Schenectady has a brand new “Train station” (a term I have yet to accept!) The traditional style architecture is very easy on the eye, both outside and in. And downtown Schenectady is most pleasant and largely new. But my taxi driver warns me not to stray two blocks from the Main Street. And the guy in the Tickets and Baggage Check-In warns me not to stray too far from the station. Timidly, I wander only to the near vicinity for some photographs, and return with oodles of time, only to ascertain that the north bound Maple Leaf is running around 45 minutes late.
I commend the Friends of Buxton Station in their success at making the once dingy and featureless 19th Century remains an interesting place to wait for a train. I don’t know who put the millions of Dollars into the complete reconstruction of Schenectady Station. Actually, it was State funded. However, the “extravagance did not extend to the intended refreshment facilities or WiFi! Strangely, my WiFi worked there much better than on QM2!
A little glass cased exhibition displays fascinating items of local history. My night here was thus more than just a stop-over, and I do hope, but don’t expect to come back. The 10.24 am to Canada is still due at 11.09, and running late, it will not “hang around”….and it didn’t!
It’s a gorgeous clear sunny day with cloudless skies. As in 2014, the Maple Leaf is not a huge train. Business Class is at the rear, behind the catering area, just like before. I learn from the station staff who took care of my bags that Schenectady Train Station is indeed brand new, reopened just eight months ago, modelled on the design of the original “Union” Station, rather than that of the one that it replaced. I would love to see Buxton Station restored similarly to something not far removed from its original design.
Just one single window seat remained when I boarded the late running Maple Leaf. It had my name on it, and I am now enjoying the still lovely countryside from my window. There is no baggage car on this train, but the conductor has stowed them away safely. (11.47am)
(17.49/5.49pm)
That was impressive. Crossing by rail from the U.S.A. into Canada is scheduled to be around an hour and forty minutes. We arrived at Niagara Falls Ontario well after 5pm and were on our way on time at 5.45pm. That was in spite of our having to take all our luggage off the train, through customs and back on to the train. Although grossly inconvenient, this didn’t come as a surprise.
We are now in Canada with 1 hour 56 minutes left of the nine hour seventeen minute journey from Schenectady. However, we made a very slow start. The Canadian side does not quite match up to the abundance of glorious scenery one enjoys on the American side, although the now flat countryside is far from unattractive, something I remember vaguely from a similar journey in 2014.
August 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of my first trip to Canada and the U.S.A. in 1969. I would return to North America in 1971, but after that, not for 20 years when I would see the Californian coast for the first time.
Rather late in the day, I have decided to mark all of my travels during 2019 as a celebration of that first adventure when in just 16 days, some of our party of 49 flew to Montreal, from Manchester via Prestwick on a B.O.A.C. Boeing 707, the others, I think from Heathrow. If I remember rightly, we continued to Toronto, Chicago, Denver, Durango, Silverton, Colorado Springs, Denver, Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago, New England (side trip) Montreal. On the way home, I would leave the plane at Prestwick and travel from Glasgow to Crewe on The Royal Scot, hauled by two what would become Class 50s. Electrification would consign such routine workings to history. AMTRAK had not yet come into being, making this a rare opportunity to experience North American rail travel towards the end of the era of the big railroad companies. I was twenty on that trip, and the youngest participant by ten years. Any still alive will be rather elderly by now!
This year’s adventures will have taken me around the world, and then some.
Rather a lot to read there; thanks for bearing with me!
David.
David's Cruise 