Talking the Train Talk

Everywhere I travel on Amtrak, in this case from the new Moynihan Train Hall in downtown New York to Chicago and then west on my beloved Southwest Chief to Lamy, New Mexico, I meet people who are dedicated to avoiding planes. Not because they are afraid of flying but because they will no longer put up with the demeaning experience of dealing with the airports, the delays and cancellations, the indifference of airline personnel who—with exceptions, of course—no longer seem to care.

An example of the different attitude on the train: at breakfast I left my purse in the diner and a woman working there somehow figured out the number of my compartment and walked through two long intervening passenger cars to return it to me (at which point I decided to strap it around my waist).

Yes, traveling in the sleepers is expensive (coach is incredibly cheap but entails sitting up all night) but those of us fortunate enough to be able to afford business class on the planes can afford to luxuriate in a tiny private compartment on the train, with two seats that convert into two bunks (although gymnastics are required to hoist oneself into the upper bunk now that the ladders are gone), a toilet and sink, lights, mirrors, hangers for clothes, WiFi and everything else one needs for comfort, plus free meals and drinks. The food is not particularly good but it matches what most food was like in this country before we all became gourmets.

The previous night in another fortuitous meeting at dinner, I learned a great deal about the trains from a man who works on reconstructing old passenger cars. He explained to me that the delays that plague Amtrak—once I was on a train that was ten hours late—are caused by the unregulated freights, sometimes as long as two hundred heavily-laden cars—can no longer allow the passenger trains, which have priority, rightly, to pass, because the freights are now too long to fit on the sidelines designed for that purpose. And of course the recent derailments in Ohio must be caused at least in part by the enormous size of these freights, another example of the need for Federal regulation.

My new friend also told me that one of the reasons the trains are struggling to find personnel, especially the engineers that run the locomotives, is that so many of the men they hire fail their drug tests. How many of the people now struggling to cross our southern border would jump at the chance to be trained for these jobs.

We U.S.-ers (I no longer say Americans because after all we don’t own the whole continent) are sociable people. Given a chance, we will smile and chat—but the chance has to be offered. Now that it is rare for strangers to make eye contact or to say a word of greeting—I know because I often seem to be the only pedestrian doing it—it takes a bit more of a chance to get us talking. The trains provide that. Of course it can be avoided if you want to squat in your tiny compartment but most of us get out to the diner or the lounge car.

My new friend told me that the crews are relatively well paid but that the “lifestyle”—unpredictable long hours away from home—is hard, and since the once powerful Union of Sleeping Car Porters, which offered African-American men some rare well-paying jobs, is now split into many smaller unions, probably the negotiating power is reduced. The working class in this country suffered a powerful blow when the unions were attacked and dismantled, although the ongoing Hollywood writers’ strike proves that some unions still have teeth. They all need to grow a few teeth, and even fangs, if the working class in this country is not to be destroyed.

Rolling through flatland Ohio now on the way to Chicago, I see the small towns from which young people have been fleeing for several generations. Once there was industry here—General Motors, etc.—polluting the streams and employing many men in soul-emptying routine labor with a financially stable retirement at the end of the road. Not the best life, perhaps, but at least somewhat reliable.

The small white frame houses march past, sometimes screened from the rails with thick green trees. There are peaked roofs, porches, garages, small yards. Women have lived and worked here for generations, keeping whatever jobs were available, probably in retail, cooking, cleaning, raising children and sweeping all those porches. My admiration goes to them now that the factories are closed, dark, even ruinous; women keep things moving along without recompense in any form, facing a future in which only old people in need of service remain.

They have much of which to be proud.

In Travel Amtrak Favorites of 2023