End of the (rail)Road

 It’s 9:40 in the morning on Friday and we have stopped. Even though the train is over an hour late already, we have stopped to do a routine inspection. I could overhear the conductor telling her assistant to check every wheel- not just look but touch (I guess to see if it’s overheated or maybe just so the guy would know what train wheels feel like). This is a long train and it could take a while. It’s a safety thing, so tough to complain.  Five minutes later we started again.

The western train made a test stop as well, this one mandated by the track owners. Amtrak does not own any track except the northeast corridor. They lease most of it from freight companies. Those companies have the right to stop trains and make sure they’re following all the rules and that was some kind of signal check. That took almost half an hour, but they build so much slack into the schedule that they were able to catch up in the flats of Kansas.

No such luck this morning. We’re in the hills of western Pennsylvania, headed toward Cumberland, MD and the country is too rolling to give the people who build the railway much of a choice, they have to follow rivers, which with few exceptions proceed in a fairly orderly, though often curvy, right of way. The terrain limits what kinds of speeds you can attain. Trains are bad at hills and curves. 

We haven’t had a lick of cellular service for the last 45 minutes, so I can’t check my map to see where we are exactly. It’s very isolated and very pretty there are occasional rustic houses (with outhouses) and a road here and there, though I haven’t seen any cars today. It’s not the limitless expanse of the west, but beautiful and peaceful nonetheless.

Even after the stop we crawled for about a half hour. Apparently there was not one, but two minor derailments of freight trains here yesterday and there are still workmen around. As the conductor said, if we hit one of them we’d get delayed for another 2 or 3 hours minimum. At this point we started going through a series of tunnels, which I guess is another way of cracking the topographic challenges.

I had breakfast with an older guy who did not look in the best of health, but he was among the liveliest company I’ve had this trip. He seems to like to travel everywhere, or at least anywhere he can drive or take a train, and we spent a while talking about Alaska.

Spent most of the morning in the observation car, listening to the extended family of Brazilians chatter on in Portuguese. We were tracking along the Youghiogheny River (pronounced yokageny or yok for short), which heads north into the Monongahela at a place called, conveniently enough, Confluence, PA. It’s a very nice river, with lots of dramatic views. There’s also a bike/walking trail that runs along a converted railroad right of way.

The train was supposed to arrive at 12:40 so there wasn’t supposed to be lunch served, but since we were well over an hour late at that point, we were provided with a meal if we wished. My tablemate was another guy traveling alone. He had a slow, kind of reluctant manner, but ultimately was good company. He’s from Terre Haute, IN, says he owns a farm but doesn’t farm it, and has been an adjunct professor of a variety of miscellaneous subjects at nearby colleges. I never did find out what he did for a living or if he did anything. I said I knew there was someone famous from Terre Haute, and though he wasn’t originally from there, Larry Bird went to school there, of course.

The main attraction at lunch was sitting across from us, a set of twin old ladies, dressed identically, who were busy regaling their tablemates with stories of their travels. Apparently they’re performers of some kind, because I’d heard from a conductor that they had been dancing in the Observation Car. At lunch, all they did was sing along with synchronized hand motions, while the Brazilians took video of them. They were very cute and it appeared that that was what they did with their time, travel around, be cute, and maybe perform.  Nice work if you can get it.

After lunch it was time to clean up my little roomette and get ready to arrive in Washington. There’s a huge amount of slack in the last part of the schedule, so rather than arrive the expected 2 hours late, we were a mere hour and 20 minutes.

This gave me enough time to stroll around the lovely Washington train station, swinging through the food court, which I’d not seen before. It was truly impressive- almost every kind of food was available at the stands, ranging from Cajun to Indian to Jamaican to BarBQ to plain old pizza and deli. I was sorry I’d eaten on the train. If I’d know I’d have time I would have waited.

Finally got on my train northbound for the quick, routine hop up to Philadelphia, Or not. A few minutes out of the station we stopped, then began to back up. At first I was afraid there was a mechanical problem, which would force us all off the train. But instead it turned out that the train in front of us had had the problems, and we had to back up to a switch where we could get onto another track. From there on the trip was routine, Good trip. A few reflections later.