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| The Southwest Chief @ Albuquerque |
I've ridden trains before; the Santa Fe Super Chief tracked these same rails forty years ago. I remember that first train journey.
Amtrak’s Southwest Chief with its two steel and blue locomotives has backed underneath Union Station’s shed and is standing in deep shade, bleeding jets of high pressure air, hisses and rumbles emanating from under its stainless steel sides. It is all active readiness. Passengers begin to climb on for Kansas City, Lawrence, Newton, La Junta, Trinidad, Santa Fe, Albuquerque. For me, it is Flagstaff. Others will travel beyond that to reach Los Angeles the next morning. I am not sure which sleeping car to get aboard, but with help from a car attendant I soon figure it out.
My Dad rode this same train, a few years before he died. He had memories of trains from his boyhood, too. His father was a station manager for the Chicago, Attica & Southern back during the depression years so Dad grew up around trains; his first job was around the CA&S train yards and roundhouses at Attica, Indiana where he lived and where he met my mother. Circumstances have changed as years passed, but trains are not so different even now, some seventy years later. My Dad never lost his feeling for trains; he thought a world with more trains was a better place. His stories and his feeling for trains and railroads make me nostalgic for them, and bring a desire to experience them the way he did.
But things are different now. Amtrak’s first class service is a mere shadow of the service that characterized a mid-twentieth century Santa Fe streamliner. Even in the leaner last years of the Santa Fe’s passenger operations, I remember the Super Chief’s linen table cloths, superb meals served on china, and porters and stewards whose seeming sole purpose was to ensure that boys of thirteen had journeys never to be forgotten, on trains that were beyond their family’s means. Today, Amtrak’s car attendants consider the name “porter” an epithet, with no remembrance of days when it was an honorable title, a term of respect in a time when a black man had fewer opportunities. Black men rendered proud service fit for princes on the trains of my boyhood; in my memory they are all dignity and grace. “Porter” is a title of which few today are worthy. Perhaps for others, that memory is different.
I board, and my car attendant shows me to my roomette. I settle in while he bustles, providing pillows, telling me about seating for dinner, bringing bottled water. He hangs my coat and lets me know he will be there if I need anything. And he is. The train’s accommodations are mostly all on the upper level of double-deck cars, so we look down on everything outside; the view is lofty. I watch the last few passengers on the platform outside as they prepare to board, assisted by the conductor and the car attendants.
Back in 1966, we left Lafayette, Indiana around lunch time on a Monon intercity train that ran between Indianapolis and Chicago. I was amazed at its approach – gliding down the middle of a Lafayette street on tracks that took the place of the center-lines! I had never seen such a thing. Grandma had driven us the twenty-five miles or so to Lafayette. We had a submarine sandwich for lunch – my first. Saying goodbye to Grandma was always hard. I didn’t know when or if I would see her again – we didn’t have the means to run back and forth frequently, and at thirteen, I was beginning to understand mortality as well as how important Grandparents are.
Once in Chicago, we had a couple of hours – not enough time to do much. Mom, sister and I spent our afternoon trying to see a show at the planetarium, then a museum. We swept in and out of the museum. Maybe we saw the lakefront too, but little else. We boarded the Super Chief late in the afternoon; we had reserved chair car seating. The Super Chief was normally all-Pullman sleeper service, but this one had a coach car or two attached. At the time, I didn’t know this train was an American legend.
The train begins to move and as it passes from underneath the shed that backs Union Station, the afternoon sunlight reaches my window and I see the Chicago skyline. It is a beautiful city. We pick up speed as we roll along boulevards filled with commuters’ cars. Rush hour trains pass us, and we pass them. Soon, we are in farmland and headed southwest toward the Mississippi. On a train, you are part of your surroundings, not separate from them. People stand beside the tracks and wave. A train, especially a passenger train, is an event.
It’s time for dinner. I pitch and sway down to the dining car, grabbing at seat backs, door frames and passengers’ shoulders for balance; I don’t have train legs yet. In the dining car, tables line the windows on each side, with a server’s station at mid-car. The galley is below at track-level. Each table has a vase with a couple of flowers in it. The color scheme is grey and western sunset; the overall effect bespeaks quality. Dining is with strangers at your table – the few tables available make it necessary to share. I’m not much good at small talk but for the most part the strangers are pleasant company.
In 1966, the Super Chief left Chicago headed south. After dinner in the Fred Harvey dining car, we settled into our reclining seats with blankets and pillows, and eagerly waited to see what would happen next. For me, it was the journey more than the destination. As it got dark, we passed through Joliet, Streator, and Chillicothe then streaked toward the Mississippi at Burlington and Fort Madison, Iowa. I drifted in and out, but sometime shortly after Fort Madison, I faded completely off to sleep. When I awoke, it was June-green wheat fields and Newton, Kansas in the golden early morning sunlight.
Dinner on the Southwest Chief is included with the price of a first class ticket. I sign my check for the server and head back to my sleeping car. The attendant, Vic, has already prepared my berth. He offers the use of an empty nearby roomette since I am not ready to sleep. I sit in the darkened compartment and stare out the window at the Illinois farmland as it rushes past at eighty-something miles per hour. Passing trains are a sudden roar as they blast past us on closely-adjacent tracks. They are there, and then they are gone. I wonder how many know the Santa Fe line was one of the first railroads to build a double-track system, running trains in both directions at once. Not many others ever did it that way. Finally, there’s not much to see in the dark and I cross the aisle to my bunk. I sink in and sleep until dawn, waking once or twice when the train stops to wait for passing freights or stops momentarily in towns along the way. We pass through Kansas City in the night but I don’t wake up.
On the Super Chief, morning was all golden in western Kansas. The train stopped in Newton and Hutchinson and then rolled west toward Dodge City and Colorado. My sis and I rambled back and forth through the train; after breakfast we spent time in the lounge car, and in the domed observation car. We seldom sat still for long. We played cards with other passengers – and crewmen. A steward named Peter, a student from Greece working the train for the summer, paid as much attention to us as he did his other duties. We got a postcard from him later reminding us that as a true Greek, he would never forget “true friends.”
I awaken in western Kansas, and take a shower to wash off the sleep. The tiny shower compartment makes this a challenging proposition, but I successfully complete the job. I have to wait awhile for breakfast; the dining car has not opened yet. My car attendant provides coffee and juice meanwhile. He is never there until you want something; then like magic, he appears. How does he know? Breakfast is a “Bob Evans Special” – a combination of eggs, sausage, onions, peppers, potatoes and cheese. I have more juice and another side of hash browns.
Now, stuffed and sluggish, I watch the passing scenery and wait for the train to reach the Colorado line. The train parallels roads and highways, and crosses an occasional creek or ravine. I wonder how many passengers realize the fame and the history of the lands we are passing through -- America's westering adventure, west of Independence anyway, began here, on this land we crossed into from Missouri about midnight and will be traversing all day long. This is the route of the legendary Santa Fe Trail; we are seeing lands and scenes almost as the earliest teamsters did in the 1820s. We are practically in their wagon-wheel ruts. The face of this land has not changed all that much. About the only thing missing are free Indians and buffalo.
I read a newspaper. I drink the railroad’s rich ever-present coffee and even I appreciate its robust quality. I don’t usually drink coffee, but I don’t want to drowse off and miss something. I listen to music I’ve brought along. I figure times and mileages from maps and Amtrak guides, and match them against sign posts along the tracks that mark switches, waypoints and junctions. I calculate this train is running about eighty-two miles per hour. A nearby passenger has a satellite global positioning receiver plastered onto a window; his device confirms my estimate. Years ago, the Super Chief ran these same rails at almost one-hundred, but these decades-old steel ribbons aren’t up to that kind of speed anymore. I do fade into a short nap.
In the afternoon, everyone waited in anticipation for the ascent of Raton Pass. Window seats in the lounge and observation cars were claimed and camped on early. After leaving Trinidad, the Super Chief began the slow climb up the hill with a couple of added engines for extra power. Not too many years ago, this added power was still provided by steam locomotives. Even at a crawl, this long uphill grade was pure railroad excitement and we all watched so we wouldn’t miss any of it, especially the tunnel at the top.
Emerging from the tunnel into New Mexico and picking up speed on the downhill grade, the train followed the old Santa Fe Trail, through Raton, Las Vegas, past Ribera and around the end of the Sangre de Cristo range. After a stop at Las Vegas, we reached Lamy in the late afternoon. Lamy was presented in the AT&SF literature as a fabled waypoint on their line. Those destined for Santa Fe left us at Lamy. The Super Chief continued on to Albuquerque, where there was a longer stop for servicing the train. We were allowed a short time on the platform while the crews did their work. Somewhere along this stretch, Mom, Tina and I had our last meal of the journey in the dining car. I carried away a Fred Harvey menu as a souvenir and still have it in a box somewhere.
Now, Raton Pass is uneventfully behind us. Sometimes wild animals can be seen alongside the tracks but there are none today, only a few cattle. The valley along Interstate Highway 25 is green and lush. This controlled-access highway didn’t exist when I last rode these tracks. Cattle graze everywhere, the snow-capped mountain peaks of the Sangre de Cristos are our western horizon. From my first memory of it, I’ve always loved this valley. It is an ancient land in a cultural sense, with evidence of its native, Spanish and Mexican past in view everywhere. It is quintessential cowboy country.
The air conditioning in a coach car dies. Coach passengers are shuffled around and combined into a car where the air is still functional, leaving some in sour moods. I sit in my roomette in the afternoon sun as the Southwest Chief glides around the famous horseshoe curves and continues on toward the narrow defile between them and Lamy. We slow to a crawl for the passage of the tight, sinuous canyon and arrive at Lamy shortly after.
In the evening, the Super Chief left Albuquerque and rushed on toward Flagstaff. Beyond that some 25 miles, we got off at Williams, and boarded another very slow train that took us through Ash Fork, and down through Congress, Kirkland Junction and Wickenburg, to Phoenix. This 160 mile trip took all night, but we almost missed the train altogether – the station staff never bothered to announce it. Mom, Tina and I tried our best to sleep in that jerky old train, without much luck. In the morning, I woke up as we rolled along Grand Avenue between Wickenburg and Phoenix, with the morning sun beating through the windows and the glass-transmitted heat reminding us we were almost home to a Phoenix summer day. Our neighbor met us at the depot with a ride home.
Out of Albuquerque, I have my last onboard meal of the trip as the Southwest Chief rolls along the valley floor with western rim-rock framing the high ground on each side; I know it’s there, but I cannot see it in the dark. But this land is like my back yard. Through Grants and Gallup, we rumble on to Arizona and Flagstaff. Train service between Williams and Phoenix ended years ago when the Santa Fe abandoned passenger service, so I catch a bus home from the Flagstaff depot. This will take only two hours or so; I will sleep in my own bed tonight. On arrival in Flagstaff, Vic carries my luggage onto the platform and guards it until I can get to it. His service has been first rate – attentive, yet unobtrusive. If he wouldn’t be offended, I would call him “porter.”
As I gather my thoughts and belongings, the long silver train hisses and puffs a few times, then hums and glides almost silently away into the night toward the Mojave Desert and its morning arrival at Los Angeles. As it leaves, it looks almost the same as the Super Chief did forty years ago. I watch it go, and think of my Granddad, my Grandmother, my Dad, my Mom, my sister, and of the memories that tie us together. Some of these memories are of trains. Dad grew up around trains and he never lost his feeling for them. He thought a world with more trains was a better place. I remember, and I agree.
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