May 16, 2023: Beginning the coast-to-coast journey

My dad and I had been planning to go cross country by rail since before the pandemic, but hadn’t gotten around to it. Finally we decided it was time to go coast to coast, from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles. He came up on the train the day before from North Carolina, and we set off together May 16 from D.C. to Chicago.

Amtrak’s Capitol Limited departs Union Station just after 4 p.m. daily, and the train boarded about a half hour before departure. The Capitol Limited, like many of Amtrak’s east-west long distance services, uses bi-level superliner cars. The train normally runs with 8-10 cars, but today there was just one coach, a dining/café car, two sleepers and a baggage car behind a single locomotive. My suspicion is that ongoing equipment and staffing shortages factored in.

We took this leg of the trip in coach, which is considerably cheaper than a roomette and is just fine for daytime travel. We left D.C. on time, and slowly made our way out of the district, through the Maryland suburbs of Silver Spring, Kensington, Rockville and Gaithersburg. Familiar territory for me, but seeing it whizzing by from the train was another experience altogether.

Our train made its way to into West Virginia as it went through the well-known tunnel and bridge over the Potomac at Harper’s Ferry. 

After a quick stop, the train made its way to Martinsburg, through the mountains in West Virginia, hugging the Potomac along the way. 

We eventually crossed back into Maryland and stopped in the old, historic town of Cumberland around 7:30 p.m. – the last stop with daylight.

The picturesque ride continued for about another hour-plus as the last bit of daylight withered away, and we climbed in elevation through the mountains, from Maryland into Pennsylvania.

It was dark by the time we reached Connellsville, Pa. At that point my dad and I decided to make an attempt to go to sleep. This was made rather difficult by several factors, among which were a few talkative passengers. One man sitting in front of us seemed to be under the impression that our train had already reached Pittsburgh, but in fact we were well south of the city at that point.

Our train should be somewhere in Indiana when the sun rises.