Friday, January 27, 2012
AM Raining and Cloudy; PM Cloudy, then sunny and high 50’s

Leave for Auto Train to Sanford, Florida

We stopped in Abbotstown at the Atland Inn for lunch. The food there was as always outstanding.

Made our annual trek to Lorton to stay overnight at the Comfort Inn. Ordered our usual pizza and beer and ate in our room.

Pretty normal, uneventful trip.

Saturday, January 28, 2012
Sunny
Mid 50’s

Did I say uneventful! At 1:10 AM this morning we awoke to sirens and white flashing lights, and realized it was a fire alarm. I’m not sure why, but I had counted the number of rooms between ours and the closest exits. We grabbed our coats, and I grabbed my purse on the way out.

In our haste we turned the wrong way and ended up going the longer way. However, there was no sign of smoke or fire. On our way out someone opened their door and asked what was going on. We told them it was a fire alarm and to get outside.

When we got outside, we and the others that had left the motel waited, and waited, and waited. It was pretty cold outside. After about 20-30 minutes later a fire truck finally showed up.

Since nothing much seemed to be happening, we went to our car to wait it out and stay warm as did most of the others. While we were waiting in our car, a hook and ladder showed up and left after about 5 minutes.

We got back into our room after 2AM.

As we were loading the car this morning, I overheard someone giving the desk clerk what for and saying that a lot of the people staying there were in their eighties and this never should have happened. The person at the desk was agreeing.

As we were actually leaving, there was another man at the desk, and I overheard the day manager tell him this never should have happened because first of all it was illegal. He then said that they were taking steps so that it never happened again.

We still had no clue about what actually happened when we left for the train station.

We arrived at the train station about 11:00. I went inside to check us in and get our dinner seating. After that we had to figure out how to turn off the alarm system in our car. It is only turned off for the Auto Train, so we never remember how to do it. Car check-in started promptly at 11:30.

After we found seats in the station we heard 2 other couples talking about last night. We started to chat with one couple who asked if they could sit beside us. Of course, we told them yes. This is what they told us saying that it came from what they considered a reliable source.

It seems that a couple, who were drunk, came in very late and were having “words.” They ,
apparently in the heat of the moment, pulled the fire alarm. That is what set all of the other events in motion.

There were several people that claimed they slept right through the whole thing. That’s pretty hard to believe. The other part that is truly frightening is that the hotel apparently made no effort to make sure that everyone was out of the hotel. If the drunken couple did indeed pull the alarm, that would explain the manager saying it was illegal.

The rest of the day went as planned.

While we were waiting, I thought I saw one of our neighbors walking down the platform. Sure enough it was. We knew they were going to Florida about the same time we were, but we didn’t know that they would be on the same train we were. They were traveling in coach so we couldn’t have dinner together.

Boarding started promptly at 2:30. We were surprised to find out that our roomettes were on the lower level of the sleeper. We were trying something different this year and booked 2 adjacent roomettes so we could have 2 lower berths. Expensive? Yes. We will see if it worth the added expense.

As always, we had interesting dinner companions. The food in the dining car for the sleepers is very good. The dessert special was a chocolate torte that could have been served in a very upscale restaurant.

Sunday, January 28
Sunny 70 degrees

Paul said that he slept very well last night. I slept better than I have on previous trips, but not very well.

We decided to skip the dining car for breakfast and have it in one of our roomettes. Despite good evening meals, breakfast is not that great. There is cereal, bananas, usually green, a basket with bagels and 4 corn muffins. They are really stingy with the muffins.

I bought muffins at the Lorton station. Each sleeper car has a machine for coffee, tea, and hot chocolate. We had a much tastier breakfast and more relaxed breakfast that way and will do the same on our way home.

We arrived in Sanford at 9:00 and had our car by 10:15. It was then off to the Holiday Inn Express in Cocoa Beach to use their stay and cruise package. We got there about noon which was several hours before check-in. However, the woman at the front desk found a room for us that was ready.

We then headed for lunch at the Sunset Café. Food was good and very inexpensive. The servings were huge.

After lunch, it was showers and a serious nap.

For dinner we went to Cap’n J’s for seafood. We were concerned because there were cars in the parking lot, but there didn’t seem to be anyone in the restaurant. We were considering leaving when our waitress motioned for us to come in. We were told to sit any where we wanted. (We noticed a sign when we left that said just that). We didn’t see it when we first came in.

We asked our waitress were everyone was and were told that they were upstairs on the deck.

Despite the seeming lack of patrons we had a very good meal.

After dinner, it was back to the motel to get organized for our cruise.

Saturday, January 25-Sunday January 26
Sunny and 65

Auto Train from Sanford, FL to Lorton, VA

The daylight return trip was just fine. Around dinner time we hit a patch of rough track which we expected. For some reason they always seem to be on rough tracks at meal time. From there, things went from bad to horrendous.

We had requested the 7:00 dinner seating. About 6:45 the attendant came to tell us that our seating would be delayed about 10-20 minutes. He explained that they had expected 80 people for the 5:00 o’clock seating, but 90 showed up.

Our dinner seating started at about 7:20. We were really pushed, dinner wasn’t that good, and it wasn’t hot. The gal pouring wine was generous with that.

We had our beds converted at 10:00 and that is when the trip became a nightmare. We, on all of our trips on the Auto Train, have never experienced such a rough ride. The train shook and rolled violently all night. I ended up grabbing the mattress a couple of times to keep from getting thrown out of bed. Needless to say, neither of us got any sleep that night.

When we asked our room attendant about it he blamed it on the speed. However, we been on the train when the speed has been such that we have gotten to the Lorton station before the staff was in. We have never experienced anything like that.

Paul thinks we were routed by CSX onto different tracks than we were on going to Florida. Since the tracks are owned by CSX, they don’t care about a smooth ride for the freight that they are hauling.

After we got home, Paul contacted AMTRAK via e-mail. He got the standard reply of “concerned for the comfort of our passengers, blah, blah.” They also said that his e-mail would be forwarded to the appropriate person—like we believe that one.

The trip home was just horrendous. We are having second thoughts about ever using the Auto Train again. From the conversations in the line for the ladies room at the Lorton Station, there were a lot of very unhappy passengers asking the same question.

We had our car by 10 AM and were on the road for home. We were very relieved to get home.

After we got home we got a letter of apology from the Comfort Inn saying that the fire alarm had been “tampered with.” There were the usual statements of safety and comfort of their guests, etc. They also offered an addition 20% off our next stay.

Sue