Coast to coast on Amtrak in winter
Jim and Pat from Illinois made the round-trip to D.C. by train to avoid the hassle of driving or flying. In the diner as the train passes historic Harper's Ferry, W.Va., Jim remarked, "it costs four times more and takes twice as long, but we prefer the train." They were traveling in a sleeper where meals are included but the fare is much higher.
Over 150 people were traveling on this overnight train. Doug, a former NASA executive in Washington, is a self-described "train nut." Resting a scanner on the seat beside him, Doug monitors communications between engineer and conductor. He interprets for a novice the various blasts from locomotive horn: two shorts when leaving a station, two longs-a short-and a long at rail crossings. Doug was headed to San Diego for a gathering of model train enthusiasts.
At 8 p.m. in Cumberland several Amish people in austere garb come aboard. Greeting a fellow passenger, an Amish woman in a long black dress smiles saying, "we usually travel in a horse and buggy." They're part of a larger Amish group from Indiana and Wisconsin traveling to El Paso.
The train is 10 minutes late reaching Pittsburgh where a few students disembark while others get on. They join a dozen high school students who have been doing community service in D.C. and are returning to Chicago. In coach, the price is right but getting a good night's sleep is a challenge.
The train slows to a crawl as a grey dawn breaks along Indiana's Lake Michigan shore. We slide past the industrial ruins of Gary and then into the Chicago yards. The Capitol Limited is only five minutes late when bells ring and passengers climb down onto the platform.
It is 8 a.m. in mid-January. Thus far the trip has been mostly smooth and enjoyable.
Each day 55 Amtrak trains pass through Chicago's glorious tall-ceilinged Union Station, as thousands of commuters hurry to their destinations, just as they have for more than a century.
The seven-car Southwest Chief is scheduled to depart at 3 p.m. At 3:05 there's an announcement that there's a problem with the engine but that it should be resolved soon. In fact it's a three-hour delay as a replacement engine is brought in because ours had a defective horn. To the passengers I speak to, the delay seems only a minor annoyance.
As a first-time cross-country traveler, I'm actually pleased with the delay as it should mean we'll see Dodge City, Kan., instead of gliding past in darkness. With 24 hours of train travel under my belt, my metabolism has slowed to a more relaxed pace.
Just after 6 p.m. there's the gentle nudge of forward movement and we're underway.
From Chicago we follow the historic route of the Santa Fe Railroad --Mendota, Galesburg, and Fort Madison on the Iowa side of the Mississippi River. Asleep in my roomette, I miss Kansas City and Topeka but am awake at 7 a.m. as we pull into Dodge City.
In Dodge there's a regular rotation of conductor and engineer but we're soon on our way, rushing past grain silos, feed lots and grazing cattle. From the window of the diner, I gaze out as we pass trucks on the adjacent highway. The Southwest Chief is 20,000 tons of steel thundering along at 70 mph.
By late morning we are in Colorado and the clock falls back one hour. It's snowing in La Junta where our female engineer and conductor complete their run. We head south along the Santa Fe Trail into the Rockies and New Mexico. We climb the 7,000-foot Raton Pass, the highest point on our route, and then drop down to Las Vegas, N.M., and then deserted Lamy, where a few passengers disembark for Santa Fe 15 miles away.
At Albuquerque there's a 30-minute stop where we take on fuel and Indian vendors do a brisk business in handicrafts.
Passengers say they're on the train either because they prefer it or want to see what it's like. We are a disparate group—retirees, students, Amish who don't fly, an autoworker from Kansas City and Amy, a Grateful Dead enthusiast from Illinois. With community seating in the diner, it's hard not to meet people aboard the Southwest Chief.
What a long-distance Amtrak train offers is a close-up view of the real America, warts and all. In the West beauty predominates.
Night descends as our train crosses Arizona but by morning we're in the sprawl of metropolitan Los Angeles. Palm trees and tidy watered lawns have replaced the desert scrub that prevailed since New Mexico. One more breakfast in the diner and we've arrived at our destination, the grand Spanish-style Union Station in downtown L.A.
Logic suggests that with few exceptions there shouldn't be passenger train service in the United States. A dominant mode of inter-city transportation for a century, America's railroads abandoned passenger trains in the 1960s as travelers preferred the automobile and the jet plane. Amtrak was created by congress as a public service in 1970.
While Amtrak couldn't exist without government subsidies, rail travel is on the rise. Amtrak has registered record ridership for 10 out of the past 11 years. Ridership is up 49% since 2000. Amtrak carried 31 million passengers in 2014 and says fares covered 85% of operating costs.
In summer rail travel is so popular several long distance runs sell out.
If you want to avoid the crowds, do as I did, ride Amtrak in winter. But bear in mind there's no e-mail access and no Wi-Fi. That exists only on Acela trains in the Northeast.