Trains

The year is 1955. I’m a youngster. I’m about to travel from Virginia to Florida by train. I stand on the station platform awaiting the arrival of Seaboard Air Line’s Silver Meteor. It roars into the station with such speed that I don’t see how it can stop in time, but it does. The sound of the engine, the smell of the diesel exhaust, the anticipation I feel as I step onto the train, the little button I press to get ice water, the design of the metal plates that cover the couplers between passenger cars: everything is new and different and is impressed upon my memory. The passenger cars are fairly quiet on the inside when the train is underway. But sometimes I open the door at the end of the car and step through to the next car. Momentarily I am outside of the passenger car and in the open space between cars. Steel wheels roar against steel tracks. Warm air gusts past my face carrying diesel fumes from the engine ahead.

When I was a kid, travel by train was almost a treat. Sometimes interesting things happened. Interesting to me, that is, but annoying to adults who only wanted to get to their destination. For example, once the train broke into two parts when one of the couplers somehow uncoupled. I was in the half of the train that had the engine. We backed up a long way to hook up with the missing half of the train.

Flash forward and the year is 1975. I’m riding Amtrak’s Mountaineer to Christiansburg, Virginia. It follows the route of Norfolk and Western’s Pocahontas up a long, gentle grade from the coastal city of Norfolk into the mountains of southwestern Virginia on its way to Cincinnati and Chicago. There is a dome car and I settle into one of its seats. The dome car is so called because it has a glass dome in the roof from which passengers can see in all directions around the train. I relax in my seat and watch the countryside pass by. The hours pass quickly. Soon the Mountaineer is at the small Christiansburg station and I detrain.

There was a time when trains were the civilized way to travel. A dining car (or diner) is like a full-service restaurant. You can order meals and drinks. Some trains have a lounge car (or club car) with large windows and comfortable seats. Lounge cars often have a small kitchen where a meal can be prepared to order. Some lounge cars only have a grill (grill car or café car) where you can order items like club sandwiches, burgers, and pizza.

Now everyone wants to fly and “get there” fast. If train travel were a novel, air travel is the Cliffs Notes version of that novel. I ask, “Where’s the fun?”