August 2020 - The MrT Podcast Studio

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:07 — 19.3MB)

The Sunset Limited (5) – US Rail Journeys Series 2 Episode 16

A disagreement:

The Sunset Limited (5) starts with a disagreement. A lady has been verbally abusing some passengers. They’ve complained and the conductor has arrived to ask the lady to be quiet and return to her seat.

She resents this and is extremely, and unpleasantly, rude to the conductor. When she refuses to return to her seat he tells her that she’ll be leaving the train when we reach Alpine.

In the end the Police took her off the train at Alpine.

Sedate progress:

They’re taking lunch reservations as we travel from Sanderson to Alpine. We seem to be ‘drifting’ through the desert. The scenery is still awesome and, of course, we pass yet more scrap.

We’re running over 3 hours late:

The schedule says that we should leave Alpine at 10.38 a.m., the reality is that lunch is well in progress. The conductor tells us about the rest of the stops on the route. He asks that everyone sits in their allocated seats because we’re running late so that they can be woken for their stop.

The time on the train goes back one hour to ‘Mountain time’ when we leave Alpine. It will go back another hour to Pacific time before we arrive in Los Angeles.

The photographs that accompany the podcast:

Please click on a thumbnail to open the gallery:

Next up:

I hope that you’ve enjoyed this podcast. If so, please join me in two weeks time for the next episode where the journey continues on the Sunset Limited along the southern border of the United States towards Los Angeles.

Links:

To visit the Amtrak website please follow this link.

You can also listen to this podcast on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Castbox, Deezer, Podchaser, Spotify and Stitcher.

Music:

AKM Music has licensed the theme, Steam Railway, for use in this podcast.

Storyblocks has licensed Twang in Texas by Keith LeBrant for use as incidental music in this episode.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:15 — 19.5MB)

The Sunset Limited (4) – US Rail Journeys Series 2 Episode 15

Leaving Houston:

The Sunset Limited (4) starts as we leave Houston, where the station is located below motorways. The city has the sixth largest population in the US with over 2.3 million residents.

The station opened in October 1959 when it replaced Houston Grand Central Station. Passenger numbers rose to 20,460 in 2019.

Through the night:

After leaving Houston, and passing through the outskirts of the city, I have dinner and, after a long day, have a good night’s sleep.

We stop at St. Antonio where carriages from the Texas Eagle join our train. The Texas Eagle runs daily between Chicago and St. Antonio and then, three days a week, continues to Los Angeles as part of the Sunset Limited.

I awake as we reach Del Rio; we are two hours late! We must have been delayed during the night.

Onward through the desert:

You meet new friends at meals when travelling with Amtrak. A group of less than four is joined by others. I breakfast well, the charge is included if you’re a sleeper. One of my new friends is a stand up comic taking the trip in order to rest.

It is a beautiful day and the desert is stunning but I wouldn’t like to be out there in the heat. We continue our journey with only a few stops because we’re living up to the ‘Limited’ part of the train’s name.

I meet a regular traveller on this route. They’re regulars because he and his wife are relocating from California to Louisiana and so they use the train for their journeys.