Off the Rails Part 1

Disclaimer:  I’m not a very good writer.  An unbelievable number of issues happened on this return trip and its very difficult to describe them all in an understandable manner.  I’ve included a sample of the issues but have left many out.  Suffice to say, it was even crazier than described below.  

After our excellent three days of skiing, it was time to head home. We had booked roundtrip itineraries so we would be traveling the same route home as we had getting there. For me, that meant riding the train to Chicago and then flying to Pensacola where Brenda would pick me up. For Nick, he was riding the train with me to Chicago then connecting to another train to get to Pittsburgh and then taking a Greyhound bus back to State College.

After our last day of skiing while we were enjoying the mountain top Apre ski, we received a text from Amtrak saying that our train departing the following day was delayed 4 hours. Our train was supposed to depart Fraser Colorado at 3:50 pm. Now it will be 7:50 pm. Check out of our hotel was at 10 am so we would be looking at needing to kill almost 10 hours in Winter Park. Not too happy about that but no big deal. We went to bed that night knowing we had a long day of waiting tomorrow.

I woke up around 2:30 am and saw that it was snowing and blowing pretty good. Checked the weather and they were expecting 6+ inches of snow and high winds all day. I started thinking that if the train is delayed any more, we’d be stranded in a blizzard with no where to go. It was a spring break weekend and all the hotels were fully booked so we needed to make sure we could get out of town. I knew that Amtrak also runs a “ski train” from Denver to Winter Park on the weekends so I checked online and thankfully, there were two tickets left on that train. I booked them and felt good that the $176 I had to spend was a good insurance policy in case our train got delayed more.

When we woke up the next morning, sure enough, we had a message from Amtrak saying our train would be 11 hours late, arriving in Fraser at 2:50 am. The Fraser train station is an open air station and we’d freeze to death if we waited for that train. Thankfully, we had the ski train backup and that was scheduled for 4:30 pm. We’d still have to wait for our train in Denver but Denver Union Station is a much better and safer place to wait than outside in a Colorado blizzard.

Amtrak Station in Fraser Colorado

So we arrive at the ski train boarding area and are met with bewilderment by the train crew. They tell us all the cars are full and each one sends us a car down the line to check with the next attendant. When we reach the last one with no luck, she finally tells us to just go to the observation car and grab a seat. No idea why they would sell a ticket if there weren’t enough seats but oh well, its only a two hour trip and the observation car has the best views anyway.

We have a great ride to Denver with excellent scenery. The conductor is telling jokes the whole way and he’s laughing at all the people who would be stuck on I-70 in the snow storm. How smart are we to be riding in comfort and not dealing with delays!

So we are all laughing and joking and patting ourselves on the back until we get 1/4 mile from Denver Union Station. Denver Union Station is a little weird in that the trains have to back into it. To do that, they go into a freight rail yard and then throw some switches so they can back in. We come to a stop and the conductor comes on the PA with an announcement. “Unfortunately, there is a freight train blocking our path and we’ll need to wait a few minutes for it to move out of the way”. OK, no problem, we’ve got plenty of time anyway. About 30 minutes later, he comes on again “I’m very sorry about the delay but apparently the train is awaiting a crew before they can move the train. We’ll update you as we get more information.” 30 minutes later “ the crew has arrived, they need to release the brakes and then they can move the train, it shouldn’t be long now”. 30 minutes later “I don’t know what they are doing. It shouldn’t take this long to release the brakes”. 30 minutes later “OK, they are moving out of the way”

So we arrive in Denver over 2 hours late after sitting just a few hundred yards away from the station.

Somewhere along the way we learned that Amtrak’s policy is that if you don’t board the train at the station you reserved at, they will cancel your ticket. Now we are worried that if we get on at Denver, when they check out ticket as we are leaving Denver, they will throw us off the train in some prarie town in the middle of the night. No problem, we’ll just call Amtrak and get that taken care of. After many calls and many hours on hold, it seems no one knows how to make that change but they all are very clear that our ticket will be canceled if we don’t get on in Fraser. We finally got ahold of an agent that said she could fix it. After serveral minutes, she said Nick’s was done and he would receive an email with the new ticket. She was also very proud to tell us that we would get a refund of $8 since we were getting on at a later stop. I didn’t bother asking why it was only $8 when I spent $68 dollars to go between those same stops on a different but identical train. She then said mine was done and I’d also receive an email. Well, Nick got his email but mine never came so I’m expecting that my ticket will be cancelled.

We get off the train and go into the station. Its a really nice train station and it has several bars, restraunts and stores right in the main area of the station. First thing I need to do is find an agent and make sure my ticket doesn’t get cancelled. Fortunately, we arrive just before the office closes and I’m able to get it fixed. Now, its about 10:30 pm and the bars are full and pretty loud. Our train is now scheduled to depart Denver at 5:30 am. We initially intend to just hang out in the station until then but its pretty busy and getting louder so I decide to see if we can find a hotel nearby. Fortunately, there is a hotel right across the street with a room. I book it, we walk over there and set our alarms for 4:30 am to make our 5:30 am train. Before going to sleep, I joke with Nick about whether we should have check on what time checkout is.

I wake up several times throughout the night and each time I check on the status of our train. For every hour that has passed, it is delayed another 45 minutes. After a couple of checks, its clear that we won’t need are alarms set so we shut them off and sleep until morning. We wake up around 7 am as see that our train is now expected in Denver at around 11 am. We get some breakfast and hang around and checking ever hour or so, seeing its delayed again. 11 am checkout time comes so we pack up and walk back to the station. We wait all day with no real updates about its status or what is going on. It is just death by a thousand cuts. There must have been 100 updates to its expected arrival time. Some would only show it 2 minutes later, many were 15 minutes late. None were enough were you would say fuck it, we are getting on a plane.

Now it starts to get weird. Amtrak is trying to break us but we aren’t conceding. This is not our first rodeo with atrocious customer service or a bad travel experience. After all of the troubles so far and many attempted calls to “customer service” I post this on Facebook “I didn’t think it was possible for a company to have more inept customer service than Duquesne Light but unfortunately, I’ve been proven wrong. Amtrak is the GOAT of poor customer service.” I think Amtrak see this and decides it game on. They decide to step up their game and employ psycological warfare to try to make us crack. Shortly after posting that, I receive this….

Oh OK, we are now arriving 14 hours EARLY! We receive this at 11 am on March 10th so apparently, our train arrive in Chicago 10 hours ago yet we are still in Denver. Amtrak has just invented time travel. They are really trying to screw with our heads but we stand strong and wait.

Then about an hour later, this…

Now its running over 17 hours LATE! Finally around 5 pm our train arrives and we board it. The conductor tells Nick and I to get on the last coach car. We go up the stairs and pick a couple of seats. After about 45 minutes, the train departs and we notice that we are the only people in the car. Apparently since the previous mind games didn’t work, they are trying solitary confinement. We walk up to the next car and its 75% full.

So in 24 hours, we managed to go 1 stop. From Fraser Co to Denver. It was a strange and very stressful 24 hours but we are finally on the correct train and moving toward Chicago, little did we know that things could get much much worse. Come back for the final episode of our Train from the Twilight Zone saga.