I used to love trains. I wasn’t compulsive about it, mind you. I’ve never taken up toy train sets as a hobby. But I have–while trapped behind a steering wheel waiting for one to go by, or after having been awoken at 2 AM by a distant, mournful whistle–been lured into irrational but romantic notions of trains as living, soul-possessing entities, steel-clad transients that never sleep, are always on the move.
I could never see a boxcar without envisioning the hoboes she surely carried within her warm-blooded womb, ragged men that heated canned beef stew over a can of Sterno while staring without human expression at the hand they’d been dealt, then raising their bets with the choisest cigarrette butts they’d harvested during the day.
Hoboes are still around, by the way. I’d thought they’d been overrun in the same manner that Homo Erectus inherited the Earth from Neanderthal. But I stumbled onto “Hobo” by Eddie Joe Cotton. A good read.
Trains–worthy of the term–have all but vanished, however. I’m not sure when it happened, wasn’t paying attention. But suddenly I’ve snapped awake and noticed that boxcars, graincars and tankcars occupy–for the most part–the same obscurity as Vinyl 33 1/3 LPs. And cabooses occupy the same graveyard as rotary-dial telephones.
The vinyl LPs and rotary phones I can live without. But I miss trains.
I always loves travelling by train in Europe. A great, cheap way to see the countryside and meet the people. Eurail passes gave me some of my fondest memories.
Move to New York, MrDarkness. All the damn trains you want. There’s the NYC Subway (my personal best time is just over 26 hours – minus scheduled bathroom breaks.) There’s Metro-North Rail Road, the Long Island Railroad, the PATH, the SIRT, New Jersey Transit, and the HBLR. And the Shore Line East and SEPTA are both a train ride away.
Plus there’s Amtrak which goes to a bunch of interesting places.
My God, I’d be happy to send you some of ours. Yeah, a train’s whistle is very soothing when you’re lying in bed half-asleep, but when you’re caught by two trains trying to cross an intersection, the magic evaporates. Some of my dislike undoubtedly comes from having to cross the railroad tracks every morning to go to class when I was in college(except when the train would stop, blocking the tracks…)
-Lil
No, you miss my point, Friedo. I’m speaking of freight trains, and all the magic they used to imply. They’ve become homogenized. Nothing left now but an engine pulling an interminable string of flatcars, each with truck trailers stacked double upon each.
Having had the pleasure of working with steam engines - there will never be anything like them. The massive amount of sheer power, vibrating under your hands - the feel of the rails vibrating…it was an incredible experience. There are so few left now, and most of the really big ones (Norfork & Western 1218 and 611, for example) have been retired due to the high cost of insurance for excursion trips. There’s just something about seeing the fall leaves in North Georgia behind a steam engine…
I was out running last week and got passed by the Ringling Brothers’ train. Now that’s something you don’t see every day. Very cool, even though it startled me out of 10 years of growth.
Build your own.
This fall, a friend and I are going to build a large HO train layout.
This is ostensively for the kids. (Yeah, right. My daughter is only 8 and she knows we adults want to play with the trains).
You can even get train whistle sound effects pretty easily.
I miss trains all the time - because the buggers are always late!
Train travel in Great Britain is rather more commonplace than in the US and is the preferred method of commuting in big cities such as London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow etc. It is also the first choice for longer distance travel and, for those living in the south-east, is by far the easiest way of getting to Paris or Brussels.
Our trains tend to crash rather less frequently than yours…
The freight trains that used to go through my home town no longer do – the tracks have been idle for years, although all the bridges and signals are still there. As a kid I used to run to see the train going through the cut at the other end of the street from where we lived.
I used to ride the passenger trains between Boston and New York all the time. I took it again this summer. It’s still the most heavily-travelled run, although the experience is different with the airline-type seats than with the old style seating. I’ve taken US trains elsewhere in the country as well, and ridden trains in Europe.
If you’re nostalgic about the railroads, there are clubs you can join. One of my wife’s cousins is insane over trains. His cellar is ringed with miniature-scale trains that he and his friends run of a regular timetable, and his walls are covered with railroad antiques and paraphernalia.
Amtrak between New York City and Albany is one of the nicest rides you’ll see. The train follows the Hudson the entire length and you get a beautiful view of the river. It’s also one of Amtrak’s more profitable runs – usually full on weekdays.
Reality Chuck – I took it, agers ago, in the winter. Beautiful, as you say. But the food in the dining car was atrocious – gray French Toast. I hope things have gotten better.
It’s hard for me to miss trains, since they’ve ‘never’ been around. The last time I rode a train in the States (except for Knott’s Berry Farm and Disneyland) was when I was about five years old, from San Diego to Anaheim. That was only because my parents couldn’t take my sister and me up to grandma’s house. So I didn’t have experience of trains being a common way to travel when I was growing up. Everybody drove. Or they’d take a jet. Or dad would fire up the Cessna.
I did travel by train exclusively when I was in Europe for five weeks in the '80s. I liked that stations and terminals, and I liked that I could take a night train so that I wouldn’t have to find a hostel to sleep in. I wish there were more trains out west, and that they weren’t so expensive. (I did consider taking one to New Orleans once, but it was much more expensive than flying.)
My father spent his entire career as an employee of the RF&P (Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac) Railroad, which used to run between Richmond and Alexandria. He started in the early 1950s, and so just had a few years of working around steam engines. He retired in 1992 after 40 years on the job. I have his Hamilton Railroad watch that he had to buy as a condition of employment. It cost $99.99 and he and my mother thought they’d never pay it off.
As to freight trains, he has often told me that the romance of the idea of riding the rails was largely a fantasy. The men who tended to do it were dangerous, often alcoholic, and far from the public’s idea of the gentle, but down on his luck hobo. The railyard police were not to be trifled with, and if they caught you trying to hop a train you were probably going to be beaten to within an inch of your life.
Every year the entire family would ride the train from Fredericksburg to Richmond for the company’s annual employee appreciation night. The food in the club car was always very, very good (strictly Southern fare - VA ham, fried chicken, etc.). The waiters were old black men in starched white jackets and black pants. Daddy seemed to know all of them by name. He was “Mr. Robert” to them.
I still travel by train every chance I get, but it isn’t quite the same.
I don’t miss trains… If you’re planning of taking Amtrak up the NE corridor and you’re going north from Baltimore, you’ll pass 250 yards from my house. I love hearing the trains at night.
