower (36 floors), the fourth and fifth tallest buildings in New Orleans are prominent in this view looking toward downtown.

A short 4-block walk along Howard Avenue from the location of the previous photo brought me to Lee Circle and the St. Charles Avenue line. This is the route that hung on during the desert years, an almost quarter century from 1964 to 1988, when it was the only streetcar line in the city. But what a line it was--and still is. Considered to be the oldest continuously operated streetcar line in the world, the 6½-mile route serves tourists and residents alike between downtown and numerous traffic generators, including Tulane and Loyola Universities, Audubon Park and Zoo, and historic mansions in the Garden District. Its popularity as a tourist attraction that serves other tourist attractions has resulted in the establishment of a multitude of bars, restaurants and hotels along its route.

Above and below: Lee Circle separates downtown New Orleans from its Garden District, but as seen in the upper photo, the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, which had been atop the tall pedestal since 1884, no longer graces the column, having been removed less than a year before the photo was exposed. Political correctness had deemed this historically important individual a "public nuisance." Outbound cars, as shown in the lower view, join the circle from paved single track along St. Charles Avenue and travel halfway around, while inbound cars run three-quarters of the way, entering and leaving from reserved track. The upper photo shows car 953 operating along Howard Avenue, which it will use for one block before turning right onto Carondelet Street, the one-way thoroughfare that takes the cars to their downtown terminal at Canal. The track on the right is available for reversing the occasional inbound short turn when Carondelet is blocked. Beyond Carondelet it merges with the inbound track. Cars cannot traverse the entire circle because the outbound rails turn directly onto St. Charles Avenue, with no connection to the inbound track.

Not yet mentioned are the venerable streetcars that serve the St. Charles Avenue line and now have become one of the symbols of the city. Built by the Perley A. Thomas Company of High Point, N. C. in 1923 and 1924, some 35 of the original 73 900-series cars remain on the RTA's roster, and since the line on which they operate has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places, they do not have to comply with the ADA regulations that call for wheelchair access. In any case, they remain as the model for the RTA's replica fleet.

A classic view of a Perley Thomas streetcar operating inbound on the neutral ground of St. Charles Avenue near Fourth Street in the Garden District. The term neutral ground for center reservation is unique to New Orleans and seems to to apply to all the city's grassy medians, not just those on Canal Street and St. Charles Avenue that contain tracks. The origin of this unusual term is generally attributed to conflict between French and English settlers during late 18th century prior to the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Perhaps these strips were agreed-upon territories where neither group had a claim. The neutral ground has seen better days. Formerly groomed to appear like manicured lawns, the jogging craze has reduced it to brown dirt in many places.

St. Charles car 962 has completed its trip to the New Orleans business district and is shown turning off palm-lined Canal Street onto St. Charles Avenue. It boarded a full load of passengers at the official end and start of the line, one block back at Canal and Carondelet, where passengers now queue to board the iconic cars, much in the manner tourists board San Francisco cable cars at Powell and Market. A third track that contains crossovers to and from the Canal line is used by the looping cars (and was shown in Part 1). There was a time that Canal Street had four tracks, another similarity to Market Street in San Francisco.

The narrative continues:

We got up early (5:40 a.m.) on Thursday, March 8, as our train, the Crescent, was scheduled to leave New Orleans at seven. We finished the remaining orange juice from our refrigerator, did our last-minute packing and were downstairs by 6:15. No need to leave our key to the apartment, as all entry, both at the building's front door and into our unit itself, was by punching a code on a keyboard. While we saw some other tourists in the elevator from time to time, the closest we got to any engagement with the management was the occasional sighting of maids. We were very satisfied with our accommodations and would do the same again if the large difference in room rates still exists in the future.

Our plan was to use Uber again, but when we opened the building's door and rolled our luggage out, a taxi immediately pulled to the curb. It did not take us more than 5 minutes to get to the New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal, where we joined the waiting crowd. Since we had first class tickets we were eligible to wait in the Magnolia Room until the train was called. Of course no Amtrak personnel were around, but when we knocked on the door a fellow passenger let us in. The lounge is rather spartan, but the armchairs were comfortable and coffee, packaged buns and a working TV were available). I counted 11 passengers occupying the room.

I used the stub-ended 1954-built station, which replaced six other terminals, before. It is clean and spacious, but rather austere, not particularly welcoming. There's a newsstand and gift shop, but not much else to service Amtrak trains (Sunset Limited, Crescent and City of New Orleans), Greyhound and Megabus.

Coach passengers had lined up at one of the gates, but soon enough, at 6:40, we sleeping car passengers were led out of the lounge to a separate gate, where we had to display our tickets to an attendant before being let through. Then we walked beside the train and climbed aboard, while the porter helped with the luggage. A tour group was also being allowed to board one of the coaches before the peons. After settling in our room I took a consist by walking alongside the train to the front, and then returned on board. The car numbers are at the end of the report, but to summarize, from back to front we had a baggage car, Amcoach, 2 Viewliner sleepers, a Viewliner diner, an Amcafe Lounge, 3 more Amcoaches and then two General Electric P42DC locomotives. All in all there were 6 Amfleet and 3 Viewliners. Our Viewliner bedroom, B in car 2010, was a little cramped, but much better than a roomette, and it was equipped with plumbing. This would be my first ride in a Viewliner sleeper, and I was looking forward to it. The car had 12 roomettes, 2 bedrooms, 2 shower rooms and an accessible room for the handicapped, and was faced in the proper direction.

We pulled out at 6:58 (7:00), operating alongside a grubby freeway and then between cemeteries near the end of the Canal streetcar line. We then turned to the east and operated through City Park, but beyond the end of the Canal streetcar branch that terminates there. Just after we crossed Elysian Fields Avenue in the St. Roch neighborhood, we came to a junction where CSX and NS rails split. We began running over the route of the former Southern Railway's Southerner, taking two sides of a triangle (traveling east and then north) and then crossed the former Louisville & Nashville, which was running northeast along the hypotenuse. This was the route of the traditional Crescent Limited, which used the L&N, Western Railway of Alabama and the Atlanta & West Point to reach Atlanta (via Mobile and Montgomery instead of our route through Birmingham). This route also hosted the eastern portion of the Sunset Limited to Orlando until just before Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

We were now in stop and go traffic, first running alongside Lake Pontchartrain and then crossing it on a single track causeway, somewhat parallel to U. S. 11 (the L&N runs parallel to U. S. 90 to Bay St. Louis). Crossing the lake for the first time was very pleasant experience (on my two previous rail rides to New Orleans I rode aboard the pre-Amtrak Crescent and the Piedmont Limited via Montgomery). Back on double track, or rather a long siding, we ground to a halt at 8:13 and waited for southbound freight trains to pass. We finally reached Slidell at 9:30 (7:57) already over an hour and a half late. For a while we continued that way, stopping at Picayune, Hattiesburg and Laurel through a rural landscape before reaching a big city, Meridian, Miss., where we paused for 5 minutes. We arrived at 12:29 (11:02) and departed at 12:34 (11:07), after being passed by a Kansas City Southern freight train.

Our breakfast, taken just after we left the Crescent City, was quite decent, and later we had lunch with the same wait crew, where we were joined by a travel agent from Brookhaven, Miss. who was riding aboard the train just "for the hell of it." Lunch consisted of steamed mussels followed by a nice chocolate-raspberry tart. We continued to Tuscaloosa, Ala.,surrounded by swampland for much of the way, arriving there at 2:15 (12:44). Before Birmingham we encountered more trouble, stopping in a siding at 3:04 and not moving out until 3:14. Thus we stopped at the "Pittsburgh of the South" from 3:54 to 4:06 (2:15 to 2:24), but soon afterward we also paused near Irondale (not a scheduled stop), where we spied Frisco 4018, a 2-8-2, displayed at a building that could be a preserved station. It looked like we were running parallel to a CSX line (ex-SAL route of the Silver Comet?).

Rather than being cramped in the privacy of our rooms, we spent a good amount of time in the lounge car, as did many other passengers.

We stopped here and there again, and between 5:17 and 5:22, the opposing Crescent, No. 19, passed us with roughly the same consist.* We finally stopped at Anniston at 5:55 (3:59), now almost two hours down. My chicken dinner was a bit dry, but Clare enjoyed her salmon. We finally made it to Atlanta at 9:50 (7:35). You'd think they'd have expedited our time here, but we stayed for 5 minutes longer than the officially allotted time, finally leaving at 10:34 (8:04), now 2½ hours late. But that wasn't the end of it. The first station we saw when we awoke in the morning was High Point, N. C., where we stopped from 7:25 to 7:30 (3:16). We were now more than 4 hours late, and spoiler alert, we stayed that much behind schedule for the rest of the trip.

* This was hard to figure, as it meant that southbound No. 19 was some 7 hours late.

We had slept very well (me in the upper), and the roadbed was very smooth. I did awake at one point, and noticed we were not moving. I liked the fact I had my own "standee" window, but it was difficult to take advantage of it, since my bed was made up with the pillow at the aisle end. [I couldn't help thinking of the Pennsylvania Railroad's old upper Duplex Rooms, with the ability to lay down on high, and still have a window to look out of.] Similarly, it was great that we had a sink and toilet in our room, but they were difficult to use during the nighttime when the bench seat was converted into a bed. Had it been a little bit narrower, we could have moved around the room much more easily. I'd say this was a flaw, but now I've been told that newer Viewliners will not have any toilets in their bedrooms! But I wonder, considering the attitude of Amtrak's President and the Administration, if those cars will ever get built. Certainly Trump's budget calls for the reduction of long-distance rail service.

We had a good breakfast again and soon we were cruising through the suburbs of Washington, D. C. We passed Amtrak's tri-weekly Cardinal at 12:35 (it was now Friday, April 9) north of Culpepper (I suspect it was on time) and reached Manassas at 12:50 (8:35), where we made two stops at a short platform in view of three idling Norfolk Southern diesel locomotives. Soon we crossed the Potomac in sight of the Washington Monument and entered the CSX's [former Pennsy] Virginia Avenue tunnel, and reached Washington Union Terminal at 1:47. I didn't want to have lunch while our power was being changed, so we went into the dining car right after our departure at 2:17 (9:53). I felt we had made up a little time before reaching the Nation's Capital, but the half-hour spent in the station was quite a bit more than what is allotted in the schedule.

Lunch was the best meal I had on the Crescent, as the Angus Beefburger was very tasty and not overcooked. One hour is scheduled for the 40-mile run to Baltimore, almost double the 32 minutes carded for Acela Expresses. We arrived there at 2:54 (10:55) though. Thus that segment took us only 37 minutes, despite being scheduled for 60. Such are the vagaries of what is clearly marketing/PR-inspired Amtrak timetable manufacturing (or maybe it's all the mail and express that has to be handled). I always enjoy the view from the Susquehanna River bridge north of Baltimore, and this time we saw that its northern bank was all white, and for the remainder of the trip we traversed our way thorough a snow-covered landscape. We spent 5 minutes at 30th Street in Philadelphia, 4:07-4:12 (12:06), 2 in Trenton, 4:43-4:45 (12:41), and arrived at our final destination, Newark Penn Station at 5:28 (1:25). We tipped our attendant and found our daughter-in-law waiting on the west side of the station (we had called her as soon as we departed Philadelphia).

We were home in no time at all, just after 6 p.m., after a most enjoyable vacation.

Jack May

's consist, front to back:

GE 150    P42DC
GE 198    P42DC
Amcoach    25104
Amcoach    25062
Amcoach    25015
Amcafe Lounge    28016
Viewliner Diner    68003    Augusta
Viewliner Sleeper    62026    Line 2010
Viewliner Sleeper    62005    Line 2011 (but marked 1911)
Amcoach    25089
Baggage    61055

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