All Gone to Look for America (2011)
“12 Terminates Here!
OF ALL THE EXOTIC NAMES Amtrak gives to the routes plied by its otherwise identical trains, the Coast Starlight has to be one of the most deliberately romantic. Rattling down almost the entire length of the western American seaboard, if you board it mid-morning in Seattle you can, if you choose, still be on board 35 hours later as it pulls into Los Angeles.
I had a somewhat different route in mind. But as we rolled out of the mock-Venetian folly on King Street, along... the rugged Pacific coastline until veering inland, into the depths of the great forests of Oregon it came home to me that I was at last California-bound.
For a start the dining-car attendant was called José and was the first Amtrak employee I’d come across who very definitely preferred speaking Spanish to English. And then there was the sign at the end of each coach: ‘Smoke-free zone: including the restrooms and the spaces between cars.MoreLess
OF ALL THE EXOTIC NAMES Amtrak gives to the routes plied by its otherwise identical trains, the Coast Starlight has to be one of the most deliberately romantic. Rattling down almost the entire length of the western American seaboard, if you board it mid-morning in Seattle you can, if you choose, still be on board 35 hours later as it pulls into Los Angeles.
I had a somewhat different route in mind. But as we rolled out of the mock-Venetian folly on King Street, along... the rugged Pacific coastline until veering inland, into the depths of the great forests of Oregon it came home to me that I was at last California-bound.
For a start the dining-car attendant was called José and was the first Amtrak employee I’d come across who very definitely preferred speaking Spanish to English. And then there was the sign at the end of each coach: ‘Smoke-free zone: including the restrooms and the spaces between cars.MoreLess
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