trains

This scene is only about 15 minutes from my house. It reminds me of a scene you might see from a train but I saw it from the road. It's in a little cove community called Falling Water. It's relevant today because I spent a good part of the afternoon reading about Amtrak. We have booked our train trip, but decided to go on into Montana and stay at East Glacier Park instead of staying in Minot, ND. We'll leave from Memphis, go to Chicago and change trains, then on to East Glacier. Total train time about 40 hrs. We will stay in East Glacier for a couple of days, rent a car and drive around, and then take the train back. We have sleeping accomodations the whole way, which makes us First Class passengers. Cool. I never get to be first class anything! We get the use of the special lounge in Chicago for First Class passengers, we get meals included on the train, a newspaper daily, plenty of fresh coffee and someone even makes up our beds at night. Plus, we get to lay down on a bed (of a fashion) and maybe actually sleep. I think it will be fun.

In reading up on the trains, I've found websites and blogs from some serious train freaks. For some reason, trains seem to attract a large OCD crowd. One guy has made a point of visiting and taking pictures of every Amtrak station in the country. Someone else has drawings of the inside of the trains. Other people have info about particular train cars, so I can look up the train we've been assigned on a specific leg of the trip and find out a whole lot about it...which bathroom has the best water pressure, where that car usually is along the line, which bedroom has the window that needs a piece of wire to close it to keep it from rattling, etc. I guess my OCD tendencies match up pretty well, since I've spent several hours now, reading about all this trivia. Whoooo Whooooo