The Train to Look for America - Part II
Amtrak is a Great Way to See America and to Meet the Amish People That Are Seeing America
The following piece was published on “Old Ones Dream” August 5, 2013, and was included as a piece of “Magnolia Elegy: Place In the Edisto Fork” April 14, 2022.
On the trip back east in July there was a large group of Amish young people (couples and singles) that spent much of their time in the view liner lounge playing board games (including chess) and kibitzing in their German dialect. They had been on vacation and were returning to Elkhart, Indiana. It was a treat to observe them because they were so fresh and smart and enjoyed each other’s company so much. One young man told me a clean “yoke” about couples who live near train tracks. There was a young woman who had been sitting alone reading and writing all day and I spoke briefly to her about their travels, but I didn’t press because I felt like an “English” intruder in their “other-world”. I did tell her that I admired the way her people farmed (based on horses), and that if our country still farmed that way there would be little unemployment and that most people would be happier than they are now. She nodded and smiled.
The Empire Builder left Minot, North Dakota headed east over 3 hours behind schedule because of severe storms and high winds in eastern Montana (moving east) and by morning we were 5 hours behind schedule. We arrived in Chicago over 6 hours late by which time almost everyone on board had missed any connection they might have had. But AmTrak had arranged for many chartered buses heading in many directions to take care of folk such as the Amish who had missed their train east to Elkhart. For folk like me who had tickets on the Cardinal for Cincinnati and points East, we were treated to a 4.5 hour Express Bus dash through the night down the Interstate system to Cincinnati where we overtook the Cardinal and boarded. So much for high speed rail.
Passenger trains travel on track owned and operated by the freight lines and the passenger trains operate within a scheduling system that includes the schedule of freight trains and passenger trains running in each direction, and that involves the location of side tracks and stretches of double track (if any). For a passenger train that is on schedule, the odds are good that the system will work very well and the passenger train will remain on schedule. I have travelled this year on 10 individual trains for almost 10,000 miles and up to this point had but one train that was as much as a couple hours late. But when a train does get appreciably behind schedule, the synchronicity is no longer in place. The train is out of its schedule pocket and the bad situation is very likely to get worse, which is what happened to the Empire Builder, and then caused the Cardinal to be left “dead in the water” on a siding at Clifton Forge, West Virginia. We arrived in Clifton Forge about 3 hours late; and CSX, the incumbent railroad, had equipment “up on the mountain” between there and Staunton that had to be cleared out before we could go. I spent this time in the lounge car, which is where the conductor’s desk is on the eastern trains, and so I had a ring side seat for all the story as we sat there for 4 hours while CSX worked out their problems. I met Tim Hensley who is a retired railroad Vice-President who now works as an Engineer for AmTrak and who had gone off duty earlier, caught some shut eye and came back to the lounge car to see what was happening. He shared my table and gave me a play by play of what was going on. He is a writer of books and a collector of railroad artifacts and has a bed and breakfast at Kenova, West Virginia By the time CSX had solved their problems and we were able to move, our crew had reached the end of the time allowed by regulations for them to operate the train. The westbound Cardinal stopped and gave us a fresh Conductor and we gave them Tim for his ride back home to Kenova, and then AmTrak sent an Engineer out from Charlottesville in a taxi; and then we began to “rock and roll”. We arrived in Charlottesville almost 7 hours behind schedule but by then the southbound Crescent was running a few minutes late, and they held it a few minutes more for us. It arrived in Greenville next morning almost two hours behind schedule.
Those two days were not AmTrak’s finest hour but travel during peak vacation season is often not pleasant no matter the mode. The experience of the people I met and visited with and/or observed was worth the pain.
The cascading delay phenomna you describe is what makes rail travel so unpredictable compared to driving. Once you're out of sync with the freight scheduling, everything unravels. Your conversation with Tim Hensley must have been fasinating, getting that insider perpective on the logistics. The Amish travelers add such a diferent dimension to the story too, their other world quality contrasts sharply with the modern infrastructure failing around everyone.