The Story of the First Train

Ok. Here it is. The story of my train to Chicago.

At 5:30 I walked from my parent's house in Ann Arbor to the Fleetwood (a little hole in the wall diner). After a couple cups of coffee I headed for the train station. I was about a half hour early and I waited for both the train and my mom, who saw me off.

Once on the train, I walked to the middle of one of back cars, sat down and settled in for a two day trip. My seat was facing backwards. I got out Rudolph Steiner's agriculture course to start reading, but kept getting distracted by the sunrise. So I snapped some photos.

Well, twenty minutes later, still trying to read, still facing backwards, I felt a jolt, like we hit a small rock, and I was thrown into the back of my seat. It seemed to subside, so I continued reading only to be thrown by another, much larger jolt. I was then plastered to the seat as we came to a thunderously screeching halt.

The train car in front of mine was tilted at a ten or fifteen degree angle. The car in front of that was sitting perpendicular to the tracks, at a 45 degree angle. The engine car was fully on it's side and completely detached from the cars it used to carry and the tracks it once ran on. The tracks directly ahead of the cars still on the tracks looked like spaghetti noodles and there was a three foot high hill of train-track rocks where once were none. The semi truck that we hit was almost unrecognizable as such. The car I was in happened to be far enough back that it was still fully on the tracks.

At least five ambulances, three fire trucks, three news anchors, three professional camera men, and countless state, county, and local police showed up. And after an hour and a half, the passengers were ushered onto busses. Those uncomfortable busses took us, luggage on the lap, to the Jackson Amtrak station, where EMTs checked on all those who wanted to be checked over. An hour later, Indian Trails busses swooped us up and took us to Union Station in Chicago.

So there I was, finally in Chicago--fifteen minutes after my connecting train had already left for Seattle.