Memories of trains

The earliest is not of the train but the train station: Pennsylvania Station in New York City. My earliest trip was to Atlantic City for a summer holiday. At the age of six, more or less, I was not too conscious of the train ride but that station! Its huge size, the light streaming through what seemed like glass everywhere, people on the move through the concourse on their way to trains--the impression is unforgettable. Much later as a young woman I enjoyed going through the station just to enjoy that size and those people. There was also a cafe, the Savarin, where I could stop for lunch when working at Macy's, just across the street. Tearing down this magnificant building was the beginning of a strong historical preservation movement, not only in the city, but nationwide.

Sometime after its destruction I traveled on the Lehigh Valley RR, the Black Diamond, on my way to college. Another journey not too well remembered, though the sound of the steam engine as it whistled its way along Lake Cayuga echoed around the campus as long as I was a student.

My first job after graduation was with Pennsylvania RR as a ticket agent. I worked in a city ticket office on 47th Street in NYC, first as a telephone reservation clerk, then promoted to the front desk as an information clerk. The next step was becoming a ticket agent, a seller of tickets, maker of reservations, planner of trips! After a couple of weeks half a dozen of us (all females as there were no newly hired men--they were all off fighting WWII) were given a tour of the Penn RR equipment which meant a trip from NY to Chicago, Philadelphi and Washington, mostly so that we could become familiar with the various types of accommodations on Pennsy trains. In Philadelphia, Pennsy's home base, we attended some classes also. This was a dream job, ended only when the 'boys' began returning from service and it became "Last hired, first fired".

Not much railroading after that until I married a man who was as rail-conscious as I was. I had my history of working for Pennsy as well as loving train travel and he had a grandfather who worked for the railroad which meant he got to take lots of train trips.

Baaaad news

Talk about destroying fond memories. Everything I'm reading today is bad news for Amtrak. A country that once had the greatest rail system in the world is about to collapse--or will do so if the present administration has its way. A Passenger Rail Investment Reform Act was introduced in Congress on April 14 that is supposed to "breathe new life into the nation's inter-city rail service" and "improve Amtrak's operations nation-wide". So much is overlooked in the administration's determination to make these so-called improvements: the subsidies to roads and highways, to aviation--that to call the miniscule (by comparison) subsidy of Amtrak some kind of drain on the budget boggles the mind.

Not that this is a new notion for the Office of Management and Budget: they've been trying for 25 years to cut off funding but now the president has some congressional conservatives who believe the government shouldn't be subsidizing a corporations. BUT Amtrak was never created as a private enterprise business. It was founded by Congress to take over passenger travel service that the freight railroads had been operating at a great loss. And transportation needs have always been subsidized by government: building lighthouses, dredging harbors, and even, believe it or not, laying out the national highways. Subsidies for roads have doubled, for aviation nearly tripled. And for Amtrak--virtually flat.

For my part, I'm convinced the railroad traveling public has little idea as to what is happening. If things go from the present bad to worse, I'm going to distribute flyers on my next Amtrak trip explaining to the passengers what they are about to lose (if it's not already lost by then).

The past exists

Last night we three, father, mother and daughter, traveled a mini-memory path. We viewed a DVD of historic western rail trips and enjoyed reliving the experience of riding one or two of them. I guess the most memorable to me was our ride on the Durango and Silverton. Alas, this was back in a time when I wasn't keeping a travel diary so exactly when it was I can't tell but she was young enough to enjoy every minute of everything we did. It was, as I recall, an extended Western journey and our single day excursion on the D&S was only one of many highlights. We rode in an open car, the better to enjoy the scenery as the train skirted the river or creek or stream, and oohing and aahing over every turn in the track. There might well have been soot from the locomotive all over us when we returned but none of us would have cared.

The video we watched shows no evidence of a loss of interest in this bit of the past. Passengers, young and old, still get their thrills from the ride that is now more than a hundred years old. Who, back in the days when this was a working railroad, transporting the silver miners back and forth, that their route would be enjoyed by people in no way connected to the work of a railroad, but were just getting their kicks by riding an old narrow-gauge railroad.

Destroying Amtrak

It has become one of the present administration's goals to, as they put it, "reform" Amtrak. What they really want to do is destroy the national system. One of the earliest indications as to what was happening was noted in a Feb. 8 report out of Chicago that Sen. Dick Durbin said during a press conference in Chicago's Union Station that he couldn't think of a worse "idea than eliminating the only passenger rail service in America". He noted that the government subsidizes other forms of transportation (air, highway travel) and that it should also subsidize Amtrak which helps keep cars off the highways. What triggered this was the revelation that the budget GWB proposed the day before provides no operating funds for Amtrak and the president is pushing for privatization and for cutting unprofitable routes, which essentially means the transcontinental routes.

On Feb. 9 a report noted that the proposed cuts could end passenger trainservice in Arkansas. The Texas Eagle passes through Arkansas on its route between St. Louis and Texas. Rep. Marion Berry, D-Ark, called the cuts "illogical--infrastructure is the lifeblood of rural America. We cannot expect to eliminate transportation options for growing areas of this country and expect their econoies to continue to expand." Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark, said that he was concerned and thought that for the "President to cut vital programs such as Amtrak, while also calling for making his tax cuts permanent, is wrong."
Dr. Bill Polalr, president of Arkansas Rail, a 27-year-old passenger train advocacy group said the president's proposal is shortsighted. He thought if the president's budget were to be enacted, it would be "the end of Amtrak as we know it. . .it would be the end of passenger rail service in America and that is one reason that Congress won't allow that to happen." He plans on contacting congressmen around the state and lobbying officials whose towns may be directly impacted by a loss of commerce if routes are eliminated.

Next came Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta's ride around the country (I wonder if he went by Amtrak?) "explaining" what the president had in mind. He persisted in saying that Amtrak is "dying and everyone knows it" but rejecting the notion that he's trying to help it do that. He is trying to convince the public that we're wasting money with a funding systemthat is "fundamentally irrational." He claims that it "runs money-losing routes and diverts cash away from repairs to cover operating losses." This was Feb. 14 in Chicago, Feb. 22 in Charlotte, NC, March 23 in Boston, March 25 in Detroit (at the railroad station--did he get there by train?) and who knows where next?