One of my favorite writers and bloggers, Rachel Charmley of Changing Skin and other stories ( you should follow her blog, if you like good fiction) asked me the other day what it is like to travel on American trains. Rachel is British and so lives in a land that has nothing but what we would call regional trains, much like, I suppose, our North East Corridor service. This is my response, I hope it pleases her. 
You know when Jess was talking about my trip back east, here, she said this:
Well, Neo is on his way East by train; somehow that seems a much more appropriate mode of travel for our favourite engineer than a plane; it is also, and that seems appropriate too, a more civilised way of travelling.
Other than the fact that she overstates my qualifications rather dramatically, she’s right. It is much more civilized, hearkening back to a time when we treated each other in a civilized manner, no matter our station in life. As a conservative, and as a practical man, I have many qualms about Amtrak qua Amtrak but, it remains my preferred method of travel.
One of the things that bugs me is the high cost of sleeping accommodations on the train, like so many things in America, there is a historical reason for it. Up until World War I, a sleeper berth was affordable for almost anyone travelling and then the Wilson administration took over the railroads during the war (and mucked the job up so badly that Roosevelt didn’t even consider it) and added an extra fare for first class trains, like so many temporary government measures, it’s still with us today.
I’ve written before about the trip, in an article called Reflections on a Train Trip, which talks a bit about the sights one sees on the trip, so there’s little point in talking about it again. Instead let’s talk a bit about the predecessor roads on this trip.
When I leave, I join my train at an old division point of the Chicago Burlington and Quincy, Usually called the Burlington Route. This is the route of one of the very first streamliners in the 1930s, The Denver Zephyr, last I knew one of the train sets was on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, The Burlington itself was of course the king of the Granger Roads, reaching into nearly every county between the Mississippi and Denver, and taking a large share of the agricultural production of the Heartland to Chicago or New Orléans for transhipment. It was a solid, conservative road, financed by Boston money, which was often British in origin. We will follow this route through the shops of the Burlington at Burlington, Iowa, on the banks of the Mississippi River all the way to Chicago. If all goes well this leg will last about 13 hours starting at 0100 Central time and will cover about 706 miles.
A panoramic view of the front of the station
That will bring us into Chicago Union Station at 14:50 still in the Central time zone. Transcontinental train travel in America has nearly always gone through Chicago, this has always been the major change from eastern roads to western, although there are others, such as St. Louis and New Orléans. But Chicago was built by the railroads and shipping, it grew from shipping the produce of the “Breadbasket of the World” to the world, by rails and by lake. It is quite a town, at once one of the largest Polish cities in the world, one of the largest Irish cities in the world, and many others. Home to jazz, pizza, pirogues, and ribs.
Chessie
At 18:40 we will be off on the Capitol Limited. This train carries the name of the Chesapeake and Ohio’s flagship train, which was famed for the scenery in the Potomac Gorge, and its wonderful chicken pot pie, back in the old days. It’s route includes using the New York Central’s route across Ohio and Indiana, which was the only way the C&O could compete on time with the Pennsylvania’s Washington section of the Broadway Limited. When things are good, I’ll usually buy a sleeper on this leg, there’s enough time to get a reasonable nights sleep, which is not true on the western leg. This was not that year, but you know, unlike like the cattle car confines of an airplane, long distance coaches have enough room (especially leg room) to sleep fairly well without beating each other up,
If all goes well, I will leave the train in Pittsburgh at about 05:00 the next morning, having racked up another 491 miles. And here our layover will be rather boring since Amtrak’s depot is in the basement of the old Penn Station, and the only services are a bank of vending machines, and waiting room chairs more suited to an airport. But it’s fairly short because at 07:30 we’ll be off riding the Pennsylvanian.
And here we are on the track of what was known as the “Standard Railroad of the World” the Pennsylvania Railroad. It got that way because it was a mountain road competing with the water level route of the New York Central on one of the great trade routes of the world: New York to Chicago. It was done so well that the cost per mile was almost exactly the same to ship either road, as was the transit time. It was done by sheer engineering and competence, and maintaining the standards. Earlier, I referred to the Broadway Limited, many assume it refers to the street in New York City, it doesn’t. It recalls the “broad way of steel”, the Pennsylvania’s four track main from New York to Pittsburgh, where the Pennsylvania proper ended. from there it ran on leased lines, The Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne, and Chicago Railway (The Fort Wayne), The Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis Railroad (The Pan Handle Route) to Chicago and St. Louis, and others.
On the main west of Altoona, Pennsylvania is one of the engineering wonders of the world, the Horseshoe Curve. which was built by hand to replace the Allegheny Portage Railroad, which was very slow and expensive. Just a few miles on is Altoona itself, where the PRR’s main shops were located, and they manufactured their own steam locomotives and freight cars. And then when we reach Harrisburg, where we will change out our diesel locomotive for an electric, in what was (and still is) the largest electrification project on an American railroad. It started when the Railroad built the Hells Gate bridge into Manhattan, and the tunnels into the island as well to serve the station they were building: Pennsylvania Station, New York.
In one of the greatest acts of architectural vandalism ever committed, the station itself, based on the Roman Baths of Caracalla and on the scale of St. Peter’s Nave in Rome, was demolished in the early sixties to build the new Madison Square Garden. This is what spawned the historic building preservation movement in the United States.
And at about 14:12 we will reach our station, having journeyed almost exactly half way across the continent in a total of 36 hours, pretty comfortably, and treated with courtesy and respect all the way. Although I will admit that the diner is not what it used to be, a bland, overcooked steak, doesn’t compare to the first really good meal I had, Roast Duck l’Orange in the diner of a second class Pennsylvania train in the mid 60s, it’s still a bunch better than a bag of peanuts and a bottle of water, in a seat designed for a pygmy in a cattle car called an airplane, although I do fly when necessary, I consider it quite suboptimal.
