Taking the Cascades down to Portland

Yesterday, I had to go down to Portland to pick up one of my coworkers and one of our trucks to take back to Seattle. I got a one way business class ticket to Portland from the King Street Station via Amtrak Cascades. I don't have a lot of experiences w/ long distance trains like this, but I was quite impressed. You'll have to excuse the photos. I'm not much of a picture taker, nor do I like people seeing me take pictures. I was trying to be an inconspicuous drive-by camera phone picture taker, not one of the Japanese tourists who were at the Portland station taking pictures all around the train and even going as far as jumping on the tracks in front of the train. Anyways, the inside was nice and roomy, there less than 10 of us in our car. There were TV's that had constant info on our next stop and final destination time. They even played Enchanted throughout the trip, but of course the seat headphone jacks are cheap and created a lot of electronic interference. I decided to watch a more fitting film for a train ride on my Zen, Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes. Many of the train stops along the way, like Centralia or Vancouver, have been maintained since the tracks were probably laid way back when. I was expecting to get held up by Jesse James or being asked where the safe was being held. The ride was about 4 hours with all the stops and some delays, but all in all a quite relaxing trip. You'll also notice the picture below featuring the emergency procedures, quite different from a plane's. There are items like an emergency hammer to break the window - then there's things like a megaphone and glow sticks. I guess if you get shut down in the middle of the countryside, you get shout out into the open and start a rave.