The idea for the trip began to have legs when I realized that if I was going do this it had to happen sooner rather than later and that, in reality, there was very little holding me back from doing it. Except, maybe planning the trip itself. Without knowing it I had parts and pieces of the trip and what I would need already gathered. For instance, I had purchased a small bag from L.L. Bean for an unknown reason and it turned out to be perfect for a tool container for art materials.
Trying to get a handle on train schedules I had down loaded and printed time tables from each train I was interested in taking from the Amtrak web site. Then I found a site that talked about traveling on Amtrak both good and bad by people who were very much into rail travel, so I watched what was going on there. It seemed that when ever there was a question about trains and operations, this site had the answers.
Of course, there was “You-tube” and some of the videos that were on there that gave whole sections of video to traveling on the trains, tours of the various cars and what to expect-( mostly they were on the “long distance” trains.)
One of the more important steps was to move into the new modern age of the twenty-first century and get an I-phone. For those who know me and my “barnacle on the side of progress” attitude will find this to be a radical and quizzical move. It was all part of the long range plan. In one of my former trips I made a big mistake in taking too much stuff with me. ( mostly books and things that I was going to do while on the trip.) And a portable CD player and carriers full of CDs- I was not going make that mistake this time. So I purchased the I-phone, dumped my second land line and transferred that number to the phone. ( it was a good idea but that had been my fax/ computer line and now I was getting interesting phone calls on my cell-phone! Which I knew were all bogus because I never used that line for voice communication. ) The first thing I did was add as many useful apps to the phone, like “i-tunes” and load the phone with every concievable classical music piece I could find, plus every travel app that would be useful. ( of course, with that amount of purchases from the I-tune store, my credit card shut down my account until they found out who had my credit card!)
Much later, when I had purchased my tickets for the train, I found out that the tickets could be stored on the I-phone and there would be no need to have hard copies of the tickets to show on the train! ( I am not ready for the twenty-first century!)
( Making a list and checking it twice!)
billybobrailcom 