I remember one train trip that I took in the winter of '67 that was
affected by a big snow storm in Chicago, although I don't think it
was 27" storm that has been talked about in the other posts.
After New Years, I was heading back to school, and had purchased a
combination bus-train ticket from Hannibal to Lincoln, with a
reservation on the California Zephyr out of Burlington (the agent at
Hannibal could get you a reserved seat, by calling someone on the
mainline and referring to some sort of coach seat diagram that he
had). Normally the bus would get to Burlington about 5 PM, and I
would have about an hour to get some blueberry pancakes in the
Grier's restaurant. But the entire area from St. Louis to Burlington
had been hit with a lot of snow, and the bus didn't arrive at the
Burlington station until about 7PM.
Assuming I had missed my connection, I asked the ticket agent if I
could change my reservation to the Denver Zephyr. I recall he said
something like "No need to do that. 17's running about 3 hours late
because of the snow. Chicago's a mess. You didn't miss #11 by all
that much."
I fell asleep in the dome car and don't remember much of the trip
across Iowa, but it was after 3AM when we pulled into Omaha, so we
didn't make up any time. There was no question that we were really
late, because after we had been in Omaha about 10 minutes, #1 pulled
in beside us.
Glen Haug
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