oh this train keeps a rollin’
Monday, June 20
…later in the day…
My car attendant’s name is Derek. He’s very congenial. I first took the train for a longish trip (my first sleeper trip) in 1998 with my sister Beverly and her then 9-month-old daughter, Allison. The service was a little sporadic and grumpy in the Charlottesville station and in the dining cars en route, but in all fairness I have to rave about our car attendant on the way home that trip. Bev and I didn’t know what we were getting in to, and we had booked a room that was too small for us and Allison (who would only sleep in a playpen at the time). As you can tell from the picture I posted, there’s no way in heck that this size compartment would hold a playpen in addition to us. The porter took pity on me and Beverly and set up Allison in her playpen to sleep in the empty compartment across the hall. And no extra charge. We lucked out, and although I know Bev didn’t sleep a wink that night, it was nice to know that the car attendant was looking out for us.
Since then, the service has undergone a revamp at Amtrak. I’ve never encountered friendlier, more attentive, and funny people working in a service industry. And not even just the dining car attendants or the porters. It’s one thing to wait tables at a restaurant on the mainland, but when you have to wait tables and work with people and sleep with people for a period of 3-4 days, as some of the trains are long, then keeping a smile on your face and not wanting to knock a passenger off the caboose has got to be the hardest thing on earth!
Here comes the conductor to collect my ticket. He even still wears that square topped round cap. I’ll try to get a picture of it so you can better see what I mean. (Funny thing, the car attendant was just joking with me about how his room – across the hall from mine – was a mess. I agreed, jokingly. Then another attendant came down the hall and Derek changed, um, patterns? Would that be the word? He moved from his professional speech to his local, friend-speech. It just struck me and reminded me that, like all service professionals, undertalk with friends is what keeps you sane. ☺
The final comment I’ll make about Amtrak in this post is this: People take Amtrak the first time because they think it’s romantic. The idealized version of, say, the Orient Express. North American trains are so far from that that riders should not be mistaken. The train is lovely and romantic and thoroughly enjoyable BUT ONLY IF you are the kind of person to make concessions. You see an awful lot of shit out the window when riding Amtrak. Just think of why the tracks were created and when they were laid. The golden spike at Promontory Point, Utah, that connected thr transcontinental railroad was driven in in, what (if I had google, I’d google it) — around 1880? The world’s changed a lot since then. Especially in and around the city sprawls that have built up because of railroad and shipping systems (as well as other economic factors).
There’s a lot of rust in the world. And most of it you can see looking out the window of an Amtrak car. That’s the concession. The crap before the beauty. If you can get past the crap (and see the beauty in it), then you’ll also get to see what most Americans only can if they still drive places – long distances – on the OLD highway system. That is, the two-lane highways of America. (Yes, another romantic notion, but one worth mentioning here.) Those two-laners coincided often with the railroad systems, all of which go through stuck-in-time towns with quaint main streets and wooden railroad stations (often, which, actually have closed or been converted in exchange for updated steel and concrete stations). Being able to look up and out and see the back-ends of towns that the interstate system passed by long ago makes Amtrak worth the extra time and $100 over plane travel.