Lake Shore Limited – Amtrak train from Chicago to New York City

I am currently in New York City for a job interview with the NYC’s Department of Education on Wednesday. Since I am so poor (I have been unemployed for the past 1 1/2 years or so!), I decided to travel cheaply – by train – from Chicago to New York City. It’s a 20 hour ride, through Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York. I expected to dread the ride, imagining cramped accommodations (for $78 bucks, what should I expect?), nasty toilets, unruly passengers … and, horrors of all horrors, no Internet!

But I was in for a surprise.

Train travel actually rocks! Even in couch! Amtrak has wide seats and ample leg room. You can recline your seat to an almost horizontal position so you can actually sleep, comfortably! The train left Chicago at 9:30 pm, which is basically my bedtime (sometimes), so about an hour and a half later after being seated, I was off to la-la land. It was dark outside anyway, so no photographing for me.

The Lake Shore Limited is one of the few trains that Amtrak has not installed wi-fi yet, but … cell towers line up near the train tracks, from here to eternity, so even in stretches of land where there were a few houses, cell phone signal was present – so I did not wont for Words with Friends nor Facebooking.

When I woke up, refreshed and ready for breakfast, we were already close to upstate New York. And since the train has wide bay windows, out came the camera to take photographs of the gorgeous, but also sometimes bleak, scenery outside. Because the tracks run through “the other side of town,” you will see a lot of abandoned and shuttered industrial buildings. It is sad, especially that the Lake Shore Limited services most of the industrial towns of the midwest – you can see with your own eyes the economic devastation of these towns. Also, since the midwest is also very agricultural, if you are into barns, especially dilapidated ones, there are lots of them to see along the route.

But once the train reached northern New York State, the route suddenly became scenic as it meandered along side the Hudson River on its way to New York City. The sunset at this time of the year is spectacular – so I shot with wild abandon. The pretty lady seated in front of me saw what I was doing, so she also whipped out her phone cam and proceeded to photograph.

Which delighted me to no end.

Uncommon Photographers are everywhere!

Have a look!

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 29th, 2012 at 1:19 am. It is filed under From the bus or car, I Heart NYC, iPhonography, Photographing the Photographer, Road Trips and tagged with Amtrak, Chicago to New York, Illinois, Indiana, Lake Shore Limited, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, train trip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.