Maybe you have read that Amtrak is asking for a couple billion bucks to upgrade the tracks. They need it! We boarded Amtrak train No. 22 in Tucson, Arizona one morning, the 20th of January, headed for, of all places, Boston. We had last been on an "overnighter" in 1965 ...from Aurora, Ill. to Seattle, with a stop off in Whitefish, Montana with the kids in tow.
This time we missed the kids. We lounged. We lounged for four full days and three nights in a private bedroom (Ed. note: O yeah??) As first class passengers, we had the choice of meals in the dining car, or, we could have them brought to us. A newspaper greeted us with a hot cup of coffee in the morning, and a cheery "Good Morning" from Manuel, who took care of making up the berths.
I took the top bunk, and it was no small accomplishment to launch myself upward, and finally nestle under the roof of the car. Getting down and back up in the middle of the night to enjoy some relief in the very abbreviated toilet with shower, was another feat!
Beauty of the scenery in the West is something to behold from a train window: right up against the Rocky Mountains, and out onto the desert floor, with snow-capped mountains in the distance, and maybe a ranch house or two. The joy is the motion and movement of racing through the scenery...that all too often comes to a halt.
We share the tracks! There is, according to the intercom, a freight train up ahead...so we sit and wait. While the delays seem to be built into the schedule, the halts interrupt our built-in sense of travel and, "let's get there"! The twenty-minute stops on a siding somewhere are all too familiar...having done this before on a troop train from Great Lakes to LA, exactly, to the day, fifty six years ago. Then it took us two weeks to get there!
Fully one half the schedule from Tucson to Boston will be spent in the state of Texas. Within a few hours we are in Texas; two days later we are still in Texas. An interesting state, to be sure: open flat desert and scrub, rocky mountains in the distance, winding around at Big Bend and finally giving in to back yards of settlements. It makes you want to go home and clean up YOUR back yard.
There are scheduled short stops along the way to get into parkas and stand around, watch the train crews and meet and talk with fellow passengers. We all get to know each other. We share a table in the dining car. The food is good, and there's plenty of it.
We are impressed with how the crews and staff really try very, very hard. They are up against it. With only one set of tracks, it is impossible to be on time. Long one-hundred-plus freights are lined up waiting for the next one to clear "...in sequence toil all forward to contend".
Somewhere in between, our Amtrak train squeezes in.
Chicago is a transfer point, as it always has been. Now there is only Union Station, and it looks the same as it did in its glory days. Same huge waiting room with the same beautiful mahogany benches and the endless echoes. The Amtrak section, which replaces the tunnel that led to the Canal St. "L" station, and the CA&E to Glen Ellyn, has a private lounge for First Class (sleeper) passengers to wait the four hours to transfer to the Lake Shore Limited to Boston and New York. I am impressed with the connections...Amtrak is trying.
I have to remember it is a reminder , if not the same, of the thirties and the green Pullman cars of the 20th Century Limited I traveled with my mother to visit in Syracuse. Then, the train ran right down the middle of the street. Now, it is out by the new mall and airport.
Nevertheless, the snow filled fields and farms of upstate New York are beautiful...a reminder of the Erie Canal and the "Water Level Route", and the way it was. Finally, we are in New England and running through the Berkshires; splendid snow covered hills, naked hardwood forests and tidy farms!
The familiar high rises of Boston hove into sight, two hours late, of course, but it is exciting to get to Back Bay, and then to South Station, a finely re-modeled and compact terminus connected to the bus station. It is a shame that we can't keep on going; we hear rumors of it as we are headed further down east to the mid coast of Maine.
The bus terminal is handy...however, the next bus is the following day. We missed this one by two hours and fifteen minutes. By cellular arrangement back in Massachusetts somewhere, George, the limo driver is standing there at the end of the platform with our luggage that gets there before us...That's a change!
Our sojourn and "lounge" are over. Well, it was almost coast to coast, and we say that we DID it. Something to remember. The last time we flew, it took two full days and nights due to canceled flights and delays and weather.
I think there may be some improvement in seventy years. I'm not sure.