The Night Train

When I was a child, I lived a block from the Rock Island tracks, back at the end of the Golden Age of trains. I would wake up in the middle of the night to hear freight trains passing by on the tracks, or the 11 PM night Rocket, a passenger train, to Chicago. For a child who didn't sleep well, the trains were a comfort, offering familiarity in the uncertainty of the night.

The Rock Island Line, like many railroads in the US, struggled to survive when the interstate system made it possible to travel at speeds previously unknown. The network of roads -- interstates, US highways, and local roads -- made the great elegant passenger trains obsolete. However, the Rock Island didn't go without a fight when the government went to take it over, and they wooed people to  their side by offering family excursion trains to Chicago.

My family took one of those excursion trips to Chicago, ninety miles away, in 1970, when I was seven. I remember everything about that trip -- the shiny exteriors of the Rock Island passenger cars and the worn interiors, the feeling of watching the industrial jungles and the brick stations pass by, bridges over sleepy water, and the noise, the glorious noise of the engine's horn close up.

The thing I remember most was eating breakfast in the dining car. With its heavy silverware, its china with the Rock Island logo, and its white tablecloths, I felt like a princess. I don't know if any dining experience will equal that one in my mind, because the waiter found me lemon and honey for my tea with a graciousness it's hard to find nowadays.  That waiter would be in his eighties if he were still alive, but if I could find him, I would thank him for making my day memorable.

The Rock Island line is no longer, having been subsumed into Amtrak. Unlike the Rocket, the aging elegant Rock Island passenger train, Amtrak presents a train ride with little to be nostalgic about. The chairs in coach are not as comfortable, the meals on the Lake Shore Limited are now pre-made, many of the old railway stations are closed and the big stations made smaller due to security needs. Sometimes the toilets malfunction and things get -- odorous.

But trains are still worth traveling on. The variety of people you encounter, from the Amish who see the train as a necessary evil, to itinerant musicians with backpack and guitar, and businessmen with their suit bags hanging in the luggage area. You can still sleep in a sleeper car, which is a miracle of getting two beds and a couch in a tiny space. The chugging of the engine and ringing of the bell as the train edges into the station, and the hiss of luggage wheels as the passengers hustle toward the station, waking up in the middle of the night in a sleeper car as the train travels through the Sandusky preserve on a narrow bridge of land surrounded by lake and marsh.

I dream of the trains coming back someday, when we have given up some of our control issues over travel, when we have given up our love affair with cars. Maybe it's a futile dream, but it's mine.