[skyguy79]

Originally Posted by Rebel Pirate

Well, this is interesting timing! Mrs. Pirate and I happen to be sitting in the train station at Lorton as I write this. She's the erstwhile travel agent in the family; she consulted me but she did the comparisons and made the reservations. She reports autotrain pricing is similar to airline pricing...it's influenced by time of year (which correlates to demand), time proximity to departure, size of vehicle, number of people, and accomodations. There are two of us...we have the smallest roomette (private sleeping but a shared restroom)...and we purchased online 45days ago. Total price = $500. Everyone with whom we've had contact today has been very friendly and helpful...no DMV experience here!

Departure was scheduled for 4:30 PM, but the schedule has been blown. To their credit, Autotrain didn't take the opportunity to blame it on a terrible truck/train accident yesterday by Baltimore, which we (and most others) would have easily believed. They owned their issues and said the delay is due to their maintenance/mechanical failures. It's now 7:00 PM and the latest estimate is the train will arrive here at 7:15.

Other things to the credit of Autotrain...they set up a buffet of cheese/crackers, cookies, raw veggies with dressing all to the accompaniment of local Virginia wines...red or white...but what we're receiving now was planned for on board service after departure. They'll serve sandwiches soon...an extra meal that wasn't planned since we'll probably eat what was planned for this evening's dinner for tomorrow's lunch. Hopefully we'll arrive by mid-afternoon tomorrow in lieu of the advertised 9:30 AM.

OK...just had another announcement...another 1.5 hour delay (it's now 7:15) so we hope to arrive some time tomorrow...anytime tomorrow would be good! Hey...it could be worse...we could be on a cruise ship!?!!!

Also, we've met some friendly people...and we might just have to pull out a deck of cards and see if we can scare up a game of bridge. If there are many more delays, this might just turn into the first of a daily installment!

My wife was wondering if Rebel had arrived at Sanford yet, so I did a little checking online and found out that as of this posting they are still on route and about 10 hours and 12 minutes behind schedule as of the latest available info. That would give them an ETA of 7:12PM in Sanford.