On board the Pennsylvanian from Pittsburgh to New York, Part Two...

It's 1334hrs and we're heading west. We've stopped at Exton. Somewhere we lost the river. Exton looks like anywhere else. The train is now pulling out slowly, passing on my side of the train, the station car park and now there's woods on both sides. I don't think anybody boarded at Exton. We've just gone under the freeway past Fizzano Bros, concrete products. There's a huge pile of hard core and now more woods.

View from room 1306, Renaissance NY Hotel 57....

My eyes feel heavy-lidded and I know that if I was on a bed I'd fall asleep. As I said in a previous post, I never really dealt with the jet lag last weekend. I've been getting around four to six hours of sleep, but at odd times of the day. Invariably I've been awake around 0400hrs and I've never bothered going back to bed once up.

On the streets of New York...

Tonight I'm staying in the Renaissance hotel in the Midtown district of New York, on the East Side. I wanted somewhere close to the British Consulate as I want to reduce all possible hassles to a minimum.

At Philadelphia pulling silly faces...

When I first discovered I'd be on a train for 11 hours, at first I thought it would be an ordeal, but no, it's been fine. I've been on board now six hours and it feels like half that, if not less. We're about to arrive at another stop and it looks like a great little place, loads of wood board houses, nicely maintained with well manicured lawns; there's something peaceful about these small towns (or smallish towns). Paoli is, on reflection, not as small as I thought. The town grew up around an inn in 1769 and was the site of a big battle between the British and Patriot troops, according to Wikipedia, known as the Battle of Paoli. It was also home of Max Patkin, a baseball player and clown.

Arriving at Philadelphia station...

The guard says 25 minutes until Philadelphia and I can't believe how fast the time has flown. Outside the window it's looking a bit suburban. We've just gone through Wayne and the houses are big, loomy affairs and now we're here in Philly. They've turned off the lights for some reason and I know they're planning to change the locomotive, but it's now 1417hrs and I think there's about three to four hours to go before we arrive in New York. A lot of people have disembarked and they've switched off the lights. A few of us are sitting here in the dark as they detach the locomotive and fit one on the other end and now the train is travelling in the opposite direction heading towards Trenton. We've taken on more passengers too, but not that many. I've still got two seats to myself as the train picks up speed and passes grafitti-covered walls and bridges. Once again, things get a little more suburban, but it's messy out there now, containers covered in graffiti, scenery that looks familiar and then I remember why. Exactly a year ago I was here taking a train out to Chestnut Grove and I remember some of these downtrodden neighbourhoods.

Mint tea and a cookie - and what a great cookie!

The streets are looking rough, there are derelict factories, a plane in the sky pulling along an advertising message, but it's too far away to read from the train. On either side of the train it looks like a bomb site of scrap metal and graffiti, parking lots and rundown houses, not the sort of place you'd want to be wandering around late at night. The Jug Handle Inn is advertised, I see a bridge. Industrial sprawl, broken factory windows. Rosenbaum Injury Law. And then we cross a river and, presumably, the state line as we're now in New Jersey and place called Trenton.

Travelling in style (it wasn't THAT good)

The light industrial sprawl and downtrodden neighbourhoods are eventually replaced by woods and greenery and the train is now heading east and I'm not sure of the next stop. Suddenly, more sprawl, a trailer park and a lorry park, the rear-ends of articulated lorries or 'rigs' as the Americans call them, and then woods again and concrete railway sleepers piled up. Flats, a marshalling yard, cranes, lengths of rusty-looking rail and a brownfield site ready to be developed. A freeway, another river, another site ripe for development into residential housing, more housing, we whizz through a station at speed, a leafy suburb, a lake and a fountain, possibly a park and then FedEx trailers, odd bits of graffiti here and there, jet skis and another station passed through at speed. Tennis courts.

At Philadelphia - where's the locomotive?

I've just eaten a ham and cheese baguette. It had a posh name that involved Swiss cheese, but it was basically a cheese and ham roll. I'm now sipping another tea, not mint but possibly camomile, not sure, but I said yes when it was offered. I doubt I'll eat again until dinner. Outside a Home Depot and then low industrial buildings, rigs and white vans, a hotel and new flats. We're going at quite a speed now and it's nearly 5pm, probably around an hour to go and I could be anywhere in northern England on the outskirts of any provincial city. Everything looks fairly quaint, but are these good or bad neighbourhoods, it's hard to tell when you're in a foreign country. I spot a low-flying jet landing somewhere and it all looks fairly pleasant.

Not far from New York...

I'm loving this train ride and wish I could go home all the way by train, but I can't as they haven't built a bridge across the Atlantic yet. I wonder if that's possible?

Where the streets have a name...

We will soon arrive at New York Penn Station and I'm wondering if this is the end of the line. Nope, it's Newark Penn Station. Why has every station got the word 'Penn' included in its name? We're still headed east according to my iphone and I'm now informed we're nearly there, just 15 minutes to go.

Room 1306...Renaissance Hotel 57, NY

Crossing another river and it's more of the same. Parking lots full of trucks and vans, new flats, the New York Red Bulls stadium, marshalling yards. and the train's running parallel to the river, there are subway trains too. Is it the Passaic River? Marshland and in the distance skyscrapers, but not the famous New York skyline. My view is obscured by young trees. Roads, trucks, containers, we're almost there. More marshland. And now we're in a tunnel. This could quite easily be the end of the line.

I disembarked and took a taxi to my hotel, the Renaissance on 130 East 57th Street and I'm only a six-minute walk from where I need to be tomorrow. I'm only here for one reason: to pick up emergency travel documentation so I can leave the country. If you've been reading past posts, you'll know the story, but if not, click here.