Posted by Dear Amtrak,
I just wanted to follow up on my letter from yesterday as I also made it available to a few friends who said that they thought I may have actually been criticising Amtrak, and I wanted to assure you that this was furthest from my mind.
Like the leg south along the Pacific Coast, the scenery on my train journey from Sacramento to Salt Lake City was just amazing, and again I meet some really interesting people on the train and basically I just enjoyed whiling away the hours watching the changing landscapes, enjoying your excellent food and coffee and chatting to people.
I do love train travel.
However, just to remove any doubt I wanted to let you know there were absolutely no hiccups with my travel this time …
Well, unless you consider that initial problem with my seat allocation where they sent me down the wrong end of the train and tried to sit me in coach. Oh, and if you ignore that when I did get to my roomette I found that someone else had already been put in there.
However once we got those little problems kicked out of my room it was smooth and quiet sailing … though this may have been because the the intercom in my roomette was broken (again).
Your carriage conductor was brilliant, once he’d settled me into my room he was practically a ghost for the rest of the trip, in fact I only saw him once more when he woke me up about 10 or 11 o’clock to make up my bed … the one I was already asleep on. He was sorry about that.
Yep, once again other than everything that Amtrak brought to the trip, it was perfect.
PS. I was particularly impressed with how after insisting that I pay extra for special baggage handling for my bicycle, your baggage handling staff managed to rip one of the handles off my bike bag. That was impressive. I mean I’ve hauled that bike all over the world and I know just how much force you would need to put on those handles to rip them of the bag. That was worth paying the extra for.
Thank you again, and I look forward to my next train journey with you.