This seems to have been my first posting to the old blog, on 27 August 2002: "I love the train. Especially Trains that tilt. These are similar to, but different from, the Talgo ‘pendular’ trains used on Amtrak for the Seattle-Vancouver and -Portland runs. Hereabouts the tracks suck too bad for them to go anything like 125mph, to say nothing of 140."
Despite the sucky track, the Talgo makes the Portland run in substantially less time than the alternative (3.5 vs 4.5 parsecs) and the return leg on the alternative is always late. And the Talgo has business class, which everybody at my house will be taking not too many hours from now.