Ticket to Ride

by Tom Chesshyre

  But the big story about Grand Central is: it's still here. Despite protests from the likes of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and criticism from The New York Times, the city's original Penn Station – another glorious, if not quite so splendid, structure not so far away in Manhattan – was demolished in 1963. 'The "air rights" above it had been sold, so the station came down. This was a shock to everyone,' says Christine. Penn Station's neoclassical columns and birdcage-like, sky-lit concourses were replaced by a functional-but-dull underground station beneath Madison Square Garden, an indoor sports and entertainment arena. 'This was,' says Christine, 'a watershed moment.' Following Penn Station's demolition, all old buildings in New York appeared to be under threat. Yet Grand Central survived owing to campaigns made by the likes of Onassis and many others. Penn Station had become an architectural martyr: its destruction such a dire mistake, realised in retrospect, that further major blunders were avoided. In 1976, Grand Central was classified as a National Historic Landmark, thus providing protection from greedy developers. Given that the station played a central role in popularising the Midtown of Manhattan, encouraging entrepreneurs to build the likes of the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building, this seems only right. The 'travesty' of what happened to Penn Station, says Christine, remains in New Yorkers' minds.

  After going to see the unusual, one-court Vanderbilt Tennis Club (which does indeed exist and where games cost $210 an hour), I return to the Roger Smith Hotel, pick up my bags and catch a cab to the 'new' Penn Station. I'm dropped by a brute of a concrete and black-glass tower block that stands next to Madison Square Garden. Beneath the ugly tower is a sign for the platforms.

  I pause on the pavement to look about. As I do so, a tramp sidles up. 'Can y'spare me a little change, brother?'

  He holds a piece of cardboard on which he's scrawled: LOST EVERYTHING BUT MY FAITH IN GOD. DOWN ON MY LUCK. HUNGRY.

  Hanging around looking like a tourist can be an expensive business in New York City. I give him a dollar.

  'Thank you, brother. God bless you and have a good weekend,' he says.

  Then I go inside and take a couple of pictures of a concourse with US cities flashing on a departure board. As I do so, I'm interrupted.

  'Hey, man! Hey, man!' A bedraggled guy wearing an untucked camouflage top and old shoes hobbles up to me. He looks furious and is pointing at my face. 'Why you takin' a picture of me without my permission!' he yells. 'MAN, YOU TAKIN' A PICTURE!'

  His face is a couple of feet from mine now. He has chestnut eyes with pinpoint pupils. He does not seem capable of blinking. I tell him I didn't mean to, I was just taking a picture of the station. A taller man with ruffled sandy hair, who looks as though he might sleep rough on one of the subway vents, joins the bedraggled guy. This is not my greatest station moment, I'm thinking.

  The bedraggled man is agitated and bouncing on his toes. I've stepped away but he's veering towards me – not letting me get out of his pouncing zone – pointing at me as though appealing to the sandy-haired newcomer.

  'I'M TALKIN' TO HIM,' he yells.

  The taller guy says, 'You ain't no more, 'less you want the cops to come.'

  The bedraggled guy contemplates this and starts saying: 'TAKIN' MY PICTURE! I'M TALKIN' TO HIM!'

  The sandy-haired guy holds him back and whispers in his ear. My enemy's chestnut eyes burn in my direction.

  As they do, I take my leave, resisting the urge to turn and take another snap for fear of becoming an item in the late edition of the New York Post: BRITISH FOAMER IN PENN STATION BUST-UP. Subhead: TRAIN TOURIST SAYS: 'ALL I WANTED TO DO WAS GET A PICTURE OF THE DEPARTURE BOARD.' For one thing, this might not look so great if it popped up on Google searches. For another, I'm not sure my travel insurance covers fights with pissed-off US veterans at Penn Station.

  'Amtrak is run on a dime'

  New York City to Chicago on Lake Shore Limited

  Platform seven of Penn Station feels like a dungeon. Dim lights flicker in a gloomy enclosure, where our sleek Lake Shore Limited train awaits. Down a narrow platform crammed with passengers, I find carriage 12, where the sleeper cabin is the same size as on the Indian Pacific. The attendant's name is Kevin. He seems friendly but harassed.

  We pull away. A horn echoes. We rise slowly into the afternoon sunlight. Glimpses of brown, flowing Hudson flit by between tower blocks. Razor wire runs along a wall by a factory. BEAST, says graffiti by a rusting fence. Then the scenery opens, the river in full view. Thick forest covers the far bank. Vines hang from tall, straight trees near the track. Cyclists spin along a dirt trail. Two old-timers rest on tatty swivel chairs that look as though they've been rescued from a skip. They're fishing on a leaf-strewn bank. A pot sits on a rock, awaiting their catch. Are the old fellows fishing for dinner? It looks that way. On their funny swivel chairs, they make an arresting sight.

  It's startling how quickly the big smoke – one of the biggest smokes of all – disappears when you leave NYC by train. Not so long ago I was in a traffic jam in a yellow cab, soon to be threatened by a veteran with a dislike of cameras. Now I'm in Huckleberry Finn land with little uninhabited islands and shafts of soft orange sunlight playing on russet and lime-green trees. Currents ripple on the river. Metal-framed bridges soar high. A bullet-bodied bird sails beyond a rust-red sugar refinery. The forest resumes. Silos arise. The trees come back. A dog walker sticks his fingers in his ears to keep out the train's horns – a little melodramatically, if you ask me. We cross a viaduct studded with rivets. The river winds onwards beyond a marsh of lilac-tipped reeds.

  We pass Irvington, former home of Washington Rip Van Winkle Irving. His house is visible near the station, it is said, though I cannot make it out. Croton-Harmon is next, then Peekskill and Garrison. The latter seems to be the station for West Point Academy across the river: red-brick buildings with battlements, sprawling on a hill. Former alumni include Presidents Grant and Eisenhower, and Robert E. Lee and Douglas MacArthur, says the handy Lake Shore Limited Route Guide. This is provided free in the cabin and is the best such pamphlet yet.

  We stop at Poughkeepsie, chosen by the Vanderbilts and the Astors for weekend retreats. This is also where Samuel Morse, the inventor of the telegraph and Morse code, once lived. Thank you, Lake Shore Limited Route Guide. From my window I can see an Irish pub, a fishing jetty, and not much else.

  'Albany's comin' up. Albany's comin' up,' says Kevin over a speaker. And so it does. Passengers leap out at the Amtrak station for the capital of New York State, going for a quick smoke on a platform close to a sign warning: IMPAIRED DRIVERS TAKE LIVES. Perhaps this message is necessary as the city's bars have a 'last call for alcohol' at 4 a.m.; later than elsewhere in the US. Thank you once again, Lake Shore Limited Route Guide.

  In the dining carriage ('All meals are included in your scheme,' says Kevin) I sit at a blue-leather booth facing a man in another booth with blue hair and SKUNKS written across his enormous T-shirt. He's even bigger than the largest of the gold-class Aussies. We stare at one another expressionlessly for a second or two. If we were wild beasts, I'd be on the one hand concerned that he was considering eating me, while on the other I'd be more than certain I could outrun any attack.

  I'm joined by Stan, a plumber, and Bette, who works in computing. They're from Oxford in England and are on a twoweek train trip from New York to Chicago and Washington DC. Bette wears a pearl necklace and a cardigan. Stan has a grey polo neck, a crew cut and a gravelly voice. They like the 'adventure' of trains as 'they're much more exciting than planes' says Bette.

  'On a plane you might say "hello" but that's it. Not like this,' growls Stan.

  I ask a few questions about their journey and Bette says, 'You sound like the immigration department.'

  I try to stop being nosy (I don't want another Indian Pacific-style mutiny on my hands). We eat our Amtrak Signature Steaks, served with a peppercorn sauce and a baked potato with sour cream and vegetables. This comes to 945 calories, says the menu, which lists the cal
orie count of every dish. Seven out of ten, is Stan and Bette's verdict, though I think they're being pretty generous (the steak is as tough as an old shoe). Then we discuss the crazy little toilets in our cabins.

  'There should at least be a dividing curtain,' says Bette. The toilets are, we all agree, ridiculously prominent in the cabins. Bette's concluding thoughts on the too cosy set-up are: 'It's not something to try if you've only been with a girlfriend for six months.'

  They return to their cabin and I go to the cafe bar, where the attendant asks me, 'Whaddya want?' She has lazy eyes but is also, somehow, super sharp at the same time. I take her to be a New Yorker, though I don't enquire. I request a Sierra Nevada Regional Craft Ale. She looks at me with an expression that says: Yes, I guessed as much – you'd have to have the fancy beer. The alternatives are Special ($4.50), Domestic ($5.50) and Import ($6.50). My Regional Craft is $7. She fetches a bottle and levers off the cap using an old crack in the ceiling above the booth. She catches the cap as it flicks off, almost without looking.

  It is dark now; shadowy outlines of buildings and trees slide by. Regional craft beer in hand, I sit at a table in the dining carriage. There are two other passengers: a young tattooed woman eating a microwaved pizza and a large man consuming a hot dog. These feats are conducted swiftly. They depart. I am alone. This cafe bar is shared with those who are not in sleeper class. These passengers are in the equivalent of the Indian Pacific's red class, with seats not beds. I walk along a couple of darkened carriages to see how the other half lives. People are sprawled with legs in aisles. Films flicker on iPads. A man wrapped in a blanket holds a little dog; I hadn't expected pets on board. I use the toilet, which is a disaster zone (I shall say no more).

  I return to the cafe and order another regional craft beer. The lazy-eyed woman performs the same trick.

  Then I meet the conductor. She is softly spoken with hair swept to one side, hoop earrings, a gap in her front teeth and bags under her eyes. It looks as though she works hard at her job. A notepad with location references sits on her table in the dining carriage. The conductor makes marks as we move. Radio messages from the driver call out from a walkie-talkie into which she occasionally mutters messages such as '2031 West. 2031 West.' From her, I learn the following: there are 11 carriages on this train of which three are sleepers, two are for dining and six are seat-only. So the 'other half' is, in fact, the other two thirds. A total of 263 passengers are on board. There are two General Electric locomotives pulling the train.

  The conductor tells me a story about a collision with a car when she was working a shift: 'There's a blind spot near Syracuse. A lady thought she could get through a crossing before a barrier came down. We had three engines up front. The car was smacked up pretty good. It got caught between two engines. She got out OK though. She was very shaky.' A blind spot, she says, is where the tracks curve to the extent that the way ahead is partially obscured.

  I sit with the conductor, drinking my regional craft beer. She picks out and eats an occasional single tortilla chip from a little plastic bag. She tells me that she used to be a flight attendant and that she has 'been around and seen it all'. She worked for her airline for 12 years: 'I did everything but fly those planes.'

  We are joined by another conductor, who has a crew cut, a blue peaked cap and keys jangling on a belt. He worked for the US Air Force for 30 years, 10 months and 9 days, he says. He took on the Amtrak job after retirement from the air force to earn extra cash as 'I have children in college'. He looks upon my regional craft beer with approval and tells me he likes 'Dogfish Head: it's got a picture of a fish on the bottle'. He also enjoys Guinness, Kilkenny and German beers: 'None of them is bad.'

  The three of us fall into silence for a while. It's close to midnight. An elderly woman in black sits at a table across from us and begins to read The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford. After a while she puts down her book and introduces herself. Many years ago she worked for the Chicago American newspaper, but 'went into computers' when the paper folded in 1974. She's heading for a reunion of ex Chicago American employees (the paper had several names over the years including Chicago Today at the end, I learn). She gives me her thoughts on trains in America: 'I love train travel, but it's not the same as it was. You used to be able to go from any little town to any little town, several times a day. Then in the 1960s, the government abandoned railroads for highways. Since then we've had Amtrak: just a few routes.'

  Our train is already an hour behind schedule, the conductors tell us.

  'That's one of the troubles: the freight trains have priority,' says the woman in black. 'No long-distance Amtrak train is on time. Often it's not late by minutes – it's by hours. There's no political will to do anything about it. Hardly anyone takes the train. Everyone drives or flies. It's faster to fly. You have more autonomy if you drive.'

  She goes misty-eyed, recalling the days before the government abandoned railways. 'Gambling and playing poker. College kids, we were. Couldn't drink – well, we weren't meant to. Florida to Mississippi, on to Louisiana – that's where we'd pay the bill.' By settling up in a state where the legal drinking age was lower, the college kids seem to have got around the drinking laws. 'The trains were hopping with servicemen – all along the Gulf Coast, military installations.'

  The woman in black pauses. She has thoughtful, expressive, pale-blue eyes. The mistiness has gone, replaced by a spark. It's clear from the way she talks that those days of poker, drinks and servicemen were vibrant and alive to her: not like the dusky, empty dining carriage with me, her and the two conductors now. 'Trains are not American at all,' she says, seeming to refer to their current status in the country, not their historical import. 'Nobody really takes them. Except for commuter trains, they're a backwater. Amtrak is chronically in financial straits.'

  I ask her if she is in a sleeper. She's not. She's in one of the seating carriages. 'Don't worry about me: I can sleep on a bed of nails,' she says. 'The class divide,' she adds, looking towards the seating carriages. She sighs and closes The Good Soldier with a snap. Her sigh seems to suggest: that's just the way it is, and the way it always will be. The woman in black says goodnight, picks up her book and disappears in the direction of the 'other two thirds'.

  When a freight train passes at night on Amtrak, it feels as though the air is being sucked from the cabin, reminding me of the TransSiberian Railway. I sleep well enough, lying on one side; there's little room to move. In the morning, I wake and pull down the blind to see fields of glorious golden crops. I take a shower at the end of the carriage, though the water runs out when I'm still covered in soap. I manage to splash enough on to remove the suds. Then I explain what happened to Kevin. 'Oh, they'll fill it up in Toledo anyway,' he replies. Kevin looks exhausted. Amtrak employees seem to have long hours. He tells me that we switched locomotives from electric to diesel-electric at Albany. We are two hours late, he adds, currently in Ohio, somewhere between Elyria and Sandusky. The latter was part of the 'Underground Railroad that helped slaves escape to freedom before the Civil War'. Thank you, Lake Shore Limited Route Guide.

  At breakfast, I meet Larry.

  'Hi, I'm Larry,' he says, as he sits down opposite me at one of the booths. American trains really are incredibly sociable. He is in his seventies, with thin, neatly combed grey hair, blue eyes and a navy waterproof jacket. He lives in East Lansing, Michigan. We order Railroad French Toast and Larry hands me his card: H. Lawrence Swartz, PhD, Chairman & CEO, America by Rail… the best way to see America! I am, by chance, eating breakfast with the founder of the 'number-one group travel company with Amtrak'.

  Larry considers our meeting to be serendipity, which I suppose it is as he's a fount of knowledge about US trains. His company, begun in 1983 and now run day-to-day by his son, takes 3,000 mainly senior citizens and 'some enthusiasts' on escorted rail holidays each year; tours to the national parks in the West are his biggest sellers, as increasingly are 'rail-and-sail' packages transporting those who are afraid of
flying from the interior of America to ports to catch cruise ships. Repeat business is strong, with one in five customers booking his train trips again. Larry got the idea for America by Rail in his forties. During his childhood he had been taken by rail with his mother to military camps around the US, where his father was posted during the Second World War. The memory of those early days sparked a moment of realisation one crisp morning when he was travelling on a train in Ontario: 'I was in tears. I knew then: I just love trains. Trains are wonderful. On a train, people can talk: they're going somewhere but they're not going anywhere. They have the time.'

  I ask Larry if he agrees with the woman in black about the decline of US trains. Larry does. He too believes Amtrak is financially stretched. He feels it is badly underfunded: 'The travel dollar in the United States: 60–65 per cent of all government money goes on highways; thirty per cent on airports; two per cent on Amtrak. Trains were the Wild West and the old way of travel, but we don't need them any more: that's the federal way of thinking.'