This part of my travels wasn’t really on rails, but I saw no point in screwing up the theme 🙂 I arrived in Portland, OR safe and sound on Friday the 23rd of June, my birthday, and when I deboarded the train, it was just over 90 degrees outside. It wasn’t humid, and aside from…

Of the great named passenger trains in the US of the mid-twentieth century, few names evoked such a sense of wonder or power as the Great Northern Railway’s “Empire Builder”. The Great Northern Railway was started by the late 19th-century rail entrepreneur, James J. Hill. He was known as the “Empire Builder” and the Railway’s…

When you tell people that you’re going to take a train across country as part of a vacation, the responses come in a few forms. For the most part, thanks to the fact that I only have a few friends and even fewer hobbies, those closest to me were not surprised at all by this…