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Southwest Chief
Amtrak's Southwest Chief is a 2,256-mile route from Chicago to Los Angeles.
The route is the successor to the Super Chief, which ran from 1936 until 1971
as the flagship passenger route of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad.
Our smoke stop in La Junta, CO gave me a chance to check out the train. We
were being pulled by pair of GE P42DC four-axle locomotives, the front built in
2001 and the slave in 1997. They weigh 134 tons apiece and provided a combined
8,500 horsepower.
Bathrooms are the weak link in any public amenity and the Superliners are
no exception. While this particular set of bathrooms was fairly clean compared
to some of my other Amtrak experiences, they are still extraordinarily cramped.
This one was actually a double-wide with a compartment on the side for
changing (where I stood while filming). Many of them have only a single-stall.
After Trindad, CO, the route proceeds in the southern Rockes through Raton
Pass, which was a crucial part of the Santa Fe trail that extended from Chicago
to Santa Fe, NM. The pass was developed as a toll road by Dick Wooten and in
1878 became part of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway's main line
through a
complex set of intrigues. The rail line shares the pass with Interstate 25.
The Raton, NM station is a mission revival structure built in 1903 for the
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. Raton also is a transfer point for
buses north to Denver.
Just north of the Las Vegas, NM station is the Castenada, one of the last
remaining Harvey House hotels. Because of the heavy snow on the platform at Las
Vegas we had to make two stops - one for sleeper passengers in the front of the
train and one for the coach passengers in the rear.
Because of the topography around Santa Fe, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe
railroad mainline never actually went through the final city in it's name.
Instead, it had a station at Lamy, NM and a short line was constructed north into
Santa Fe. Lamy exists primarily as a railroad junction and has very few
residents, but it does have an Amtrak station, along with some vintage railcars
celebrating the rail town's past.
Proceeding southwest into Albuquerque, the sun came out and gave a nice
sheen to the fresh snowfall on the barren landscape.
As the sun went down west of Albuquerque, it wasn't possible to see much in
Arizona or eastern California. So the photographic day began in San Bernadino, CA
as we proceeded around the San Bernadino mountains into Los Angeles.
As we entered Los Angeles, I was struck by how much industry was visible.
While the socially-constructed stereotype I'd had of LA was of palm trees and
the lots of idle wealthy folks with synthetic enhancements, the view from the
train was considerably more gritty. Admittedly, railroads inherently travel
through areas with clients to service, and the nasty weather gave the whole
experience more of a Blade Runner feel than it might have had on a sunny
day, but the contrast between reputation and reality was striking to this
weary traveler 48 hours after I'd left the snow of northern Illinois.
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