The GrandLuxe Limited is a throwback to the golden age of pampered train travel, said Kitty Bean Yancey in USA Today. “Aiming for Orient Express opulence,” GrandLuxe takes passengers on cross-country tours aboard refurbished 1950s railway cars. An onboard chef prepares gourmet meals served on white tablecloths. A tuxedoed butler escorts guests to their quarters and at night folds down a tapestry-upholstered setback that becomes a bed. Best of all is the five-star, “aah-inspiring” scenery. GrandLuxe usually offers passengers tailor-made journeys across America, but also has recently experimented with Amtrak for a 54-hour, 2,438-mile trip from Emeryville, Calif., across the bay from San Francisco, to Chicago, with six cars attached to the rear of the California Zephyr.
Our train pulled out of Emeryville at 8 a.m., and it soon became apparent that many of GrandLuxe’s passengers were “train buffs out to savor every minute of a gracious mode of travel” that has all but vanished. Many carried guidebooks that pointed out such historical tidbits as the grave of Wyatt Earp’s stalwart ally, Doc Holliday, in Greenwood Springs, Colo. A few toted audio scanners that allowed them to listen in on conversations between engineers and dispatchers. Photo ops popped up almost immediately—canyon walls, multiple mountain ranges, the gulch where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid once hid after a robbery. Soon the train reached the foothills of the Sierra Madres and climbed toward Donner Pass, “where stranded 19th-century pioneers turned cannibalistic.”
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