Ticket to Ride

by Tom Chesshyre

  In short, a train arrives – but it is not just any train. It is a special train, and Excited Train Guy is soon in raptures. The train has a bulbous, upturned nose and orange and yellow streaks running along the side of the otherwise brown body of the locomotive. Excited Train Guy begins his commentary in a tone that sounds excited yet somehow restrained: 'Oh, I've been waiting for this moment for months and it's finally here!'

  This period of cool observation does not last long. Bells ring out from the locomotive. Excited Train Guy begins to get very excited, very quickly indeed. The train rolls forwards beneath an oystergrey sky. 'I'm FINALLY going to get a heritage unit on camera!' he says. 'YEAH! ALL RIGHT!' he bellows. 'Look at that: a 1953 EA! WOOO-HOOO! Oh yeah, listen to that bell! Yeah, listen to that bell! Ah, take a look at that!'

  The locomotive blows its horn, sending out a deep resonating sound. Excited Train Guy: 'OH MY GOD! WHOOOOO! LISTEN TO THAT HORN!' The horn blows again. 'OH MY GOD! SHE'S BEAUTIFUL! SHE IS BEAUTIFUL! YEAH! ALL RIGHT! OH UH OH…'

  A blue, yellow and grey locomotive with Saratoga and North Creek written on its side is at the rear of the short train. It's just come into view. Excited Train Guy is temporarily lost for words as he assesses the new loco. 'Oh no, it's a BL2 too!' More horns blow. 'Oh, the SNC 52! OH MY GOD!' Quieter now, as though in awe: 'Oh, we're going to watch this – oh! This is special! This is special! Oh! Oh, that horn gives me the chills! And the chills have nothing whatsoever to do with how cold it is here!' As he says this, his camera pans round, following the train, catching a glimpse of another foamer who is also recording the moment. Excited Train Guy: 'AH! OH! That doesn't stop a foamer, especially when it comes to heritage equipment!' He is referring to the cold, which clearly means nothing to a foamer when an SNC 52 is passing by. 'Ah, this is fantastic! OH! Oh, my goodness! Look at that: blue and grey! Oh! Coupled to the – oh! – Iowa Pacific! Number 518! WHOOO-HOOO!'

  This cry is so loud that the other foamer appears to look round to take in Excited Train Guy. The horn blows again. 'AHHHHAAA! WOOO! Listen to that horn! Oh, that's fantastic! Oh my gosh! Look at that! All right. Ah! Oh!' He seems to be catching his breath here, and he quietly wonders what a couple of words written on the side of the blue, yellow and grey loco mean. He's not sure. 'Oh well,' he says, as though you cannot have it all in life: some mysteries will always remain. He perks up. 'Ah! This is just awesome! I have been waiting for this for months! Look at that: Illinois Central livery, right here in North Creek! Ah! That is AWESOME!' More bells. 'Aaahh! Wooo! Oh yeah! Can't believe I got this!' More bells, once again. 'Oh yeah! Ah! Heee-ahh!'

  The footage cuts out.

  It is a remarkable, infectiously joyous film – and the 4,600-plus comments from YouTube viewers pick up on Excited Train Guy's celebratory vibe: I feel so happy for the guy, good on him!… This guy's excitement is contagious. I'm smiling and feeling happy even though I don't care about trains at all… I'm genuinely happy for this guy and that something this innocent can make him so happy… This guy is my hero!… Woohooo!

  Trains in America mean a lot (perhaps a little more to some than to others). The conquering of the West and the bringing together of the world's wealthiest and most powerful nation relied on the country's railroads, which literally connected America from sea to shining sea in the mid nineteenth century. The completion of the first transcontinental railway at Promontory Summit in Utah on 10 May 1869 was a major moment – and media event – celebrated by the hammering of a 'golden spike' in the final sleeper. News of the symbolic act was sent immediately by telegraph across the country in a one-word message: Done. All of a sudden, the Wild West was not quite so wild any more. Dreams of 'going west' to seek fortunes and a new life – thoughts of which had been stirred during the heady gold-rush days of 1849 – took on a greater sense of reality.

  Railroads prospered for many years to come, helping to determine where cities and towns grew as America blossomed. Tracks soon formed an impressive web across the vast nation and the luckiest passengers enjoyed getting about in plush carriages designed by New York State-born George Pullman (1831–1897), who was at the forefront of developing comfortable sleepers and snazzy dining cars. Trains were not only highly practical; they were fashionable too. Railroads continued to boom at the turn of the twentieth century and well into the 1930s, although by then things had begun to change. The introduction of affordable cars for the middle classes, famously beginning with the Ford Model T in 1908, provided trains with their first serious competition. This newfangled way of getting about proved immensely popular. In the 1920s, state highways sprang up, followed not so long after by lengthy interstate roads. Train use began to tail off slowly, and just as it did, another challenger to the railroads came along. By the 1940s, propeller planes linked many cities, becoming the passage of choice among those who wanted to get about quickly and who could afford the fares. When jet aircraft with cheaper tickets arrived in the late 1950s, trains – as a means of travelling across the vast distances of the US – took a major hit. Hopping on planes suddenly made a lot of sense. Airlines such as Pan Am and Trans World Airlines took off, literally. Passengers and freight could zoom above the clouds, while trains chugged along below, waiting at sidings and generally looking extremely old-fashioned by comparison.

  Trains were feeling the strain. Lines were losing money and could not keep up. The government had to step in. The result, in 1971, was the formation of Amtrak, which took over most intercity passenger lines. This federal-backed service has not, however, turned around the fortunes of US trains. Amtrak Railroad's current debt is about $1.3 billion and in its latest financial results, the organisation boasts that its 'federally funded operating loss of approximately $227 million was the lowest level since 1973'. Amtrak appears to be proud of a $227 million deficit – which is, admittedly, half what it was in 2007, so some progress appears to have been made.

  Yet despite all this, the historical role of trains in America – so important during the golden era of frontiers and fortune-making of the nineteenth century – hangs in the background of the country's remaining passenger lines. For this reason, and because some simply enjoy trains, many Americans still love rail travel. Excited Train Guy in North Creek is not alone.

  I decide to go from east to west, travelling in the direction of the nineteenth-century dreamers, starting in New York City. Trains to be taken: two from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Manhattan (where I am to stay a night), a subway ride to Brooklyn and back, one overnight train from New York's Penn station to Chicago (on the Lake Shore Limited service), another from Chicago to Minneapolis (on the Empire Builder service) to spend a day or two learning about a key figure in the history of American trains, followed by another Empire Builder train from Minneapolis to Seattle. Total distance to be covered: 3,180 miles.

  'Hey, man, why you takin' a picture of me?'

  AirTrain, the subway, New York Transit Museum and Grand Central Terminal

  Getting from JFK International Airport to the right part of Manhattan by train requires catching the AirTrain and then the blue E line on the subway to the heart of the Big Apple.

  A busy, unremarkable AirTrain speeds along and drops me at Jamaica station, where I wait on a platform watching tattooed folk with headphones sauntering past, bouncing to the beat of their music. A bald man wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt sings a Latino song. Skinny guys, who may or may not be gang members, hop by in hooded tops and pristine Nike trainers.

  I take the E line subway in a carriage with plastic lilac seats, sitting beside a man whom I assume is a painter and decorator as his jeans are splattered in paint and turps. Nobody makes eye contact. There are no 'mind the gap' announcements. Anyway the gap is much smaller on the New York Metro than it is back home; plus New Yorkers, I can already sense, do not need to be bothered with such obvious messages. They seem too hard-boiled for that.

  Soul music awaits at Lexington Avenue and 53rd Street station. A three-piece band with a drummer, guitarist and lead s
inger is playing a tuneful song entitled 'Let's Just Kiss and Say Goodbye'. I stop to listen as the battered stainless-steel train departs, with Stars and Stripes painted on each carriage. The lead singer croons on about his 'darlin'', who he's been meeting in secret and with whom he's been doing 'wrong' – presumably conducting an illicit affair. They decide to part, to kiss and say goodbye. His smooth soulful lyrics drift along the busy platform. A crowd has formed and a few are tapping feet, closing their eyes before the next train comes. It's the best train music so far on these many and varied journeys; certainly a cut above the patriotic Russian tunes on the run into Moscow. When he finishes, I ask the lead singer about the song. It's by a group called the Manhattans, appropriately enough. I thank him and drop two bucks in a guitar case.

  'Yeah, man,' he says.

  My hotel, the Roger Smith, is in Midtown, close to Grand Central station. I picked it for this proximity as I'm intending to engage in a little light New York City train research in the morning before taking the Empire Builder to Chicago.

  This 'research' can be broken into two parts. The first involves a visit to the New York Transit Museum; I still remember what Charlie said in Kosovo about museums being important to 'rail knowledge'. So after an early night, I head to Grand Central, where I eat breakfast in the cavernous basement food hall; an appropriate start to a 'train day', I feel. I can recommend the porridge plus the mango and banana smoothies from a circular food stall that seems to go by the name of Dishes.

  From Dishes, I walk to Grand Central's subway station. At the ticket machine, a man whom I initially take to be a station employee helps me press the right buttons for a ticket to Brooklyn. Having done so – the machine was incredibly simple – he says, 'You got a little to help, man?'

  I give him a dollar.

  'Awl-right,' he says.

  On the train to Brooklyn I sit next to a twenty-something man wearing a massive grey T-shirt; it must be XXXXXL-sized. He has wrapped his arms inside this T-shirt in order to keep warm. I have never seen anyone do this before. His head rests against a partition by the door. He's fast asleep, and cuts an odd figure. The journey is otherwise uneventful.

  We arrive at Borough Hall station, with elegant old mosaic signs giving the station name. Outside, I listen to a deranged black man, whose trousers are almost falling off, crying: 'I'LL MURDER YOU BLACK SISTERS! BLACK BITCHES, MAN!' Nobody walking by seems to bat an eyelid.

  Trestle-table stalls offer cheap fedoras and DVDs. A skinny man clutching a cane is asleep on a subway vent. His trainers are by his side, their tongues lifted out so his shoes can ventilate. A towel is wrapped round his neck and his head rests on the edge of a black bin liner containing his possessions; a rudimentary alarm system, it seems, should anyone try to make off with his bag.

  The New York Transit Museum is in a basement connected to an old, disused subway station in which heritage carriages and locos are stored. It's a funny sort of place – tucked away, with few visitors when I go. I examine exhibits on the early days of New York's subway; ground was broken on the first line in March 1900 and services began in 1904. Displays tell me that many of the early tunnels were created using a 'cut and cover' technique: a big trench was dug, the tunnel installed, and the earth refilled. This method came before more sophisticated 'deep rock mining' and 'underwater tunnelling'. There is a section on the history of turnstiles and tokens on the New York subway, with multiple examples of each from over the years. Here you can learn all about the groundbreaking Round End Kompak Model of 1946, with its metal plates to prevent vandalism, as well as the innovative Automatic Fare Card turnstile of 1992, which was created with slanted sides to 'reduce leverage for leapers, while the narrow passageway inhibits people from crawling under the arms'.

  Beyond are (many) information panels on the building of bridges. Brooklyn Bridge, which opened in 1883, is the star of this section. On the day after its formal opening, 150,000 people walked across the bridge, while it hit the headlines a year later when 'circus impresario P. T. Barnum led a herd of 21 elephants across'. It's also intriguing to learn that the vast structure across the East River was made before the invention of power tools, so it was 'effectively built by hand'.

  I check out the shiny carriages and locos in the old subway station, which would no doubt be of great interest to Excited Train Guy, and as I walk along the platform I suddenly realise something: although the history of turnstiles and tokens on the New York Metro may not exactly be for everyone (being brutally honest), I'm quite enjoying the New York Transit Museum. The setting is strangely fascinating, allowing you to slip into the lives of the passengers back when these creaky trains spun beneath the skyscrapers of Manhattan. Old adverts for Campbell's tomato soup and Veribest corned beef have been preserved in carriages, as have messages from the US Food Administration during the Second World War: FOOD WILL WIN THE WAR. WE OBSERVE MEATLESS DAYS, WHEATLESS DAYS, PORKLESS DAYS. After the war, oversized passengers apparently became an issue as they were contributing to cramped carriages thanks to a rich diet during years of full employment. A New York Times editorial commented: 'With more and stouter people about it is only a matter of time before the [subway] car must explode.' Vintage station signs warn that spitting is unlawful and that carrying lighted cigars, cigarettes or pipes on the cars, stations or station stairways is not permitted. Visitors must also refrain from resting on their canes on escalator steps, while 'meddlers' are warned that tampering with escalators could result in a prison sentence.

  The New York Transit Museum is both for aficionados and the casual train lover – which is, I suppose, how I categorise myself by now, having perhaps quietly moved up a category from 'someone who likes looking out of the window'. There's something satisfyingly rewarding in making the pilgrimage. Just a handful of others are around during my hour-long visit (including a couple of definite foamers).

  I return to Grand Central for part two of my New York City train inquiries. I've signed up for a Municipal Art Society tour of the station. I booked in advance ($20) and Christine is waiting, as promised, by the entrance to platform 29. This is on the main concourse, with its magnificently high ceiling painted peacock blue and decorated with symbols of the zodiac, way up above the passengers weaving across the pink Tennessee-marble floor. I know the colour is peacock blue and the floor is pink Tennessee marble as Christine, a slight figure dressed in green and black, with New Balance trainers and peace-symbol earrings, tells our small group so. Christine has grey hair in a neat bun, glasses and an inexhaustible knowledge of Grand Central, which we are soon scooting around, learning that the platforms can handle 700 trains daily, while the subway copes with 250,000 passengers. It's estimated that half a million people walk across the main concourse each day. More than 21 million tourists are believed to come to gawp at the station every year, making it the tenth most popular tourist attraction on the planet, according to Travel + Leisure magazine – whose word I'll take on the matter.

  Alert soldiers with weapons defend key corners of this world-famous attraction as Christine informs us that Grand Central is technically a 'terminal not a station' and that it is a 'marriage of technology and aesthetics' as well as a 'monument to movement', the brainchild of the entrepreneurial Cornelius Vanderbilt in the 1860s.

  'Vanderbilt was a poor farm boy from Staten Island,' says Christine. 'He had a job on a ferry, but then he borrowed some money for his own ferry from Staten Island to Manhattan. The journey would take two hours in those days.'

  Step by step his ferry business grew, with steamboats soon introduced, before Vanderbilt – who had rapidly developed into a hard-nosed businessman – seized the opportunity to take control of a train line that ran from Harlem to 26th Street, where it met a horse-drawn service to the tip of Manhattan. At around the same time he bought the 'wasteland' where Grand Central now is. 'Everyone thought: "You're nuts. New York City is all downtown."' says Christine of Vanderbilt's decision. This move, however, helped reinforce Vanderbilt's position as one of the ric
hest men in the country. Grand Central opened in 1871 and Vanderbilt lived a few years to see its potential realised (he died in 1877). An acorns and oaks motif, later introduced in his honour, now runs throughout the station: a nod to Vanderbilt's rags-toriches story.

  We stroll past the special waiting room for guests of the glitzy Biltmore Hotel, learn that the facade is made of granite built over a steel cage, that the station was rebuilt in its current Beaux-Arts form in 1913 when electric tracks were introduced (this was a response to a terrible steam locomotive accident in 1902), and that the symbols of the zodiac on the ceiling are back to front as the painters made a mistake when copying a drawing from sketches while peering down from their ladders. We take in the 50-foot statue of Vanderbilt close to a decorative station facade topped by Mercury, the Roman god of travel, financial gain and thievery. 'Though no one mentions the thievery,' says Christine, having just done so. In the days of Vanderbilt's empire-building, a certain amount of cunning – if not outright theft – was required, with some public officials doing pretty well, by all accounts, out of applications for licences and planning permission.

  We return inside to see the famous oyster bar (setting for many a shot from Mad Men, the television series about the Midtown advertising boom in the 1960s), and the four-faced opal clock in the centre of the concourse, near a giant Stars and Stripes that has hung from the terminal's 125-foot ceiling since 11 September 2001. We also learn that a tennis court exists up on a top floor at the front of the station – which seems rather hard to believe.