Larry refers to one success story: trains are now the number-one way of travelling between Washington DC and NYC. This is despite a tragic recent derailment on the line in which eight people died and 200 were injured.
'Let me tell you something, Tom,' Larry says, all of a sudden. Larry feels that our meeting is such a coincidence (I have mentioned Ticket to Ride) that he wants to tell me a personal story. Or maybe he just always opens up to strangers. 'My favourite part of the female anatomy is the eyes,' he says.
'Could you say that again?' I ask.
'My favourite part of the female anatomy is the eyes.'
'Oh,' I say.
Larry explains: 'Years ago I was in a college choir when I met Nancy. But then I took the proverbial long walk for fifty-one years.' Larry is talking about his marriage to another woman, I gradually surmise. 'There was a college reunion, when I met Nancy again, but I was with my wife. I thought Nancy looked very good, but I was with my wife: I never thought I'd see her again. Then my wife sadly died.' This was in 2009. Sometime after that, his memory was jogged: 'One Friday in July, the good Lord said to me: "Remember Nancy Norris." I wrote her a seven-page letter. Six months later we were married.'
He had, it seems, remembered Nancy's eyes.
We eat our Railroad French Toast (180 calories). Switching subject, I ask Larry – one of North America's most knowledgeable train men – what his favourite train journey is. He tells me it's from Vancouver to Toronto on The Canadian service (sadly I am not managing to fit this one in). He goes on the train each year with Nancy, and he invites me to join them on their next trip. Larry also likes the 1930s carriages built by Budd of Philadelphia that are used on America's California Zephyr trains – the same company behind the Indian Pacific's carriages in Australia.
We finish our Railroad French Toast. Larry says he's a bit disappointed the blankets in some cabins had not been unwrapped and laid out by the carriage attendants who make the beds at night. He notices things like this and tells me he's going to have a word with the train manager about this and a few 'other matters'. We finish our twice-refilled cups of coffee and get up to return to our cabins. 'Amtrak, Tom,' Larry says, as a parting comment. 'Amtrak is run on a dime.'
He pauses, looks down the dining carriage and adds quietly: 'On a dime, Tom. It's too bad really.'
Toledo comes. We stop. Smokers alight. Water supplies are replenished as passengers come, passengers go. We roll west across bridges, passing container carriages, buttercup crops, picket fences, Stars and Stripes, cornflower skies, wind turbines, hawks, golf clubs, horses, water towers, dogs on trailer steps, long thin roads, turkey vultures, baseball fields, WATCH FOR TRAINS signs, Confederate flags, bankruptcy ads, the small town of Bryan, the even smaller town of Waterloo.
'South Bend is comin' up,' says Kevin over the speaker. A neighbour tells me she slept on a table at a station in New Jersey for 14 hours as another train, a couple of days ago, was late. Amtrak is going to 'get a talking-to'. 'I'm putting you in my travel journal,' she says, though we haven't talked all that much.
We chug on: Alka-Seltzer depots, tractors on trailers, a Shooters bar, Gary in Indiana (Michael Jackson's home town), storm clouds, steel plants, rusting trucks, Chinese containers, Whole Foods Markets, Pet Smart Grooming Pets Hotel, windows of a metro train glowing green in a tunnel… Chicago.
'Everybawdy ay-else goddit'
Chicago to St Paul
Let's just get this out straight away: Chicago is, for me, a disaster.
Lake Shore Limited pulls into Union station a couple of hours late, but there's still plenty of time till my next train, the Empire Builder to St Paul, Minnesota. Union station is modern and nondescript with soulless waiting lounges and a dull food hall. Outside, paving stones lead to a muddy-green river surrounded by smoked-glass skyscrapers, where an Amish family wearing straw hats, bonnets and purple aprons stand by a railing. The men have long beards but no moustaches. They seem to be discussing an important matter. I feign interest in a boat and eavesdrop.
'Shall we go to Burger King?' asks one bearded man without a moustache to another.
'I don't like Burger King,' says the other bearded man without a moustache.
'Ruth likes Burger King,' the first man replies.
'What about Pizza Hut?'
'I don't like Pizza Hut,' says the first bearded man without a moustache.
'Ruth really likes Pizza Hut,' says the second.
And so on. Here I am, hoping for insight into an important non-mainstream American culture – and all I get is this.
Inside I eat a sandwich and go to a waiting lounge before realising via an announcement that I'm eligible, as a sleeper customer, to go to another, better lounge. Never turn down the chance of a fancier lounge! This must be one of the first rules of twenty-first-century travel. I go to my new lounge, which is pleasingly plusher, with cushioned armchairs, a free-to-use computer and free soft drinks and coffee. I sit opposite a man in shorts whose calves are squashed against his armchair so that each is about 12 inches across; I do not exaggerate. Announcements are made for the Texas Eagle and the California Zephyr services. Neighbours discuss President Putin: 'He's mafia. KGB.'
An announcement is made that my number-seven Empire Builder train to St Paul is delayed by half an hour. I relax and read a book. Then another announcement is made, ten minutes later, that the seven-two-seven train is about to depart. I keep on reading. A last call is made for the seven-two-seven train. I keep on reading. After about 20 minutes I go to see how my train is faring with its half-hour delay. The number-seven train to St Paul is no longer on the departures board. I have an immediate sinking feeling.
'I cawled the seven-two-seven three times. Three times I cawled the seven-two-seven,' says a large man by the counter – who says 'seven-two-seven' very fast.
'But I'm not on the seven-two-seven train. I'm on the seven train.'
'Dat is the seven-two-seven train,' he replies. 'SEVEN and the twenty-seven. Dat's two train numbers for one train: one goes to Seattle – the seven. One goes to Portland – the twenty-seven. Dat's the seven-two-seven.'
'Oh,' I say. 'But I thought my train was delayed half an hour.'
'The seven-two-seven got brought forward from the yard.'
'Oh,' I say. Pause. 'Where I come from, if a train is delayed, it does not usually become un-delayed.'
The large man takes me in for a moment. 'Everybawdy ay-else goddit,' he says. He raises an eyebrow.
'Oh,' I say.
Pause.
The long and the short of this quickly becomes clear: I will have to wait a day for the next train. But I am due to meet a contact who has kindly arranged to meet me at St Paul and take me out at 9 p.m., when the train arrives. Much organisation has gone into this meeting. We are to go to a restaurant and afterwards to a famous music venue. It's all part of an intricately planned twoday visit (with some important train history thrown in, naturally).
'Are there any alternatives?'
'Well, yey-as,' says the man, who appears to have decided that I'm not a troublemaker, just an English idiot. 'Yey-as.'
Within 15 minutes, thanks to my new Amtrak friend, I am booked on a flight to Minneapolis–St Paul International Airport. The cost is $69 on Southwest Airlines; almost exactly what the train ticket cost. I catch a $25 cab to the airport and an hour later I board my plane. I arrive at Minneapolis airport four hours before the Empire Builder is due. I feel disappointed with myself for being so dumb, and frustrated by the strange announcements.
Yet I have learnt two lessons.
The first: listen very carefully to Amtrak employees with strong Chicagoan accents.
The second: in America trains really are an endangered species. Planes in the States are like buses. They get you there quicker and, often, cheaper. No wonder Amtrak is in the doldrums.
'We call this the Badlands'
St Paul and Minneapolis, then the Empire Builder to Seattle
Cheryl Offerman, my contact fro
m the Minneapolis Convention and Visitors Association, meets me at the airport, from where we go to a steakhouse and then to the First Avenue club, where the local musician Prince recorded parts of his famous Purple Rain album in the 1980s. We have a very good night out, with Cheryl's take on my mix-up being: 'Tom, I know that with Amtrak, anything is possible.'
The trains do seem to have a bit of a reputation.
I'm staying in downtown Minneapolis, which has a rigid grid system of streets and is beside a section of the Mississippi river that's home to St Anthony Falls, the highest waterfall, with a 23-metre drop, in the northern stretch of the Big Muddy. St Anthony is the reason Minneapolis thrived. The falls provided the energy required for the mills that made the city and the region the world leader in flour production from 1890 to 1940. Of course, ships on the Mississippi were an important form of transportation for the goods, produced by companies such as Pillsbury and Gold Medal, but railways were key to opening up markets too, first in the east and then the west.
By far the most important local railwayman was James J. Hill, whose nickname was the Empire Builder, after which the trains from Chicago to the west coast are named. He lived in a big redsandstone house on a hill in St Paul, the 'twin city' to Minneapolis, just across the Mississippi and not far from where the novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald was brought up. Cheryl and I go to take a look.
Like Vanderbilt back in New York, Hill was self-made. At the age of 16, blind in one eye after an accident with a bow and arrow, he emigrated to the US from Ontario, Canada, to seek his fortune, arriving in Minneapolis aged 18. He did not hang about, first working on a steamboat line before shifting to trains, realising that valuable local resources such as iron ore, copper, timber and wheat could make him a millionaire if he played his cards right. He took control of a poorly run, unprofitable line, turned it around and went on to construct an important bridge across the Mississippi as well as tracks all the way to the west coast. The final spike was struck in 1893, completing the northern line across America. But unlike each of the other transcontinental railways, including the one that passed by Promontory Summit in Utah, Hill's Great Northern Railway did not go bust. This is partly because Hill sensibly made deals with the workers to avoid long, costly strikes. By the time of his death in 1916, he was one of the richest men in the country, worth more than $2 billion in today's money, some estimate – which would be more than enough to sort out Amtrak's current financial woes.
His St Paul house, now a museum, is a testament to the great riches of the glory days of the railways, with its electric lights, boiler room, grand dining room, piped organ, fine-art gallery, ensuite bathrooms, billiards room, library and sophisticated security system of caged doors and alarms (his wealth made him a major target for burglars). Hill had become a tycoon of the first order, yet he is not as prominently known as the flashier Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers on the east coast. Nevertheless, probably because of Fitzgerald's childhood proximity, the writer mentions Hill in his masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, in which the St Paul trains mogul is held up as a shining example of American success. When Gatsby dies, his father says that Gatsby might have gone on to be a 'great man' like Hill and contributed to building up the nation, if he had lived.
Excited Rail Guys, and anyone crossing the north of the US by train, should take the time to drop by.
St Paul's Union Depot is deserted. It's a beautiful building with a grand hall featuring a high, arched ceiling, Ionic columns and friezes depicting trains. At its peak in the 1920s, almost 300 trains stopped by daily. Now it's a shadow of its heyday, with a few commuter services and the occasional Empire Builder train; Amtrak began using the station a couple of years back.
From the almost empty concourse, I enter a waiting chamber at 22:10, being very careful indeed not to misunderstand what's going on.
A flamboyant but poker-faced guard says, 'I behove you to make your way to Platform C.' Outside of characters in Shakespearean or other early English plays, perhaps, I cannot recall anyone using the word 'behove' in speech before.
A neighbour says, 'They're calling the seven train, but I'm on the twenty-seven. I don't know about this seven train.'
I and a few others put him straight.
We board and I find my sleeper berth, which is smaller than all the others so far: less than 1 foot's floor space when the bed is down. It's on the lower deck of the double-decker train (my first).
Curious about this new two-level monster, I make a pilgrimage to the bar/lounge carriage, where I buy the fanciest-possible beer from a smarmy barman. The bar is on the lower level, but there is seating on the top deck, where I locate a little blue swivel chair. This lounge has wide, curving 'observation windows'. It's a fabulous place. I sit back and watch orange sodium light from street lamps dancing on the surface of the Mississippi. The train creaks away and rolls beneath a bridge. Then we judder to a halt.
A bald guy in a heavy lumberjack shirt sitting on a sofa across the way says, 'I hate it when this **** happens.'
I nod wisely, as though I hate this **** as well.
We are waiting for the 'dropping-off of two extra cars', the bald guy believes – whatever that may signify.
'Oh yeah, I hate it when this **** happens,' he repeats.
I nod once again.
The bald guy, I notice, hardly ever takes his eyes off the Mississippi river. I fall into the same habit. There's something hypnotic about the light on the water.
A kerfuffle breaks out in the bar down below. Because we have stopped there is no electricity in the carriage. This means the cash register does not work. This also means that customers, of which there are quite a few, cannot be served drinks. Voices are being raised and a few customers are returning upstairs, shaking their heads and muttering about Amtrak.
'I really hate this ****,' says the bald guy, who really seems to mean it.
My neighbour says he's in one of the seating carriages but plans to rest overnight on the sofa. He bagged his spot earlier in the evening. During the night he says he intends to help himself to the conductors' coffee station below by the bar. 'They caught me doing that once,' he says. He's heading for Spokane, Washington. He seems a canny sort.
We move. The bald guy and I stare out at the river. The gaudy lit-up skyscrapers of Minneapolis loom into view, then we're into the countryside and an ink-black beyond.
'Fifty miles an hour now,' says the bald guy, who seems to be able to calculate the speed from many years on the railways. 'Doing fifty, pickin' up speed.'
It's a very long way across Minnesota through the states of North Dakota, Montana and (a little bit of) Idaho to Washington. I especially love this part of the journey because of its famed 'big sky' scenery. We are travelling through parts of the US few tourists visit, roughly along the route of the famous 1804 Lewis and Clark Expedition, commissioned by President Jefferson to find a passage to the west coast. It's a land of wide plains and small towns, grain silos (also known as 'elevators'), cornfields, truck stops, lumberyards, farms with white picket fences and shiny black cattle.
The train pauses at Minot, North Dakota, which was put on the map by the Great Northern Line and was nicknamed 'Little Chicago' during Prohibition due to the Mafia's local liquorsmuggling operations.
I jump off and buy a copy of the Trading Post and Minot Daily News from a 75¢ vending machine. FEDS WANT MORE PRAIRIE DOGS ON NORTH DAKOTA GRASSLANDS, splashes the Daily News. Prairie dogs (squirrel-like rodents) provide food for black-footed ferrets, and the numbers of blackfooted ferrets need to be bolstered, say the Feds. Ranchers, however, do not like black-footed ferrets as they damage pastureland. It all sounds controversial. Elsewhere, another story reports on a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe who has been jailed for 18 years for stabbing a Bureau of Indian Affairs superintendent. Meanwhile, the Trading Post runs a feature on the second annual Soggy Doggy Day at a local school, during which dogs are allowed to play in its swimming pool.
A fog descends. Long trains with oil-ta
nker containers sit at sidings. We rumble on alongside a creek. In the lounge, there's a flicker of cards. A ginger man wearing a cap, who's been on the phone telling his mother that he does not want his partner to retire as he does not want to have to support her (his partner seems intent on retirement), looks out of the window and says to me, 'We call this the Badlands.'
He goes on to say that in Portland, where he's heading, 'some people just drink beer and smoke pot: you can get your brain smoked out'. It would, however, be a big mistake to get caught smoking pot in 'North or South Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, north Texas or parts of west Minnesota', he says, as though providing a traveller's tip. The possession even of rolling papers could lead to jail in these places 'especially if you are a person of colour – the cops might roll their eyes at you if you are white, but not if you are a person of colour'. The ginger man tells me the name of a town where 'if you are not from there, you just keep going – don't stop there'. This is said in the manner of more travel advice. Furthermore, the ginger man does not approve of fracking: 'It's really bad – earthquakes, water going bad, they pump chemicals into the ground.'
Ticket to Ride Page 24
