I had hoped to post a few updates before checking out of the Best Western, but alas, blogspot.com was deader than roadkill. Damn you Google! If you are going to take over the whole internet, you could at least make it work reliably!
So, back to Union Station – a slightly less traumatic trip this time. I checked my bag for retrieval later in the day, and jumped on a Metra commuter train out to Lisle via the BNSF ‘racetrack’ line. I’m pretty impressed with the city train service here – quite similar to Sydney, as it needs to be to adequately serve a city of four point something million.
As arranged, I was met at Lisle by Rich Weyand, another model railroading friend, whom I ‘met’ via email about 12 years ago, through our then mutual interest in modeling similar areas of the Norfolk & Western Railway in N Scale.
Rich took me to one of his favourite Italian Restaurants, where I enjoyed possibly the best Lasagna outside Italy, washed down with a very nice Italian lager. Rich & I enjoyed getting to know each other for real, and discovered a whole bunch of interests in common outside trains, which was really neat.
After lunch we cruised on back to Rich’s place in a nice quiet spot on the outskirts of greater Chicago, where I met his wife Wendy, and had a tour of his Pocahontas Division layout. It is considerably more impressive in person than in photos I had previously seen, and it definitely rates as one of the most thoughtfully designed and engineered layouts around, and the way Rich has captured the prototype is most impressive. Given the number of good layouts I’ve seen over the years, I don’t make such comments lightly, either.
We spent another very pleasant couple of hours gasbagging about all sorts of things of mutual interest, before heading back to Lisle, and my train back to the City.
Rich, thank you once again for your hospitality – it was a great pleasure to finally meet you, and I hope we can do it again some day. And I really do hope you get that book published. I want to read it!!!!
I got back to the city with a few hours to spare before my next train was due to board, so I caught a water taxi down the canal to Navy Pier, a tourist hotspot where the city meets Lake Michigan. I must have looked like a real tourist, snapping away at the Chicago skyline as we went. Once there, I repaired to a funky jazz bar for a beer and a bite, and then took another, even scarier, taxi ride back to Union Station. I swear that bastard taxi driver was trying to kill us both! Is it absolutely necessary to accelerate to 60mph in the space of every 200 foot long city block? Didn’t you know that leaning on the horn continuously does not guarantee that 6 inch gap is going to open up wide enough to insert us into every time without fail? I was definitely ready for a cup of tea and a wee lie down after that experience!
By the time I retrieved my bag, and got myself checked into the flash Amtrak Metropolitan Lounge, I literally did only have time for a cuppa before the boarding call came through. The Lakeshore Limited doesn’t leave Chicago until 10:00pm, but we sleeper passengers get to board at eight, and enjoy a pre-launch wine & cheese party before the off. Very civilized! I enjoyed the company of two very nice sisters, and their young companion, who were also doing the Portland to Portland run. Amongst other things, we got chatting about cars, and Stephanie, one of the two sister, just happens to have a daughter in law, whose father restores old Corvettes! She very kindly hunted me down before we left the train, and gave me his email address, along with a note to say he would be happy to hear from me. Cool eh?
I got myself settled for the night, and from my bed, watched the lights of Chicago recede behind us. Then, another state line, another time zone, and a good night’s sleep, with no early morning deadlines to worry about.
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