Saturday, February 11, 2017

"Quick" Train Outing to Santa Barbara

It was Jamie's last free Saturday for a month, and a group of motorcar ("speeder") operators were doing a little joy ride to Santa Barbara and back on Amtrak before their Board meeting, so why not, let's go! Matt and Jamie took Matteo and AJ. Track work prevented us from leaving SLO on time (40 minutes late). Why they couldn't be done in time with their overnight efforts eludes me, but hey, we were on the train! They were out of hot dogs. WHAT! No AmDog! We only had about 20 spare minutes to get to Santa Barbara in time to catch our return train. And a tree fell across the tracks near Goleta. That took care of that. We ended up having about an hour in Santa Barbara after all. While we arrived late, the northbound Starlight (our fall back return train) was late, too. With some fancy footwork by the SB station agents, we turned our 10-ride tickets into Starlight tickets (not usually allowed) and headed on home. The good news was the kids got a dining car experience and a chance to check out an Amtrak observation car. A mere four hours late, we finally got to SLO, dropped off our four boxes of railroad books, and headed home. All the pics are here.






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