A Ride on the Southwest Chief - Part 1

As I wrote earlier, we went on the Southwest Chief Amtrak train from Kansas City to Albuquerque for Thanksgiving. I have never traveled by train for a long ride before and I learned quite a bit about train travel.

It's a lot of fun... a little magical even.

We reserved the smallest sleeper cabin, called a roomette, and it was tiny. We boarded at Kansas City's Union Station at 10:30 pm. The sleeper cars were in the front of the train, and I'm not sure how many sleeper cars there were. Maybe 4?  We were in the last sleeper car, nearest to the dining car.

It was hard to find the right car. There weren't many employees down by the tracks to point you in the right direction. The cars are marked as "sleeper" (something like Streamliner Sleeper). Your ticket tells you which car and which room you're in. Ours was 6/330 : room 6 in car 330.

We found the car by luck. Our car attendant was Pinky, and she took our tickets and had us wait in the downstairs of the car. She finished up making up our car and then we climbed the narrow spiral staircase to the second floor.

Yes, these cars are two stories. The cars connect to each other on the second floor. The first floor had several rooms (including a big one at the end of the car) three bathrooms and one shower room. There were luggage racks for bulkier items. We only had 2 bags and all of our stuff were in those bags, so we didn't check them or put them on the rack. No security for those bags...but it just didn't seem like a high-risk situation.

You know, like the old days, when people respected each others' property, minded their own business, helped each other, etc.

Up to the room we went! There's an upper bunk and a lower bunk in our tiny little room. We were on the south side of the car. The sliding door is glass, but you have curtains to draw for privacy.  It felt like we were little kids playing house under a large piece of furniture!  We could sit up on the lower bunk. We tucked our possessions where ever we could (not much room at all - we had to be creative) and we were on our way.

I took the upper bunk, where I could not sit up. The front of the room has about 10 inches between the edge of the bunk and the sliding door. After watching The Soup on the iPad, we settled in for sleep.