susan @ 75: cross-country trip on amtrak with susan, sara, karl & ben 1984

At the end of April - 1984, Mom treated me and the boys to a train journey to attend the wedding of Dorothy Loomis and Jeffery Wilson. Karl had just turned 3 and Ben, 1. The first leg of the journey, Boston to Chicago, we had the old-fashioned Pullman accomodations. The seat folds down into one bed and another bunk pulls out from above. Good old Mom, we each took a kid into our beds for the night and I don't think either of us got much sleep, but it was fun. When we awoke, we were in Cleveland, and our friendly porter opened up the partition to the adjoining compartment so we had a "double".

From Chicago to Reno, we switched trains to the "deluxe" compartment...the complete width of the train. Mom & I illustrate the spaciousness . Actually it was very nice to have two windows. There was a double bed, a twin bunk under the window and another one opened out above the double. I'm afraid I fell asleep fast and slept like the dead, because Mom asked me the next morning if I'd heard Ben crying and I hadn't. The only thing I can think of to justify my unmotherly behavior was, knowing that my Mom was on the train, I felt safe enough to sleep so deeply.

In Western Colorado and Eastern Utah, the conductor looked the other way so I could lean out and take these picture of our view. The pictures I took through the windows are pretty discolored because of the double panes and the plastic glass so I won't include them here. However, I will add that one night, we ate trout in the dining car, and several times we took walks to the Observation car, with the "VistaDome" roof. Downstairs from there was a snack bar where we had a treat of Hagen Daz ice cream!