Thursday, January 16, 2014

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

You long-time Gentle Readers know that I took a vow about six years ago that I'd never fly again.  I took that vow because o' the hassle that flying has become, most o' that having to do with the asshat rules and regulations foisted upon us by the gub'mint in the interests o' our "safety."  The rules are only part o' it, though, coz the numb-nuts enforcing those rules are about as clue-free as it gets, not to mention tact-free and generally objectionable, in the best case scenario.  So: no flying for ME!

Our personal No-Fly Zone was the primary reason we elected to drive out to the Right Coast on our vacation this past summer.  While that was fun I don't think I'll ever do it again, mainly on account o' because that trip messed up my back.  We haven't been the same since we returned from our 4,214 mile road trip, ergo: never again.

So.  We can't drive and we won't fly.  That leads one to wonder how we're gonna get back east this year.  And then it hit me: AMTRAK!  Yeah, let's do the train!  Traveling by train is enjoyable and I've done a lot of it in my lifetime, both here and abroad.  I've also gone on a bit about the joys o' train travel, most notably here.  Just so ya don't have to chase the link...
It’s fun to travel by train. You have a lot more room than you do in a car. You can get up and walk around, you can sit and look out the window, and if you’re taking a long trip, you can eat in the dining car and sleep in a bed, too! The trip from Atlanta to New York takes two days and a night. We got a Pullman sleeper compartment on the train for our trip. A Pullman compartment is the term used to describe a little private room on a train. The room has two bench seats and beds that pull down out of the walls so you can sleep.


Train at Peachtree Station

The picture above was taken in 1969 at Peachtree Station, which is where we caught the train to New York. There’s little or no difference between the train you see in the picture and the one I took to New York.


I really enjoyed riding the train, especially eating in the dining car and watching the country roll by the window. When we were going through open country the train ran about 60 or 70 miles per hour. Whenever the train passed through a town you could see people in the street, kids would wave at the train, and it seemed like everyone was looking right at you. In the old days the train tracks often ran right in the middle of the main street of those small towns. The train would slow down to 25 or 30 miles per hour whenever it went through a town (for safety reasons, I’m sure), and the result was you got a close-up look at the town. I’m sure all that has changed, now. The train also stopped to pick up passengers, mail, and supplies in the larger towns and cities. I remember waking up in the middle of the night and raising the shade to look out on to the station platform. It was very late, but I could see men wheeling baggage carts and people getting on and off the train. I’ll never forget those sights.


As soon as the sun went down the porters began their work. Porters are people that are sort of like waiters or butlers. The porter’s job was to take care of the passengers and get the sleeping cars ready for bed-time. The porter would knock on your door and ask if you were ready to have your room “prepared.” That was the signal for you to step into the corridor while he pulled the beds down out of the walls, tightened the sheets, put the blankets on the beds and fluffed the pillows. The whole exercise was over in about three or four minutes. When you went back into your room the seats were gone and your beds were made for you. It was very cool!


The train passed through northern Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Washington, D.C., a tiny bit of Pennsylvania, and New Jersey before arriving in New York City. We got to see a lot of farm land, lots of woods, rolling hills, and flat plains. The east coast of America is very, very beautiful, even in November. And rolling through the big cities like Richmond, Washington, Newark, and finally New York was exciting. A lot of folks say there’s no better way to see the country than by train. I’m inclined to agree with them.
So there's that... noting the fact I like traveling by train... and then we were off on these here inter-tubes to visit AMTRAK.  Imagine my surprise:


Aiiieee!  Over 700 Yankee Dollars... ONE-WAY!  You'll note that price is for a roomette, which is the only way to go.  Can you imagine almost 48 hours in a coach seat?  I can't.  And that price doesn't include meals in the dining car which, bein' as how you're a captive audience, would cost ya an arm and a leg.  Not to mention the fact I'd have to drive three hours up to Las Vegas just to get to the train station, which also means I'd have to come BACK via AMTRAK if I wanted to retrieve my car from where I parked it.  Compare the above to this:


Looks like I'm gonna break my vow and fly this summer.  Every man has his price and it appears mine is a long ways south o' a thousand Yankee Dollars.  I'm really quite sad about this.

19 comments:

  1. I don't know if this will shift your thinking any, but when Carrie and I traveled first-class on Amtrak (sleeper car, like you'd be in with your Roomette) our meals were included, though alcohol with supper was extra if you wanted it.

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    1. I'll have to check into that, Barry. "Meals included" MIGHT make a difference!

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  2. However, see: http://reason.com/archives/2005/12/01/amtrak-sucks

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    1. That reminds me of my last AMTRAK experience, riding the Starlight from Klamath Falls, Or to San Luis Obispo, CA. I might have talked about the experience elsewhere on the blog, but it wasn't all THAT bad. I spent most of that night in the club car with some Oregon hippies, drinkin' beer, smokin' stuff that was decidedly illegal, and having a great old time. The memorable quote from that experience as this dude pulled a Pall Mall out of a pack, lit it up, and casually said "Have you ever noticed that sometimes a cigarette smells EXACTLY like pot?" Heh.

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  3. Maybe catch a Space-A C-17 out of Amarillo.

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    1. Now THERE'S an ideer! I'd think the chances o' that would be pretty low, however, coz most AF traffic into and out o' Amarillo is prolly carrying 999 cargo to/from Pantex.

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    2. Tell them you'll sign a blank form! :-)

      I had to fly home to bury my dad when I was in Ramstein. I went to the terminal with emergency leave papers and this pilot came to see me in the waiting room, he asked what kind of security clearance I had, and I said just a secret. He came back and said I could ride on his C-141, but I couldn't leave the cockpit un-escorted, even to the bathroom. Being a flyer, I often signed blank forms. Since a lot of flights I was on were top secret, and I only had a secret, they would give you a blank form to sign. If you accidentally became aware of what was going on, and disclosed it, they gave you a PCS to Kansas.

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    3. If you accidentally became aware of what was going on, and disclosed it, they gave you a PCS to Kansas.

      Heh. Lord knows we wouldn't want THAT. I'm kinda-sorta familiar with that drill as I carried an SCI clearance for a number o' years. The debriefing process when I left that world was pretty scary, you wouldn't believe (or mebbe you WOULD) the dire consequences that were held over your head concerning disclosure, accidental or otherwise, and the reams of paper you had to sign during the debriefings. That stuff followed me into my civilian career, as well. My company had to go to DoD for "permission" to send me off to Moscow on a gig in the early '90s, well after the Cold War was over and quite a while since I'd seen any compartmentalized info (I retired in '85). Squares must be checked, however. ;-)

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    4. You might be interested to know, that currently France is on the "No Travel" list for people on special access programs (SAP).

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  4. The old Nickle Plate Road Steam engines used to run thru my town in Ill and the IIRC (Illinois Central ran thru the adj town 10 min away. When in college at LSU I was w.o a car my first two yrs, and rode the IIRR "City Of New Orleans," the milk-run stop-at-every-wide-spot in the road "La Louisiane" and the overnite sleeper "Panama Limited" all at least once to and fro from LSU to my home in Illinois. My Aunt Elsie used to come home to see her Father from Dinuba, Ca in the 40s, 50s on the old Santa Fe Super-Chief streamliner. I road it once when I spent the summer at Foster AFB, Tx south of Houston @Victoria, TX in 56 when my 1st cousin was Wing Co of a Day Fighter Group there and at the end his wife drove me to Houston where I was picked up by Aunt Elsie on the Super Chief where we sped to Chicago, then to change to the IICRR's La Louisiane to take the trip down-state to my home. In those days fares were cheap as hell, Buck, and I, like you was ABSOLUTELY shocked when I priced a trip by Amtrack from N.O. to LA post Katrina to re-join my family in '08 after staying behind to oversee the reconstruction of our home. Truly shocking... and, like you, I ended up flying..

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  5. * screwed up twice: "ICRR"= Ill Cent RR

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  6. PS: The last time I road a train was on the ICRR in 1973 and the fares then were not much changed from the 60s. Heh, of course my Aunt Elsie used to tell me in the 50s that the price of pork-chops during the depression was 25 cents/lb (except nobody had the 25 cents, lol) so its all relative.--heh, when I first got married in '73 bananas were 5 cents/lb..

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    1. Or if you want more geezer stories about price inflation I distinctly remember sitting in Felixs' restaurant in New Orleans in Nov, 1968 on leave between assignments and eating a BAKERS DOZEN (in this case 14, not 13) of oysters on the half-shell for 99 cents!!

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    2. I like your stories, Virgil. I can't remember the price o' anything back in the day... except for gas... which was 12 cents per gallon at the quartermaster store on base at Wakkanai, 1968. That stuck in my brain for some reason.

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  7. I haven't sat a train in so long that it was the railroads still running the passenger trains
    ...and there were a lot more of them
    ...and they were a lot more convenient to ride
    I'm thinking maybe, now that the government is involved in operating passenger rail service, there are too many bosses making too much money ...kinda like the U,S. Postal Service

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    1. I agree with your thoughts vis-a-vis the USPS and AMTRAK. Or gub'mint anything, for that matter.

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  8. My last train ride was in '62 on the Western Pacific Feather River Route (it's all freight, all the time, now).
    They had those "Vista Dome" cars.
    I was on leave after finishing Radar "A" School and had two weeks before I had to report so I went with a buddy back to his home in St Paul.
    As I remember, it was only about $90 round trip ...which was still more than a months pay back then... and didn't include anything.
    The upside was there was plenty of room because the train car was only about half full and there was room to move around a lot.
    Then again, there was no way to get comfortable enough to sleep soundly.
    We had a club car porter take pity on us and saw to it we didn't starve.

    I understand that today you're pretty much stuck where they put you when you board the train.

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    1. In re: yer last. I gathered that from surfing around the AMTRAK web site. It appears all seats are reserved, which strikes me as rather strange, given ridership is down. And those "Vista Dome" cars were VERY cool!

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  9. I've never been on a train. And I too loathe flying but its a means to an end to I suck it up. Thank heavens for Xanax.

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