May 13, 2014 on the Sunset Limited

Woke up at 7:30 and headed for the dining car.  Well, it was jammed...after all, we had taken on about 200 people in San Antonio  By 9am, I was seated and enjoying my usual scrambled eggs and grits.  Two very nice gentlemen tablemates, both retired, one very quiet, the other easy to engage in conversation.  Born in Providence, RI! Hah!  When his father was at Brown....after that he lived in many places.  Bob is retired and looked kind of Duck Dynasty with a white beard...but definitely not Duck Dynasty type at all.  Now lives in DC and was on his way to Alpine, TX, which is the jumping-off point for Big Bend National Park.  He discovered this park long ago and camped there for years.  Then bought some land nearby and still camps!  Takes trains and camps!  We had some great conversations about trains, transportation, politics etc.  Samuel, the quiet one, is on a veritable train odyssey...just about taking them all...his bucket list!  

So, I awoke in the west Texas desert.  Sand, lots of it, sagebrush, cacti, yucca, arroyos, mesas, buttes, mountains.  Absolutely stunning.  Only a few cattle here and there, though there must be more because fencing is visible. Nary a car on the road running alongside.  Occasionally, a building of sorts or a hamlet.  The stop at Alpine lasted 15 minutes and we were able to step out onto the platform...it was freezing.  Cold wind....totally unexpected.  This cannot be normal even at 4,000’+.  Well, it lived up to its name!

At one point we passed a strange white structure..spaceship-like...in an enclosure.  I later learned, from a very learnèd young man, that this as almost certainly a propoane tank....apparently people here like to camouflage them!  Along the Rio Grande Valley, groves of pecan trees and fields of crops.  A green swath along the river amid the desert.

"Out in the west Texas town of El Paso, I fell in love with a Mexican girl....."  So do we all remember Marty Robbins in 1959?  Every time I said El Paso in the past 24 hours, I found myself humming that great song!

Lunch was ill-timed because we were 28 minutes getting into El Paso and I had intended to walk around for the 40 minute layover.  Very nice tablemates, one of whom, Dulcie, I talked to later on the platform and in her room.  It was damned hard, staring across at Ciudad Juarez, not to talk about politics, but we agreed we shouldn't!  Good thing too, because I sensed some possible differences of opinion!  Anyway, I did ultimately get 15 minutes on the platform, but not enough time to poke around.  I could see huge white words on the mountains over in Mexico.  I will need to blow up my photos to see what they say.  As we pulled out of the station, we saw it....the fence.  Repairs being made at one point in the town. We crossed the Rio Grande, almost dry, and left Texas for New Mexico.  The fence continued for a while, with border patrol SUVs here and there, up and over hills, then disappeared as we moved further inland.  We had not gone far into New Mexico when we approached an enormous site...by that time, I was back in the observation car and "quiet" Sam had joined me...we did not know what to make of it.  All brand new.  As we moved further into it and stopped, we agreed that it looked like a giant railroad depot.  Well, after consulting three conductors and checking online we found out that it is just that...an enormous railroad depot in the desert near Santa Teresa, NM, built by Union Pacific.  Further sleuthing revealed that a new container port is being built on the west coast of Mexico to "bypass" the union-expensive port of Los Angeles in favor of cheaper labor.  Of course!  And the rails will move the freight across Mexico to this huge spanking new depot.  And guess what, Union Pacific owns a chuck of Ferromex, one of the Mexican railroads!  Free markets at work.  I must say, I have never seen anything like this self-contained place...you should see the new rails, shining on concrete ties...the very black new blacktop, the shiny new color coordinated pumps for fuel, water etc.  And container cars and locomotives as far as the eye can see.

Still in the desert.  Not really much different from this morning as we make our way across southern New Mexico.  The scenery became somewhat more dramatic in Arizona.  Some dried lakebeds...impressive.  We have followed, for the most part, Route I10 which runs from Jacksonville to Santa Monica; it is the southernmost US interstate.  Of course, highways often followed railroad lines, which took the paths of least hills...or resistance.  More heat hazes in Arizona, probably because the temperature is now in the high eighties!  We arrived in Tucson as the sun was beginning to set.  The reflections off the mountains and mesas was so beautiful.  The train lives up to its name!  We continued into the setting sun as we sat down for dinner.  I had three amiable ble companions....the very learnèd young man ( a distant cousin on Sheldon's!), a gentleman from California and a lady from Houston....the three of them had joined us on the Texas Eagle in San Antonio.  Very nice conversations, not dominated in any way by the very learnèd young man, but his great knowledge was astonishing!  And he comes from a very interesting and learned family.

Early night since apparently we are going to arrive 90 minutes early.  Astonishing!  That means 4am. Ack!  Talked to Paul and Amy and too them not to pay too much attention to this information and not to come to the station any earlier than the scheduled time.  I did not sleep much at all...I did not have any new batteries for my noise-reducing earphones.  Silly me.  I was pretty much a zombie by the time 4am rolled around.