26Aug11: The Lake Shore Limited: Day 1 (Rail Day 10)

The last rail leg of our journey was on Amtrak's Lake Shore Limited from Chicago to Rochester, New York. From Rochester we took a bus back to Ithaca. Because this was an overnight train we got a sleeper again. The cars on the Lake Shore Limited are not Superliners, they are single level. The roomette we got was a little bigger than what we had on the Coast Starlight and California Zephyr. We even had our own toilet. Which was right in the room with us. Kind of weird. The bed arrangement was similar to that on the Superliners, though. We had two seats facing each other which converted into a lower bed and the upper bed lowered down from the ceiling. The big difference was that you had enough head room in the upper bed that you could sit up. And you had your own window to look out.

Because so much of the East Coast was shutting down for Hurricane Irene the Lake Shore Limited was not going to complete its full schedule. Normally the train split into two sections at Albany, New York. One section went to Boston, Massachusetts and the other to New York City. This time it was set to terminate in Albany. Not that that mattered to us, we were only going as far as Rochester. The train left Chicago at 9:30 in the evening, right on schedule. Since it was already dark there wasn't much to see, but I watched the lights of Chicago through my upper berth window until I fell asleep.