9200 miles on the rails

It was a long, long trip on Amtrak but well worth it, if only for the chance to see how my version of Amtrak's problems differ from the administration's. We (my husband and I) were aboard a train daily from June 28 to July 15 with only a few hours in between portions of the trip in a station.

It did not begin well. Our taxi pick-up at home was prompt and we were at Columbia's station about an hour before the train was due. As soon as we checked our luggage (one piece going directly to our destination, Portland, Oregon) we saw the notice on the Arrivals/Departures board that the Silver Star was 2 1/2 hours late. No reason known for why it was so late. Since we had now something like 3 1/2 to 4 hours to sit in a station with no enhancements at all was almost unbearable and there was no place to walk to for some kind of diversion. When the Star finally arrived at 2:30am the few dozen passengers boarded as quickly as possible so as to get some sleep on the way to their various destinations. For us it was easy to tuck into our respective roomettes and sleep until we were ready to get up for breakfast in the dining car. Since we were now expecting to be in Orlando closer to noon than the scheduled 8:20am, we could take our time about everything. As we sped through the Florida countryside I was more than glad that we never thought to retire there--such dismal scenery.

Arriving in Orlando we had a relatively short wait for our departure on the Sunset Ltd, thank goodness. Orlando's station is decent enough but not one in which you'd want to spend several hours which would have been the case had we been on time. I guess Amtrak doesn't count on passengers having much of a layover so they don't have any amenities to offer beyond restrooms and a drinks dispenser. But the Sunset departed on time--1:45pm--and we were off on the second leg of our journey, New Orleans. Since we'd had no lunch we opted for the earliest dinner reservation, 5pm. Steaks, mixed veg, a baked potato, a salad, some Merlot wine, cheese cake and coffee more than made up for the loss of a mid-day meal.

A knock on my roomette door the next morning got me going; Ron was already up and dressed. The weather was foul, very heavy rain just about all the way to New Orleans. How nice to be dry and comfortable with somebody else doing the driving. I was glad to have my knitting as I was just about finished with the first of several books I'd brought along. We noticed herons and small flying birds in the vast bayous of Mississippi, occasional signs of man'w works, remnants of docks and at one point an enormous structure that appeared to have been an oil derrick--huge, sitting on stilts well above the water. The usual accumulation of freight trains coming and going, as well as right ahead of us, caused another delay, putting us in New Orleans about three hours late. Again it didn't matter: our departure on the City of New Orleans was scheduled for 1:45pm so we had little more than an hour to kill.

The station in New Orleans has had some considerable renovations since our last run through there. But it still seems to be in a little regarded area as there is only one newstand and one fast-food restaurant. The first class lounge, which we would have been entitled to use, was closed for fumigation purposes so we had to sit with the hoi-polloi in the general area. Not a problem, though, as we had a couple of interesting conversations, one with a young British woman who told of her experience with passport clearance when she entered the country (fingerprinting, etc) and the other with a couple, NARP members, who were completing the last leg of their round-the-country by rail, much like our own trip.

The City of New Orleans departed promptly but delays began as we barely left the station. There were several stops along the way to drop off or pick up passengers. No lack of passenger traffic. We spoke to more people about the Amtrak funding problem and none of them were aware of it. There wasn't much to comment on about this stretch, mostly farmland, but no more rain. We were in Chicago not only on time, but a few minutes early. At least it meant we could have lunch at The Corner Bakery which I'm convinced has the best sandwiches in the country. Since I hadn't slept well after about 4:30am I was glad to sit and snooze in the Metropolitan Lounge while Ron went out to photograph whatever he thought interesting.

As usual, another delay. This time in departing from Chicago. Supposed to depart at 1:50pm we didn't collect our bags and get a ride to the train until 1:20. After settling in our compartment (bedroom this time) an announcement asked coach passengers to occupy only one seat as others coming from the Lake Shore Ltd were boarding and the Zephy was booked solid! Another knife in Mileta's argument that no one rides Amtrak! We made a 7pm dinner reservation and had very enjoyable dinner table companions, though I suspect some topics (relating to the gov't) might have been inappropriate as he did contract work for companies like Halliburton. We had to set our watches back an hour as the next day we'd be on mountain time.

Up early and a good thing as the dining car was full when we went down; we had to put our names on the "call list". Not yet into Denver so the scenery was still flat, cattle and ranch land. Our breakfast table companions were delightful, two gentlemen, slightly younger than us, were from Toronto on their way to Salt Lake City for a barbershop quartet convention. Later we sat in the lounge car so as to get the best views of the mountains as we headed for Winter Park. The spectacular scenery brought lots of people to the lounge car where we sat until lunch time. With our table companions, Malinda and Gary Parks from near Sacramento, we had a great discussion about trains, outdoor life and their new home construction. Shortly after crossing into Utah we ran into signaling problems, forcing the train to sit for more than an hour. Nothing like being in the middle of a desert to stall! Of course this would mean another delay in our arrival at Emeryville.

Our dinner companions were the worst we've had in ages. In Chicago I had noticed a young woman and a severely handicapped man boarding, using the handicapped room. Although not wheelchair bound he was bent and twisted with a considerable lack of mobility. They were seated with us. No problem with the man, though he was very hard to understand as he had severe speech problems but his daughter was impossibly cheerful. She accompanied everything she said with laughter, suitable to what she was saying or not. It was the most awful dinner hour.

More later--------

No Rails?

I am trying to imagine the country without any transcontinental rail service which is probably a no-brainer for most people. I have, however, enjoyed too many rail journeys to think that, after my upcoming major trip, there might never be another. It is a possibility, given the present administration's view of what a railroad should be. As far as they're concerned we might just as well think of crossing the country by horse and wagon, I guess, since the airlines are all heading for bankruptcy and no one's doing much about that situation, either.

I'm not without some compunctions about the June-July trip. We had so many delays and interruptions last year that it's not impossible to have even more this year, especially on the way to Portland. Departing from Columbia at nigh on to midnight it's conceivable the Silver Star could be late--so on our way by one or two in the morning? Which, of course, means a late arrival in Orlando--or will they take us off at Sanford or Jacksonville for our next leg on the Sunset Ltd? Probably the run into New Orleans will be on time (it's the NO to LA that is so often late) and our departure for Chicago will be on time as that's the origination point for the City of New Orleans. Will it arrive in Chicago on time? We have nearly four hours before our departure on the California Zephyr but I don't know if there's much to do with that amount of time. I think most of Chicago's sights are pretty far from Union Station. Then it's on to Emeryville and five hours (if we're on time) there before we take the Coast Starlight to Portland. Maybe enough time to get into San Francisco for dinner?

I'm glad we arrive in Portland late in the afternoon: time to clean up, change and find a good dinner, not that that's a problem. I feel quite confident about restaurants in that city!

Given the hours of departure and return of the excursions we've signed up for I am dubious about how eager I'll be to go dining out every night. With Laura joining us I'd hate to be a wet blanket about going out for dinner. By the end of the week we'll all be ready to slow down. As she goes on to her Forest Service program in Idaho we head back to Chicago on the Empire Builder, then New York on the Lake Shore Ltd. An overnight in New York (no more as July is not my favorite time of year in the city) and return to Columbia the next morning, arriving in Cola at 11:55, home by one or so.

I don't know how much enthusiasm I'll have for any other trips this year!!

It don't get no respect!

Try as one might there just isn't any counter-attack to Sec'y Mineta's (and the administration's) fulminations about Amtrak. Talk about a bully pulpit. He's all over the country, meeting with this group and that--but no one else comes along with any rebuttals about what he and/or the White House really wants. Determined to dispose of Amtrak or any other nationwide passenger rail system they continue to paint Amtrak as a money losing corporation. I'd love to know how many rail passengers they have spoken to, other than commuters. I guess I've got a preconceived notion that traveling by rail can be a relaxing way to travel, certainly nowadays where airline travel is no longer what it used to be. Americans have become so overwhelmed by the notion that they should get to where they're going as quickly as possible--therefore fly--or by having complete control over how and when you get there--therefore drive yourself--that they've forgotten, if they ever knew, how great a train ride can be.

I'm about to take my fourth major trip with Amtrak and I'm looking forward to it as much as I used to anticipate a flight to anywhere.

Empty Trains??

The latest info I have found discrediting the current administration's disinterest in funding Amtrak is in the May 2005 issue of Railfan & Railroad. Under the Capitol Lines heading by Wes Vernon he reports that the "overall view in Washington is that there is little chance Amtrak is going to die" but he cautions that this should not lead to false optimism. Emphasis is placed on the importance of Amtrak's route through Montana: the Empire Builder contributes nearly $14 million annually to its economy. There is no parallel bus service on a 982-mile stretch from Spokane, WA to Minot, ND, and Greyhound buses don't stop anywhere between Billings, MT and Minneapolis.

A tour director who uses many of Amtrak's services says that if the long-distance services are eliminated, "the few surviving corridors will rapidly die due to a lack of connecting passengers and the vastly increased cost of carrying the full expense of the rump of Amtrak." NARP, the National Association of Rail Passengers, says trains are filled and Secretary Mineta's comments are not resonating with the people who are riding the trains. This same tour director offers the contrast between the operating subsidy of Amtrak with that of highway spending: $1.2 billion in 2004 with $133 billion in 2001--and 40% of that was not recovered from gas taxes.

Whither the trains? I'm probably repeating myself with the comparison of riding a train nowadays with flying somewhere. Yes, it's restricting me from traveling abroad but given the exchange rate that's no big loss. The difficulties involved with security at the airports still rankles me beyond reason so for now I'm more than content to travel about the US by Amtrak!

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?

Europe's trains

When that young lady got married she found a like-minded guy who also loved riding the trains. After they made several transcontinental trips by train (pre-Amtrak) some with a six-year-old, they ventured overseas. At first they used the four-wheeled vehicle type of transportation but after a while HE got tired of the double yellow lines and not being able to enjoy the scenery so they tried out the trains in Britain and on the continent.

Both were more than satisfactory. It was a time when boarding a train still meant opening the door to a compartment right from the platform. To HER this was like living a movie scene from now long-forgotten British or French films. Together they criss-crossed England, Scotland and Wales. They crossed the Channel and explored train stations in Paris, Copenhagen, Oslo, Hamburg--wherever trains would begin and end.

The wonderful novelty of reading a departure board in London's Victoria Station, noting the track number, rushing to board your train and then settling down in your compartment, often with several other passengers, was a far cry from the American experience of boarding a coach car and having seats lined up a la airline format. On the continent they rode one of the TGV trains from Paris to the south and marvelled at the speed. Nothing like this to compare in the U.S. How ridiculous!

Dining aboard was also a novelty at times. In the German trains they were served at their seats by a waitress, with china plates and stainless steel knives and forks. In many cases, a trolley was pushed through the cars, stocked with sandwiches, assorted snacks, tea or coffee, cold drinks.

Perhaps all this was too long ago. It's been several years since they've ridden European trains. But they know the TGV in France still exceeds any speeds in the U.S. Governments can give the people comfortable transportation without adding more highways and increasing pollution. If they can do it there, why not here?

Saving The Rails

Many years ago a young woman, fresh out of university, got her first real job as a ticket agent with Pennsylvania Railroad. On 47th Street in New York City, a large glass-fronted office provided travelers with information about rail trips, long or short, and the chance to buy tickets without going to the station. Several railroads--New York Central, New York New Haven & Hartford as well as Pennsylvania-- shared the huge space; counters where passengers planned long-distance holidays or bought their communter tickets lined the walls. Although there was no seating for the future travelers, it didn't seem to matter to them how long they had to stand to plan a trip. Ticket agents were prepared with timetables and brochures describing various routes across the country and the time needed to do this didn't matter to them, either.

The system map in those days was, compared to the present-day Amtrak system, extremely extensive. The transcontinental trains, the north-south routes, featured trains with nostalgic names: The City of New Orleans, The California Zephyr or The Broadway Limited. People were, of course, accustomed to a more leisurely pace to their cross-country trips as this was still before the desire for speed in getting from place to place.

What happened to "travelin' by train'? How did it become a third rate means of transportation for Americans? Why have other nations--Japan, France--surpassed the once superior railroads of the nation?