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Well I went to Reno and back from Martinez on Sat, it was an amazing ride. I haven't been on the Zephyr since UP took over SP. I usually take the Starlight, so there was some differences. One thing I noticed was how bad some of those old cars are looking, they really need to find a way to repaint them without having the paint strip off. Inside they looked nice though. Going from Mtz, the train was about 10 mins late, and getting to Davis, we had to BACK out of the Station on to the siding to let the Capitol pass on the Causway. The SP really made a mistake when the took out the second track there. Going up the mountain was pretty cool, there wasn't much traffic on the line as it looks like all the intermodal traffic now goes over Feather River. I think that we passed two or three trains the whole time including the westbound Zephyr, which was close to being on time. The trip over the pass was beautiful, although there wasn't much snow left on the mountains, Maybe two to three points at the most. It was kind of sad to see the old lines that had been taken out, but if this was a usual day for the old SP line, I can understand why they did take the second line out. Once we got to Reno, I must say that I was amazed at how much work has been done on the ReTrack thing. They are definetly moving along. My only question would be when the project is done, how are we going to be able to get onto the tracks to board our train? We got into Reno about 45 mins late, which isn't bad considering we had just gone over a mountain pass. Staying in Reno, we stayed at the Golden Phoenix, (CAN YOU SAY DUMP) which is basicly just the Flamingo under new owners. I only heard about 5 trains the whole time I was there. The next morning, we caught number 5 about 30 mins late. I never saw a train the whole time until we got right outside of Colfax when we met a mixed manifest, and number 6. We arrived back in Mtz about 45 mins late, which considering it is coming from Chicago isn't bad at all. I know there had been some talk over added 4 capitols to Reno per day, and if the trains were full like mine was both ways, with that frequency I bet they could easily fill those trains up as well, (Especially in the winter if they promoted it right). If the traffic that we had on Sat and Sun was normal, then I see no reason why UP couldn't handel those extra trains either. Hope you guys enjoyed my report, Brad
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