Our fifth Amtrak AutoTrain ride...last sunday...August 24th

I love riding the rails I guess. I no sooner get off the train and I am planning the next excursion.

This last trip was slightly different from our previous last 4. We had delays caused by Tropical Storm Fay. All week we were affected in Disney by her. I tried to contact Amtrak to find out about the status of the Sanford Station since we had heard about the Sanford, FL floods.

When we got up to the ticket counter , the agent told us that we had a overbooked train. They had had four days of cancellations due to the storm and flooding. We boarded at the usual time of 2:30pm - it was sunny but getting cloudy again....I am thinking ...this is just the typical summertime Florida storms. But ....now remember that Fay shifted and her outer bands went north a bit....well I believe that is what hit us.

 As we approached the Jacksonville area we started coming into some really nasty storms. The train slowed down to a crawl at times. I could see some areas on the sides that were still flooded. The tracks seemed ok. We saw this poor goat standing in the water. We felt bad for him. We had the first seating of dinner, and the lightening was those cloud to ground ones. The lady sitting across from us wanted to shut her curtain while eating dinner. I said I rather keep it open and see what is coming at us. So we kept it open. I figured the train it most likely well grounded....of course her husband kept joking how we are on the metal train. This storm seemed to go on for hours.

We finished our meal and went back to our room for a bit, then we went and saw IronMan in the lounge. After that we went to bed. All thru the night , as usual I stared out the window. I noticed that we passed the other Auto train later than usual. Then at 3 am we pulled into Florence SC ....hours later than we were supposed to.

At 5 am I ran down to the showers so we could eat breakfast at 6.....but because of the storm delays...breakfast was being served later than usual . I didn't mind...we sat in the lounge car and watch the North Carolina& Virginia sites. I love eating breakfast on the train looking out the windows.

Now usually we arrived early at the stations.....this time we pulled in at 10:30 am and didn't get our car until about 11:30. I do consider us lucky, the delays could have been worse. At least our train wasn't cancelled like the four days before and I made it to VA on the day I was supposed to. I saw my other daughters later, but all in all....it all worked out good.

Next time I go...I am going to try and book the reg bedroom and not the roomette....just for the bathroom part! the roomette is actually pretty good.