The "No, We Are NOT Australian" USA Tour 2005

Day 6 : Thursday 27th October

Woke up sometime in the early hours - Cleveland, Ohio....3 hours late :-( Was a little puzzled to witness us arriving at the station then setting off in reverse after the stop - this was however a booked move. After reversing a couple of miles we stopped at a junction then set off again in the other direction - this move being needed to regain the required route...which happened to take us right past the station again but on non-platformed tracks! Me thinks they need to rebuilt Cleveland station about 20m to the right...

Excitement over, back to sleep.

Stirred about 6am and headed for a change of scenery and some breakfast from the cafe car. Daylight broke and we were still around 3 hours late. The cafe car attendant was predicting a 4 hour late arrival into Washington. Compared to the UK it was a delight though, everyone just accepted it, no grumpy passengers or cross words. OK we would lose some bashing time, but what the hell, we were on holiday. The advantage of the late running is that we saw the most scenic parts in daylight. A further hour was lost at the Cumberland Pass...due to snow! It had fallen the night before but knocked out some of the signalling so it was a crawl, the engineer having to be prepared to stop if we caught up the train in front.


A view in the Panoramic Car - it was early so not many takers for the seats!


8,400hp up-front - 138 & 202 plus the remnants of recent snow-fall.

Arrival into Washington was approaching 4.30pm so we abandoned all thoughts of bashing in favour of a shower at the hotel, meeting up with Canada-based UK crank Bob Hannaford in the process. The evening meal was taken at one of Washington's brewpubs.


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