Wrap Up

A few shots from the recent train trip out west. Top three from the museum in Ogden - great collections in four different museums.

Next one is a cylinder head and piston from a radial engine powering a B-29 as seen in Wendover. These things are pretty cool. The head and cylinder are cast as one piece with a thin iron liner. Lots of thin cooling fins. Radial engines rock!

While we were gone I heard about the crash of the B-17 my brother from a different mother and I took a flight on. Seems they had trouble with one of the radial engines and crashed while making an emergency landing. Terrible tragedy. I received an e-mail from the Collings Foundation who owned the bomber that crashed and the others I've flown in. They of course were horrified by what had occurred but also concerned about the future. It would be a shame if the remaining fleet were grounded.

Bottom photo taken out the window of the train during one of the "fresh air" stops. Interesting mix of people who travel by train. Some take the train because it's cheaper than air travel or goes to a destination not served by a bus or an airport. Others, such as Rick and I are rail fans and just want to ride the train. Others seem to have some money, get a sleeper car and enjoy their journey at a nice leisurely pace. So you get hippies and freaks, regular Joes and a more upper class clientele all mixed together. It seems to work for the most part and everyone co-exists nicely. The food is on the expensive side, so like myself, many folks bring snacks along. Rick and I ate breakfast in the dining car and we got the cheapest things on the menu and it was about $11.00 each. Dinners were more. They do offer vegan items - rigatoni was $19.00 plus your drink. Food wasn't bad but it's like airplane food now. They no longer have cooks fixing meals to order. Service on the train was good. Quiet time from 10:00 pm until 7:00 am, so you can sleep. The attendants kept the car clean throughout the trip - an improvement over a trip I made a few years back where the only clean up was as we were pulling into Chicago at the end of the trip.

It's a nice way to travel if you're not in any particular hurry. Coach seating is comfortable and a definite upgrade from riding the bus long distance. If I do a long distance ride in the future I'll look into a roomette. I don't need or want to pay for a sleeper but I'm not sure I'd want to spend 38 hours riding in that coach again. Actually, that wouldn't have been so bad if we had gotten in at 11:00 pm rather than 4:00 am. Likewise we left at 3:30 am on our return trip. Not the best for the sleep cycle. However, riding along reading a book or listening to music and looking out the window is very relaxing. The scenery going through the Rockies was just spectacular and we were fortunate to go through there at a good time of the day both coming and going.

All in all, a great trip. I've now been to 49 states and saw another region of the country that is nothing like what I normally see. Mountains, salt flats, sage brush and tumble weed. Nothing like corn and soybean fields that make up most of the landscape around here. Depending on how things go, I might take another trip out that way some day. Lots more to see.