The Great Amtrak Disaster of 2018

Well, that was a bit of a cluster.

As planned, my brother and I left on Monday morning for a leisurely drive down to Southern California. At the end of it, I was scheduled to board an Amtrak train (which I enjoy taking) for the ride back to Seattle.

About mid-morning, I received a voicemail alert that the train had been cancelled! You can imagine the panic, especially since I was in a place with no cell service when I picked it up. In the motel that night I called Amtrak. Apparently a tunnel had partially collapsed on the Coast Starlight route and was not due to be cleared for up to 10 days. There was no alternative Amtrak choice unless I wanted to route by way of Denver. I am not a great flyer, so that wasn’t really a choice either. Yes, I am aware of the irony of a person whose main hobby is aviation modelling and history not liking to fly.

So we had to make some stark choices. We were staying in Albany OR at the time. The Cascade route (Eugene OR to Seattle WA) was still running. The Cascade route departed from Eugene on 6-12-2018 at 4.30pm. The deciding factor was that I only had meds with me through Monday, when I was supposed to be home. That meant that even if my brother was nice enough to put me up for some extra days (he was) my meds would run out. And these are not really meds you can just stop on a whim. That decided it, and I made arrangements for the Eugene-Tacoma route on the next day.

Since we had most of a full day, we decided to go over to the Oregon coast from Corvallis and then come back to Eugene. Luckily we got a very nice and sunny day for it, which isn’t always guaranteed in the Northwest in June. Most of the more scenic parts of the coast are to the south, farther than we were going on this revised itinerary, but that was just a casualty of the replanning.

I caught the Cascades route with no problems and made it to Tacoma. And in retrospect, it may have been for the best. We were splitting a room, and I was assaulted all night long by the loudest and most inhuman sounding snoring I have ever heard in my life. Even across the room, it was like listening to a semi-truck crashing into a slaughterhouse. I doubt I would have gotten much sleep in the remaining 5 days of the trip.

I’m still getting my stuff all sorted, but should be able to resume normal modelling content shortly. Here are a couple of (the few) photos I took. First is Silver Falls State Park near Salem OR (which is beautiful and recommended if you ever take a trip to the area) and the Oregon coast.