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The Disorient Express By Geoff Edwards
I had called 1-800-USARAIL to make AMTRAK reservations from Los Angeles to Florida and I was worried about, what is for AMTRAK, a close connection. My wife, Michael and I do a travel show on Los Angeles radio with Paul Lasley and Elizabeth Harryman Lasley, well known travel writers. Several of our listeners had professed a love for cruising, but a fear of flying, and they wanted to know if it was possible to depart from Florida on a cruise ship without taking a plane. Michael and I were assigned the task of finding the way.
Our problem: The solution: We board the Sunset Limited on a Tuesday night around 10
PM at Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. My last trip on AMTRAK was about ten years ago. Since then, the shower/commode has been updated slightly. Not too many years ago, the button for the toilet flush, and the button to activate 20 seconds of 100 degree water (temperature not adjustable) were about an inch apart, which made for more than one Australian bidet. The buttons are far apart now, and the temperature is now passenger controllable. When activated, the telephone type shower head emits a weak spray of water which now stops after 30 seconds rather than after 20 seconds. (I would have loved to be at the meeting when the decision was made to increase the water access time from 20 seconds to 30 seconds. I wonder if there was a major discussion.) To get an additional 30 seconds of water, the button must be pressed again. Figure on using the first 30 seconds just to set the water temperature. Although these changes have been made to the water delivery system, the old signs pointing to, and explaining, the now non existent controls are still there. Ashley is our Stewardess. She has been with AMTRAK for 20 years. Ellery is the AMTRAK passenger services representative, he has been here for the same amount of time. Ashley is extremely pleasant and very proficient. She delivers coffee, muffins, juice and a paper in the morning. We use a call button to summon her when we wake. She also makes dining car reservations for us, although meal hours are a bit imprecise. Wednesday This first morning we enjoy coffee, muffins, and the Tucson paper in our bedroom. We then head to the dining car which is arranged with tables for 4. The chairs are comfortable, the tables are set with tablecloth and plates made of a Corning Wear composite. The utensils are some sort of stainless metal from Taiwan. Not real elegant, but better than the plastic AMTRAK previously sported. All the dishes on the breakfast menu have catchy names. "The Golden Spike", "The Sunrise Limited", "Tucson Morning", "The Transcontinental", and "The Crossover". They range from eggs, anyway you want them, to hot cakes and French Toast. French Toast on American trains is a tradition going back to the Super Chief days. Thick, topped with powered sugar, with as much syrup or honey one can handle. The prices are quite reasonable. Eggs and grits with toast are $4.00. Take away one egg, add hot cakes, sausage or bacon, and you are up to $5.50. For lunch, the most one can spend is $5.75.
For that you can have turkey cutlet, topped with tomatoes and cheese,
served on a bed of rice. They
also offer hamburgers,
breast of chicken salad, tortellini, and sandwiches of the day. It is first come, first served at breakfast, and parties of two are paired with other parties of two. We are seated with Dee and Joyce, a long time couple from Ft. Lauderdale, who took the train to the Grand Canyon via Los Angeles, and are now on their way home. They are real adventurers. Strangers in Los Angeles, they traveled to all the tourist points in that city by bus; something few Los Angeles natives would attempt. They love AMTRAK, but then, they are in no hurry. Neither, it seems, is the train which varies in speed according to track conditions. The engineer must observe "track speed"; the assigned speed for certain areas of track. The track is not owned by AMTRAK, and in many instances will only tolerate speeds of 40 or 50 miles an hour. Some sections of track are even more speed restrictive. The tracks are owned by rail companies that, concerned mainly with freight, are not overly excited to have AMTRAK on their rails. Freight trains are not known for their speed, and thus the companies really have no incentive to upgrade their tracks. For most of the trip we parallel a highway. I judge our speed by how fast trucks pass us. Sometimes we pass them! Exhilarating! Fast or slow, trains do not traverse the best parts of town. In one grim area we spot a couple obviously living out of their car. As we sit in our deluxe bedroom, we feel compassion, but we envy them their space. We stop briefly in Deming, New Mexico, to let off one passenger. Well, actually to put off one passenger. A man had been acting strangely in the coach section, mumbling to himself, and banging the lavatory doors. Upon investigation, the conductor found the man was unable to hold a coherent conversation, and, oh yes, he had a 45 caliber automatic in his duffel bag. Bye, bye. A bit later we pass a freight derailment that knocked 11 cars off the track the day before, delaying the westbound AMTRAK train 6 hours. Moments after we leave the accident scene, a request is made on the PA for a Doctor or a nurse, if one is on board, to report to the lounge car. Nice juxtaposition. A short time later, Ashley serves us our lunch en suite. The fun
of eating in our compartment, without being responsible for making
small talk with
other passengers,
is slightly tempered when Michael notices that the white cloth covering
our small table is actually a pillowcase clearly stenciled "Property
of Loyola
University Medical Dept." Twenty minutes later we move smartly out of El Paso Union Station right on schedule, and stop. Ellery’s voice on the speaker system explains the problem. "There has been a collision between a freight train and a truck at the crossing ahead. We will be stopped momentarily while the debris is removed and police investigate. We will keep you informed." Momentarily" turns out to be two hours and thirty minutes. The Sunset Limited is halted next to the El Paso Locomotive facility. Ten feet from our bedroom, a mechanic works on a locomotive. He tinkers with the behemoth, then runs the engine up to high rpm’s. He does this again and again and again. I love the smell of diesel in the afternoon. Finally we move. We crawl past the remains of what used to be a Kenmore big rig, the loser in the race with the freight. A hundred yards of wreckage is strewn on either side of the track. I am starting to get real uncomfortable with the messages that are coming to me about this trip. I hope they are not from anyone important. Shortly after the truck and the train announcement, Ellery passes the word that Bingo is about to begin in the lounge car. There are constant announcements on the train. "The lounge car is open for snacks." "The lounge car attendant is taking a breakfast break." "The dining car is open." "The lounge car attendant is back." "It is happy hour in the lounge car." "Here is the menu for tonight’s dinner." "The dining car is open." "Wine tasting in the lounge car." Bingo! At dinner, Ellery regales us with tales of the old days on AMTRAK. He tells us about the guy who tried to hijack the train to Cuba. Even though the crew tried to explain about the 90 miles of water, the hijacker persisted and took a hostage. A female FBI agent disguised as an old woman boarded at a station stop, and put a quick end to the hijacker’s travel plans with adroit usage of her cane. AMTRAK offers movies at night in the lounge car. Not on this train. The VCR is broken. There is only one place one is allowed to smoke on this train. It is located in the downstairs section of the lounge car. It is here, according to Toni, a woman we met, that everyone gathers, and all the train gossip is generated. After a few cigarettes, the smokers come up for air and circulate amongst us non-smokers to deliver the rumor of the moment. Kind of like the pioneer days when the itinerant peddlers were the real newspapers of the day. It was from Toni that I learned about the man with the 45. Thursday Texas goes on forever. Miles and miles of brown nothing slowly turn into miles and miles of green nothing, nevertheless we finally arrive in Houston. We are now two and a half hours late. As it turns out, this is not relevant. It seems that the train crew of the New Orleans to Houston segment of our Westbound counterpart had been held up outside New Orleans by bridge repair, thus they were late getting to Houston. (Apparently, bridge repair work is done every Wednesday.) The crew was on "turn around" to take us back to New Orleans. Union regulations require that each crew member get an 8 hour break between trips, so they were actually not allowed to get on our train until the legal time. For 20 minutes they stood along side the train, chatting. The clock ticked, the 8 hour period came to an end, and we left Houston exactly 3 hours behind schedule. Had we arrived in Houston on time, we would have sat on a siding for those three hours. AMTRAK schedules are not set in stone, rather they seem etched in silly putty. And I found all of this out without having to smoke. From Lake Charles Louisiana on, the Sunset Limited is constantly blowing its whistle. Whether or not there is a vehicle in sight for miles around, and mostly there is not, the engineer must herald the trains approach at every road crossing. This includes weed filled dirt roads that haven’t seen a car in weeks. In these rural southern towns, every road seems to want to cross the tracks. What was once a romantic sound from my childhood, as I lay awake in my bed in the wee hours of the morning, is becoming annoying as Hell. The train whistle sounds at other times too. It is always blown 10 seconds before we leave a station stop. It is also blown just prior to movement after an unscheduled stop, and there are a lot of them. It is never blown before an unscheduled stop. Perhaps the engineer thinks we won’t notice. We arrive in New Orleans, having traveled 2,033 miles in 47 hours. We are 4 hours late, and I am getting real nervous about that connection in Jacksonville. In New Orleans, the train is serviced. I use the time to walk briskly up and down its length to get rid of some of my train induced lethargy. I watch baggage being loaded on the bag car. It comes off two carts. One is new, made of stainless steel, and sporting pneumatic tires. The other must have been made in the early thirties. Constructed of wood slats and iron, wrought not from the forge, but from wear, its tires are solid rubber, worn now to the wheel rims. The two carts are a perfect metaphor for AMTRAK. The new ideas coming from a new generation of rail personnel, come up hard against the thirty year train veterans who know that there is only one way to run a railroad; their way. Ellery has told us that the biggest problem he faces is convincing the old dogs that the new tricks will benefit them in the long run. He told us how he tried to get the Dining Car waiters to set the tables with wine glasses, the better to "sell" wine to the customers. They were in the habit of waiting until wine was ordered and then bring the glass with the wine already poured. Taking the wine bottle to the table and pouring it there, meant an extra trip. The new policy went into effect. The wine glasses simply disappeared. It is rumored they left by way of the window. Chalk up one for the old dogs. Friday Because we are so far behind schedule, the single track is no longer exclusive to the Sunset Limited, and must be shared with freight trains. And, since freight is the money maker to the owners of the lines, it has priority. Several times we are shuttled off on sidings as long, long, lines of freight cars lumber by. Ellery comes to our room with news. We are three and a half hours late. The southbound Silver Meteor from New York has encountered no daring semis, no disconnected gunmen, and no pushy freight trains. It is on time, and not about to wait for us in Jacksonville. We will stay on the Sunset Limited until it terminates in Sanford, Florida. We will then get on a "luxury motor coach" (a bus), for the final leg to Fort Lauderdale. This means no deluxe bedroom in the Silver Meteor’s new vista car, no video in the room, and no dinner in the Meteor’s new vista dining car. It means 6 hours on a bus and no dinner at all. It is the middle of the afternoon when we finally get off the train. The bus is over thirty minutes late picking us up at the deserted Sanford depot. It is a cranky group that finally boards the "deluxe coach". We try to find room for our legs in the cramped space between the seats. The driver starts a movie on the video screens. In the movie, a train is hijacked. We all cheer. Ultimately, we arrive in Fort Lauderdale. It is 9:30 PM. Incredibly, the bus has made up most of the time the train lost, and we finish our trip only an hour late. Is there a message here? The AMTRAK fare for two people in a deluxe bedroom, meals included, from Los Angeles to Fort Lauderdale is $1385. (There are some discounts available for Seniors, etc., and it is considerably cheaper if one wants to sit up three nights in coach). The plane trip costs $440 for two, takes less time than our bus ride did, includes a meal, and a movie that works. Memo to our listeners:
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