Tag: Lake Shore Limited

The platforms at Toledo, OH. Photo by Prasenberg.

The Toledo Option

February 22, 2017 / Charles Fulton / 0 Comments

Or, I reconsider the Lake Shore Limited yet again, and find a use for it.

A frequent complaint about Amtrak service is that “you can’t get there from here,” and it’s a fair criticism. As a Michigan expatriate living on the East Coast I’m sensitive to these limitations. Michigan itself has comparatively good service: three Wolverines to Detroit/Pontiac, the Blue Water to Lansing and Port Huron, and the Pere Marquette to Grand Rapids. Unfortunately for me all three services pivot on Chicago. Coming from the East Coast, I’m facing hours of layovers and backtracking.

As an alternative, Amtrak offers a Thruway Motorcoach connection at Toledo to various destinations in Michigan. Thruway Motorcoachs are contracted buses which you can book with trains to help get you closer to your final destination. I’d resisted this option for years because of the timings in Toledo and general uncertainty about the whole enterprise. After a positive experience with an Amtrak bus in Florida in 2014 and a growing desire to avoid driving on I-80, I decided to take the plunge.

The trains

The Lake Shore Limited at Croton-Harmon. Photo taken by Adam E. Moreira, [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Amtrak has two trains serving Toledo, the Capitol Limited and the Lake Shore Limited. They are both long-distance trains running between Chicago and the East Coast; neither serves Toledo in daylight. The Capitol Limited runs southeast to Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.; the Lake Shore Limited follows Lake Erie and serves New York City by way of Buffalo and Albany. I’ve previously written several posts about the Lake Shore Limited but I do not come here to bury it (again).

The bus

Amtrak contracts with local bus operators to provide bus connections. Trinity Transportation handles the bus from Toledo. Westbound, the bus is scheduled to depart Toledo at 6:30 AM, or thirty minutes after the scheduled arrival of the Lake Shore Limited and ninety minutes after the Capitol Limited. It will be held, barring major disruptions, for both trains. Eastbound, the bus arrives in Toledo at 10:35 PM, or an hour before the scheduled departure of the Capitol Limited and four hours before the Lake Shore Limited.

The bus itself is of the modern intercity variety, with comfortable seats, a restroom, and free Wi-Fi. When I rode the bus it was close to full between Toledo and Detroit but half the people got on (or off) in Detroit.

The station

The platforms at Toledo, OH. Photo by Prasenberg.

Toledo is an intermodal facility, serving Amtrak, intercity buses, and local buses. It’s expanded from a New York Central Railroad station built in the 1950s. The station is open during the wee hours of the morning when Amtrak’s long-distance trains come through. It’s well-lit and there are comfortable chairs to sit on. Amenities include restrooms, Pepsi machines, a snack machine, a coffee vending machine. There’s also a small Subway sandwich shop which is open until midnight.

Where you can go

The bus serves five destinations in Michigan:

Detroit: the Amtrak station in the New Center neighborhood near Wayne State University.
Dearborn: the new Amtrak and intermodal station.
Ann Arbor: the Amtrak station along the river.
Jackson: the Amtrak station in downtown Jackson.
East Lansing: the new Amtrak and intermodal station off Troubridge.

I’ve done Ann Arbor and East Lansing; in both cases I needed to rent a car to complete my journey. There isn’t a car rental location near either station. In Ann Arbor there were taxis at the station; in East Lansing I needed to call one. The East Lansing station closes at 6 PM, an hour before the scheduled departure of the bus, but there’s an enclosed waiting area which stays open and which has not-entirely-uncomfortable seating.

Game planning

This is the itinerary I employed over the Christmas holidays:

Outbound

3:40 PM (Day 1): Depart New York on the Lake Shore Limited
5:55 AM (Day 2): Arrive in Toledo
6:30 AM: Depart Toledo on the bus
10:05 AM: Arrive in East Lansing

Inbound

7:00 PM (Day 1): Depart East Lansing on the bus
10:35 PM: Arrive in Toledo
11:49 PM: Depart Toledo on the Capitol Limited
1:05 PM (Day 2): Arrive in Washington, D.C.
3:05 PM: Depart Washington, D.C. on the Northeast Regional
6:30 PM: Arrive in New York

The choice of the Capitol Limited on the return eliminates an extra three hours layover in Toledo while not materially altering the arrival time in New York. Another option is to change to the Pennsylvanian in Pittsburgh but that makes for an early morning after a late night.

The big consideration here is meals. Unless the Lake Shore Limited is very late you’re missing breakfast westbound, and you’re definitely missing dinner eastbound. Assuming a big dinner the night before, missing breakfast is tolerable, but I suggest bringing along some granola bars or some such. Eastbound, the Subway at the Toledo station is a godsend.

Alternatives

A big theme in my travel writing and planning is resiliency: I want above all to maximize my options while controlling costs. I considered bypassing Toledo and the bus altogether in favor of South Bend, Indiana. South Bend is roughly the same driving distance from the places I would drive to in Michigan. With South Bend I had to weigh the following considerations:

South Bend is 2 1/2 hours west of Toledo. Westbound that’s more time to sleep and gets you breakfast on board, but also adds that to your final ETA. Eastbound you still miss dinner and have to meet the train that much earlier.
How do rental car prices at South Bend compare to the rental car prices in Michigan? What are the hours of the facility?
How is taxi service in South Bend? How does Uber/Lyft availability compare to Ann Arbor or Lansing?
If I encounter problems in South Bend, what are my fallback options? Is there a bus? Do I know someone who can pick me up?

These same factors applied to all the Michigan locations. I selected East Lansing because of rental car price, timing, and proximity to my final destination.

The verdict

This works as a travel option between the East Coast and mid-Michigan. Door to door it takes about the same amount of time as driving the whole way with an overnight stay, and can be price-competitive under the right conditions. It also eliminates someone sitting behind the wheel for 630 miles, and that has to be worth something.

The Bus

March 11, 2014 / Charles Fulton / 0 Comments

This is part of a series of posts chronicling our difficult journey to the 2014 edition of B-Fest, the annual bad movie festival at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

I’m sitting on a bench at the Metropark train station in Iselin, New Jersey. It’s January 23. It’s very cold. I’m pondering how it came to this. Some form of cosmic retribution for the near-perfect runs on the Vermonter and Silver Star earlier in the month?

It started well enough, with Ken dropping us off at the Easton Bus Terminal a little before 8 AM. We planned to take the 8:10 Trans-Bridge Lines bus, which would deliver us to New York by 10:00, more than enough time to catch the 11:35 Northeast Regional (train 125) for Washington, D.C.

It went wrong almost immediately, as multiple crashes in the cold, snowy weather turned I-78 into a gigantic parking lot. By 10:20 or so we had reached Terminal A at Newark Airport (nearly an hour late), and the traffic situation into New York didn’t sound promising. Google Maps predicted an arrival in New York at 11:20-11:30, which was far too close for comfort.

If we misconnected in New York with 125 we were out of luck on the Amtrak front. 125 is the last train with a valid connection to the Capitol Limited, and the last train period scheduled to reach DC prior to the Capitol Limited‘s departure owing to weather-induced cancellations. If we arrived late into New York the only choice would be to rebook for the Lake Shore Limited, accepting the necessary repricing and likely unavailability of sleeping accommodations. I’ve documented at length why the Lake Shore Limited isn’t a desirable option.

The alternative was to bail out at Newark, ride the AirTrain out to the airport train station (on the Northeast Corridor), and catch our train south of New York. Using the last of my laptop’s battery I worked out a plan. We would get off at Newark, ride the AirTrain to station, and hop a New Jersey Transit train to Metropark in Iselin. As we walked through the terminal I called Amtrak and adjusted our itinerary to originate from Metropark instead of New York. We left the Trans-Bridge bus to its fate.

Featured image courtesy of Adam E. Moreira (Own work) [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Lake Shore Limited redux

December 17, 2013 / Charles Fulton / 0 Comments

Back in March I enumerated seven reasons why I wasn’t going to take the Lake Shore Limited on future trips to the Midwest. To these I might also have added that the ex-New York Central route between Cleveland and Buffalo is particularly vulnerable to weather-related delays in the winter. Unfortunately I was called back on short notice to Michigan and the Lake Shore Limited was the only train I could catch in time. Let me quote from what I wrote in March:

CSX’s handling of the train in western New York. Amtrak is dependent on the freight railroads for dispatching. CSX does an absolutely terrible job between Schenectady and Rochester. They’re incapable of getting the train though on time. It’s just frustrating.

Now, here’s how my train fared across western New York last night, courtesy of the invaluable Amtrak Status Maps:

* ALB  1  620P  1  705P  618P  750P  Departed:  45 minutes late.
* SDY  *  *     1  731P  *     821P  Departed:  50 minutes late.
* UCA  *  *     1  844P  *     1009P Departed:  1 hour and 25 minutes late.
* SYR  *  *     1  941P  *     1130P Departed:  1 hour and 49 minutes late.
* ROC  *  *     1  1100P *     137A  Departed:  2 hours and 37 minutes late.
* BUF  1  1155P 1  1159P 300A  320A  Departed:  3 hours and 21 minutes late.
* ERI  *  *     2  136A  *     533A  Departed:  3 hours and 57 minutes late.
* CLE  2  327A  2  345A  818A  829A  Departed:  4 hours and 44 minutes late.
* ELY  *  *     2  418A  *     915A  Departed:  4 hours and 57 minutes late.

We were late leaving Albany because we had to wait for the eastbound Lake Shore Limited, which was late, to arrive. CSX is an equal-opportunity railroad; having stabbed the eastbound train it makes sure to stab the westbound train in compensation. Add that to the heavy snow and ice along the coast of Lake Erie and it’s not gone well.

I’m not complaining exactly. I’ve had a good trip: good meals, good company. My roomette is comfortable. I will arrive in Michigan well within my timetable. The snow is messing with the airports too. It’s just that the Capitol Limited, having come up from Washington and missed most of the weather, was only 57 minutes late out of South Bend and will probably hit Chicago within 20-30 minutes of its arrival time.

This is why I don’t take the Lake Shore Limited.

Image by AEMoreira042281 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Leaving the Lake Shore

March 10, 2013 / Charles Fulton / 0 Comments

I keep track of all my train mileage because I’m one of those people. By my reckoning I’ve done over 41,000 miles on Amtrak alone and another 10,000+ on other systems, mostly in Europe. A full quarter of my Amtrak mileage is on a single train: the Lake Shore Limited, which operates between Chicago and New York, with a section to Boston. I’ve taken it to three Moodle Hack/Doc Fests: Summer 2009 at Smith College, Winter 2010 at Lafayette College, and Summer 2011 at Hampshire College. I’ve ridden it to a pair of weddings. I took it to HighEdWeb 2012 and B-Fest 2013. I’ve made three trips on it in the last eight months. This makes writing the following all the harder: Lake Shore Limited, I’m afraid that we may have to break up.

Here’s the situation. I have cause to make the trip between New York and Chicago at least once a year for the B-Movie Festival in Evanston, Illinois. I’m likely to make it another time for business related to the German Studies Association, and it’s a fair bet that I’ll make at least one trip for pleasure to the Midwest. I’ve never made less than two round-trips in a calendar year since 2009. I’ve done one already this year, another is booked and at least one more is on the horizon. I’m just not sure I can do it on the Lake Shore Limited anymore. I think my future lies with the Capitol Limited.

7 things I don’t like about the Lake Shore Limited

The eastbound departure time from Chicago. The Lake Shore Limited is Amtrak’s cleanup train, handling misconnecting passengers from the west. This is a necessary and useful function, but the 9:30 PM departure is a hardship. You’ve got to find dinner in Chicago, though if you’re a sleeper passenger they give you all the wine you want. If the Empire Builder got stuck in the Dakotas you might be a few hours late leaving.
The eastbound afternoon crawl across upstate New York. Because of the late departure time from Chicago you spend all the daylight hours between Buffalo and Albany. It’s very, very boring. You do get lunch.
CSX’s handling of the train in western New York. Amtrak is dependent on the freight railroads for dispatching. CSX does an absolutely terrible job between Schenectady and Rochester. They’re incapable of getting the train though on time. It’s just frustrating.
The toilet in the Viewliner roomette. Amtrak experimented with the design of the Viewliner and included a toilet in each roomette. There’s no problem with smells or anything like that it’s just…awkward…in an already confined space. I can’t tell you how many times I wished for a public restroom instead, even though it meant a walk.
The track quality around Buffalo. It’s very rough around Buffalo, and westbound you hit it around midnight (ish, depending on how badly CSX screwed you, see point #3) which guarantees you’ll be woken up.
The Amfleet lounge. I’ve discussed this in the various route guides linked above but the Amfleet lounge/cafe simply doesn’t compare to the Sightseer Lounge on the Capitol Limited. There’s no good place for sitting and watching, and perhaps more importantly there’s not enough seating.
The Amfleet lounge, Part II. It’s located on the back of the train because it travels to Boston. If you’re a New York sleeper passenger you’re walking through five coach cars to reach it.

The Capitol Limited improves on all these points. Its most significant drawback, of course, is that it doesn’t go to New York–it terminates in Washington, D.C. Passengers traveling to and from New York must take a Northeast Regional. That adds about four hours to the trip, allowing for connection times. This April I’m testing out taking the Capitol Limited westbound. We’ll see how it goes.

Amtweets?

May 16, 2012 / Charles Fulton / 0 Comments

I’m on the road today, heading back to Michigan for a friend’s wedding. This involves three different transit operations playing ball: Trans-Bridge Lines between Easton and the Port Authority Bus Terminal (PABT) in New York, the MTA between the PABT and Pennsylvania Station (Penn), and finally Amtrak from Penn to Kalamazoo, via Union Station in Chicago.

One of the minor pleasures of taking the bus from the valley to New York (and there aren’t many so you really can’t be choosy) is running along the Northeast Corridor near Jersey City. Today, a little bit after 11 AM, I spotted the Silver Star, just a few minutes into its 31-hour, 1500-mile run to Miami and points in between. I recognized it from the two Viewliner sleepers behind the HHP-8 locomotive (see this page for more on train identification). Pleased, I tweeted the following:

On the bus to NYC and just saw the @AMTRAK Silver Star go by. Too fast for a picture!

This drew a quick reply from Amtrak’s social media folks. I’ve found them to be pretty responsive…

@mackensen Very cool! We’re glad you got to see it 🙂 How’s your ride going?

Amused that I’d gotten them interested, I replied with the following:

@Amtrak not bad but we’re crawling through the Holland tunnel. Happily I’m on the Lake Shore Limited this evening.

That tweet went out from the tunnel, incidentally. I continue to be impressed with Verizon’s coverage. That last tweet drew an odd reply, ending our little colloquy:

@mackensen We are sorry for any delay, we hope to have you to your destination ASAP! We look forward to having you on board again later!

I’ve been thinking this one over. At first I was deeply confused, but I’m coming to realize that I never said whose bus I was on, although I don’t think Amtrak operates any Thruway services in New Jersey. Also, it probably comes naturally to Amtrak to apologize for service delays (*cough*), even ones it isn’t responsible for.

Anyway, thought I’d mention all this. It really can be fun to tweet at Amtrak and see what you get back. A couple months ago I was coming back from New Orleans and got help up by Norfolk Southern maintenance in northern Indiana. I started including @Amtrak in my tweets slagging away at NS and eventually drew a friendly reply.

From Amtrak, that is. Those bastards at NS never said a word.