(This is the fifth post in a series about a cross- country train trip we recently completed)

(Click here to go to my Galleries for full-sized images, the ones below are thumbnails)

Vivid western sunset…

Side Note: In typical Amtrak style, just at sunset the crew announced that we were going to stop for twenty – thirty minutes to swap a locomotive. Evidently there was a problem with one of the two pretty Amtrak locomotives so they were going to put on a freight locomotive (a bit of scorn entered the announcer’s voice when he said that) for the next day’s pull over the Donner Pass. Twenty to thirty minutes turned into an hour or so… with no power. They had to turn off everything except emergency lighting when they did the coupling, including the heat. We sat in semi- darkness and grew rapidly colder, finally wrapping ourselves in blankets. We were no longer in the mountains but it still was chilly. Finally they got things sorted, power came back on and off we went… led by the aforementioned ugly freight locomotive.   

December, 2017