Page 15 - WTP Vol. XIII #1

into the station. It’s faint at first, but soon shakes all other thoughts from my mind. This route is called the Empire Builder—hearkening to a time when such an endeavor was still permissible. People rise from their seats and head toward doors leading to the boarding area. The sheer noise of the braking train is remark- able. When I was a kid living through the umpteenth tornado warning in southern Indiana, I remember asking my great grandma what a twister might sound like. “Like a locomotive barreling down on you,” she would say with authority. As the train pulls into the station, I wonder if I now know the sound of a tor- nado.
An attendant announces over a loudspeaker that Amtrak wishes to thank uniformed military per- sonnel by welcoming them to the front of the line. Two men in pixilated fatigues step ahead of a young woman traveling with a baby stroller. I find it hard to believe the doughboys I’ve conjured in my head would do the same. Regardless, we all file through the door, and when I hand the attendant my ticket, he actually takes it from me and punches it, leaving a small hole shaped like a Chevrolet insignia. I grin stupidly as he hands it back to me and then step into the loading area.
My ticket is for the next-to-last car, and the walk down the platform is long and dark. I pass smok-
ing hippies and an old woman attempting to back her power scooter up a boarding ramp, but I barely notice the stream of people I’m weaving through. The train dwarfs me, a dim sheet of silver in the faint light. It must be twenty feet high. Onboard, I find a cramped hallway winding between accommodations on both sides of the car. I have an upstairs room, and as I drag my bags toward it, I catch faint snippets of other passengers through closed curtains. I slide my own door open to find a dark, gloomy interior. The seats are enormous, even compared to first-class on an airline. I toss my bags and sit, nosing through the literature provided near the window. A map of the route, a list of approximate arrival times, a red line crossing through named dots I’ve never heard of. Red Wing, Minot, Cut Bank. I imagine prospectors and desperadoes, but the molded plastic interior of my roomette reminds me that I was born a hundred years too late. Still, they were there once.
A few minutes later I look up to find the train reced- ing from the darkness of the station. We move beneath raised stretches of interstate and I hear
the faint blast of a horn from the head of the train. I begin to feel a steady back-and-forth sway that will become a constant companion. The sleeping car at-
tendant, a bald Black man with glasses, knocks on my door to inform me that he’s made a five o’clock dinner reservation for me, and that there is complimentary champagne located downstairs in Room Eleven. A step above airline peanuts for sure.
Eventually, my excitement is tempered by the un- avoidable monotony of cross-country rail travel. I notice details in the towns we encounter. The train doesn’t pass through the “nice” areas. There are no manicured lawns or swimming pools. On one hand, it makes sense that prime real estate wouldn’t be located next to railroad crossings, but it also echoes the fate of rail travel. How, like many of the inhabit- ants on the wrong side of the tracks, it has been put on economic life support. The longer I’m onboard, the more I see through the romance even as I cling
to it—outdated hardware and peeling paint hide behind friendly service and china plates. The tiny reading light in my cabin doesn’t work, shattered in a spider-web pattern. The seam where the window meets the wall is filled with crumbs and debris. Yet, to my forgiving eyes there’s nothing mediocre about this assemblage of railcars. As they rocket through dilapidated neighborhoods, I enjoy both the glimpses of domesticity and freedom from it. I’m unmoored by the spirit, if not the reality, of the Empire Builder.
Dinner on a train works one of two ways. For coach customers, you go buy a sandwich or a microwaved meal and, if you’re lucky, you find a seat in the obser- vation car to watch the country roll by. For first-class passengers, you make a dinner reservation in the dining car. When you’re called over the train speak- ers, you walk through the coach cars to you freshly- linened table. I question the logic of putting the first-class cars at the end of the train, the dining car at the front, and filling the space between with coach passengers. The walk to dinner seems designed to make you feel conspicuously superior, strolling past mothers with screaming children, senior citizens at- tempting to make a coach seat comfortable, boy scout troops taking over entire sections of cars, Amish look-
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