ANOTHER AMTRAK TRIP

Friday, March 23, 2007 9:42 PM CDT

When winter gets a little long and we need a break in the action, we occasionally get the itch to take a long weekend trip on Amtrak with our good friend Dave Zweifel, editor of The Capital Times. And, that was just the case some weeks ago when we decided to take a little junket on the Southwest Chief.

Each year we try to take a different route or at least a different destination. Many of our readers will remember our trip of a year ago when we went out to Essex, Mont. and spent a night at the Izaak Walton Lodge at the entrance to Glacier National Park.

That was a great trip - one we'd like to do again in the near future. We wrote about the trip in our column last year and we were surprised at how many people from Watertown and the area not only read the column but were so intrigued by it that they went out and duplicated the trip!

We even got a call that time from Rod Musel, station agent at Columbus, wondering what we did to get so many tickets from Columbus to Essex sold. The reports were pretty positive about the trip and we suspect people are still making that one.

Well, this year we decided to make the run on the Southwest Chief with Albuquerque as our station stop.

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We boarded the Hiawatha service in Milwaukee, leaving right on time and arriving in Chicago right to the minute. There was a short layover and then we loaded our Superliner car and moved to our small but adequate sleeping room. Once again, we left on time and arrived in Albuquerque right on schedule. The trip takes about one full day.

Both legs of the trip have some spectacular scenery as we followed the original Santa Fe trail for many of the miles. The Sandia Mountains were spectacular and as the train wound its way west there were plenty of canyons, mountains, streams and some wildlife along the way. It was just a matter of looking out our spacious windows.

If you're a train buff, there's a nice S-curve that allows you to see much of the train as we wound our way on the sharp curves. It's just an enjoyable trip, watching all the scenery and the changes as we moved further west.

We arrived in Albuquerque late in the afternoon and the stop is an intercity stop for local and interstate buses, cabs and the Southwest Chief once a day. Unfortunately, while there is a beautiful new structure for the buses, Amtrak's station remains the same old and small station it has been for decades.

Albuquerque is a service stop for the train so it's there for 30 to 45 minutes while fuel is added, a new operating crew comes on board and supplies are added. That's a perfect spot for some of the local residents to be selling their "western wares" including the always popular blankets, jewelry and other clothing. They do a brisk business.

We stayed at the Hyatt Regency Hotel which was only about four to five long blocks away and had intended to walk that short distance and take in some of the sights, but we were quickly warned by an attendant at the train station that this was not probably advisable because of some of the street people. We took the advice and used a cab but it certainly didn't seem all that rough to us.

Albuquerque's downtown is beautiful with a lot of new skyscrapers, but at the same time it has a certain coldness to it.

The weather was nice, but there wasn't a lot of activity going on. It's almost like a new city that was almost deserted. It had all the makings of a lively downtown, complete with water fountains, large plazas and some businesses operating. But, there just weren't a lot of people.

Maybe we were visiting just a little too early for the tourism season. But, it was different, to be sure.

The hotel was a nice one and one of the highlights was an international barbershop quartet meeting which brought lots of the singers to the hotel. The actual competition was several blocks away in a convention center but there was no lack of quartets warming up in the lobby.

The next morning we got up, had a nice buffet breakfast and packed up for the return trip. With only one night in Albuquerque it was hard to make any real judgments about the community. But, it didn't seem overly lively downtown as compared to what we thought it would be.

All totaled we covered nearly 3,000 miles by train, enjoyed some great scenery and had some excellent meals in the diner. The food is always top notch and there's nothing better than to be dining and enjoying the scenery.

One of the side benefits of the diner is that it's community seating which means you'll typically be dining with people other than from your own group. It makes for some interesting conversation. We run into people, who, like us, love the train and the training experience.

We had lunch with one young man who simply doesn't fly. He was from the East Coast and was traveling to a business meeting west of Albuquerque and it was three days on the train in each direction. But, he said, "The boss wanted me at the meeting and I told him the only way I would go is via the train and he told me to 'go for it.'" So here I am!"

A couple of weeks ago we wrote about our experiences on a short airline trip - one where everything was late. Well, that didn't happy this time on Amtrak. That's not to say it works flawless on the train because we do have some real stories about late trains, but one thing we can tell you is that on time or late, the surroundings on the train are far more comfortable than the cramped seats on the plane.

Obviously, you need time if you are doing any distance but being late on the train is more tolerable - if it is within reason.

We're sure there will be more training in the future and we hope it's sooner rather than later that we can make the trips from a station stop in Watertown.

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