Union Station departure Board
Wednesday 8.11.23
We are on the move again and our first stop this morning is Union Station where – given the usual generous Great Rail timings – we have a wait for our train to Houston. As before all cases are handed over to porters and loaded aboard the train and we follow separately to our assigned seats.
Union Station probably handles less passengers (and many less services) than Sandhurst station on an average day. So in European eyes it is unaccountably well appointed with a large number of seats, catering facilities and so on. The other travellers are also here in plenty of time – walk up and go is not the way they do it here! The train is scheduled to depart at 09:00 and we leave more or less on time.
Sunset Limited
We leave New Orleans by what seems a slightly twisting route eventually leaving the City over the Huey P Long Bridge with the train then coming to a stand on the raised section on the south side of the Mississippi river – and we are there some considerable time, although later in the day we appear to be back on expected timings. Freight is always more important than passengers in this country of course.
I turn to listening to radio recordings – time to catch up on events in Ambridge amongst other things. To break the day up we book lunch on the late sitting (yes there are two!). The countryside rolls by – generically we are heading just about due west to Houston, Texas on the Sunset Limited which will (eventually) terminate in Los Angeles some 48 hours after the journey commences. Our route passes through Lafayette, Lake Charles and Beaumont amongst others.
Historically this was not a rich area and from a passing train it is hard to establish any definitive conclusions – but it does not reek of prosperity – there are some nicer houses and there are some which are far less attractive – with I suspect a predominance of the latter!
Lunch is excellent and we stay talking at the table as they have cleared up and do not seem bothered about making us go.
Once on the outskirts of Houston we are routed through a freight route and we end up passing the station and backing into it – but that will be to enable it to head off on the remainder of its journey to the West Coast. We arrive a little later than planned due to the Houston circumlocution – which means that eating out tonight is not on.
A quick coach hop to our hotel and with communications re-established (no wifi on trains) we can check in for our not too distant return flight. Dinner is in the hotel tonight and is perhaps one of the lesser meals of the trip. The warm weather has gone and it is raining. Houston is a modern city – at least in the centre. It is, as might be expected, heavily dependent on the car – but outside our hotel there is a modern metro shuttling back and forth. Time (and a wish not to be stuck somewhere distant) will preclude travel on it on Friday morning.