Day two - August 26 (Tuesday)

Breakfast started at 6:30 so we set our alarm for 6:00. Dave showered and we headed to the dining car. There are no reservations for breakfast or lunch. It's first come first served. We watched a very colorful sunrise in Grand Forks, North Dakota with Marjorie and her husband whose name I couldn't remember. They were headed to Whitefish Montana to visit friends and then on to California from there.

Now if you were to look at the timetable, which we did, you would notice that we should have been past Grand Forks by now. Somehow we had lost about an hour overnight. We asked Dennis about this and he explained that in the middle of the night a freight train in front of us had to make an emergency stop. No one seemed to know why. An emergency stop means slamming on the breaks and the metal wheels slide along metal tracks. This means the possiblity that wheels are flattened at the meeting spot. It is necessary to check each and every wheel to make sure this has not happened since moving forward (or attempting to) on this condition won't work and will likely cause a derailment. So being behind the freight train we had to wait approximately one hour while all the wheels were checked. Thus our lateness.

Dennis assured us that there is lots of time built into the schedule for these types of things though and we would likely make up time later. Which we did. However, not before getting to be as much as an hour and a half late because now that we were not on schedule we did not take precedence on the rails. If we had been on time when approaching a freight train coming the other way the freight train would pull into the siding and we would pass first. Since we were not on time we had to pull into the siding and let the freight train pass.

After breakfast we headed to the lounge car with our warm sweatshirts on :) The chairs here didn't swivel as they did on the Capitol Limited (not as much fun!). There was a hazy fog between Devils Lake and Rigy. It was so thick in spots we really could not see much. When the fog did clear we saw the following all in a span of two minuntes:
Fields of wheat and soy beans
Marshy land
Sunflower Fields (more on those later)
Cattle
and a Pine Barren type field
Then suddenly we were looking at mounds of rolling earth. It was spectacular how fast the scenery changed. Having said that the majority of the scenery in North Dakota was sunflower fields. I am guessing that if you were to look at a bag of sunflower seeds you would see that they came from North Dakota. I'm just guessing but it's probably a good one.

A service stop was planned for Minot, North Dakota. This is where they take off trash, load up supplies & water, change drivers and such. So we disembarked to walk around and stretch. Dennis reminded everyone that he would be picking up complimentary copies of the local daily newspaper. This turned out to be the Minto Daily News. In case you are wondering the headlines were that Bob Lowe, the founder of Lowe's Printing died at 91 and several Minot High School students had returned from an exchange trip to France. At this point in the trip we were down to half an hour late.

After everyone reboarded Dennis came around with Mimosa's which we passed on. (I forgot to say we were offered Champagne in Chicago). He also took reservations for the wine and cheese event in the dining car for the afternoon. We passed on that too.

We had lunch with a couple from New York who were going to visit friends on the San Juan Islands (off the coast of Seattle). This was a trip they made often as the man would join friends doing research at the marine institute there. I'm sorry I don't remember their names. Dave had a burger for lunch; I had a soup and salad combo. The train was back to running an hour late. We had a long stop near Glasgow, Montana to let a freight train go by.

Most of North Dakota and Montana up to this point were pretty flat and more or less the same scenery. Just before Havre, Montana though we got our first glimpse of the foothills leading up to the Rockies. We passed a town that I dubbed, "Centralia" Centralia is that town in PA that has been more or less abandoned because of the fire in the coal mines below it. We drove through there on a road trip last year and this area we had just been through on the train looked very similar except there wasn't any smoke coming up from the ground.

WE had dinner with John and his wife (again I missed her name, sorry) who were heading to Portland for a wedding. I opted for the steak again and Dave went for the lamb shanks again. For desert I could barely wait for Damon to finish naming the options before I ordered the peanut butter chocolate pie again. He laughed. After dinner we spent some time in the lounge car wathing the foothills pass by and some small housing developments. Our first glimpse of residential areas since leaving Chicago.

As we approached Glacier Montana, there was a voice over the speaker system. It said simply "Power's out!". The train crew often sent messages to each other over the speaker system. A voice came back, "Yup, it is. We'll get it at the next stop". Sure enough there were only limited lights in the hallways. It was still daylight so there was not much need for light though. However, two very important things run on electricity; the kitchen and the bathrooms! Again we turned to Dennis for an explanation of what this all meant. He informed us that the power comes from the engine. As we jostle through the mountains and over some rough terrain the connection sometiems disconnects. So at our next stop, someone would follow the connection along and basically plug it back in. There were emergency power sources that kept minimal lighting on but that was it. Sure enough at East Glacier National Park, our next stop the power came back on.

East Glacier was originally a smoke and stretch shop but they asked everyone to stay on board so we could make up for some of the lost time. We stuch our heads out the door though and saw a beautiful chalet style station. Sun glare was rough though. I don't think the picture came out well.

We learned that Dennis used to be a cook on the train; for 20 years until he developed tendonities in his elbow and switched to sleeping car attendant. He is 52 and can retire in 8 years.

Our last stop in daylight was Essex Montana at the Isack Walton Inn. The trian only stops here if a message is sent that there are passengers waiting to get on or off here. It is one of the two stop stops on the route. The station is so small that it is necessary to stop once for coach and once for sleeping cars.

Unfortunately due to the train still running behind schedule we did not get to see much of the rocky mountain range and Glacier National Park. It was too dark.