I’m not going to give an account of Days 67-69 which are basically zero days from a hiking perspective, since I’m just hanging out with Sheila in Connellsville PA. On day 70 I hope to get back on trail. But I did want to capture the absurdity of my experiences with Amtrak.
I booked tickets from Harpers Ferry to Connellsville and back for Friday evening and early Monday morning. The trip to Connellsville was scheduled to leave at 5:09 and arrive at 9:39. That’s 4.5 hours. It’s just under a 3 hour drive.
I started getting text messages about delayed departure Friday morning. By 5:30 the delayed departure had slipped to 6:20. But all delay notifications come with a disclaimer that they may make up some of the delay so make sure you’re near the station. All delay numbers are expressed as “up to X minutes or more” which is kind of the same as “zero to infinity”.
The Harpers Ferry station building is probably a hundred years old. The indoors is just a seating area. No washrooms, no water fountain anywhere. It’s more for tourists than travelers and it gets locked up at 5 pm. So travelers arriving fir a train delayed to 6:20 can only sit or stand outside. There is a single bench that seats 5 people. The south/eastbound platform is partly covered by the overhanging roof of the station building, so at least people could stay dry in the day’s continuous drizzle.
Every 15 minutes I would refresh the Amtrak app to get a new departure time. The train kept getting later. Eventually I noticed a pattern: every update gave a departure time that was 8 to 12 minutes from the refresh time. My theory was that the train was stopped somewhere.
At 7:14 I got a notice that the train was stopped near Rockport MD while crews performed a mechanical assessment.
At 7:51 the new notice said they were trying to source a recovery locomotive.
At 8:42 the update was that a recovery locomotive was on its way from Brunswick MD and that an additional 90 minute delay was expected.
At 10:03 the update was that service had resumed. Minutes later the train arrived. We all had to scramble down the stairs that go under the tracks, to get to the other platform. There was no signage telling us which platform to be on, nothing on the ticket or in the app or on the Amtrak website. (The far platform only had about 10 feet of roof coverage and no bench so everyone was waiting on the station side.)
The passengers deboarding or boarding all had to use a single door on one car, which meant it took almost 10 minutes to complete the stop.
Once the train got underway I was surprised by how shaky the ride was. I opened my speedometer app and left it running. The speed was often only about 30 km/h or 18 MPH. The maximum for the entire trip was 92 km/h or 56 MPH. At one point I took a screenshot that showed:
Current speed: 18 km/h
Distance: 78.48 km
Average speed: 34 km/h
Maximum speed: 74 km/h
Stopwatch: 2:17:16
In other words, the train averaged 34 km/h over more than two hours and never got above 74 km/h.
About 20 km from Connellsville I got another notification saying that the train was stopped at Connellsville waiting for crews to remove fallen trees from the tracks and an additional two hour delay was expected. But we weren’t even in Connellsville yet and the train was still moving.
Eventually at around 3am the train approached Connellsville. We were 0.1 miles from the station. I grabbed my luggage and headed to the door where a porter was standing. Along with three others I waited. The train stopped. We weren’t at the station but there was some kind of pavement outside the train. I asked if we could just get out there, but if course the answer was No. There was a lot of chatter on a radio system either on a device the porter had, or on the wall of the train, about delays due to fallen trees. I hated to think we would be stuck for two hours, just 0.1 mile from the station, waiting for tree cleanup.
At 3:10 I just sat down in a nearby empty seat. Around 3:20 the train started moving again. We got off at 3:30 in the pouring rain.
I asked a few people who were walking towards waiting cars if they were heading sout and could spare me a two mile ride to my hotel. No one even answered verbally, they just shook their heads. I went back under the station roof and tried Uber. It gave several encouraging messages about the progress it was making finding a driver. After 15 minutes I canceled, and it suggested going for premium, which costs more but tends to get a faster reponse. After waiting another 5 minutes I canceled again.
I wasn’t too upset about that wait because it was pouring and gusting and I could see from the weather radar that the heavy rain would probably taper off within 20 minutes. Sure enough it did. At around 4 am I finally started walking. One mishap – I noticed a covered entrance cut into the corner a the building and cut through there while turning right. But I didn’t notice that the entrance was a step up from the sidewalk so went flying down, landing on my side on the soaked pavement. Luckily it was a minor scuff, no injuries or tears.
Most of the walk was on sidewalks so I didn’t have to contend too much with headlights or getting hit or spray from cars, but there were parking lot rivers to cross near the start and headlights and spray to deal with once the sidewalk disappeared. There was at least a wide shoulder between me and the highway.
I arrived at the motel around 4:30 am, roughly 11 hours after leaving the hostel. I spent 15 minutes hanging and spreading out all my wet clothes and damp gear. Bed at 4;45, which is pretty close to when I sometimes get up on trail.
I’m booked on the train back on Monday early morning. Let’s hope I don’t face a similar situation then.
#LastTimeOnAmtrak