An Amtrak Trek North By North - Page 5

I am not the first to notice this phenomenon. A Fodor's article on how rail ridership had increased 6% this year is on my RSS reader. More people are noticing this alternative to the shoe searches and nasty security people looking for hate in all the wrong places. With luck or intelligence Amtrak and the Congress that oversees it will see the new riders lining up and try to raise the level of American rail service. Business Week has an article on the plight of the airline industry post 9/11, “The Summer Of Hell”.

My movie done, it is about 11 and the sleeper attendant arrives to convert my room. The two chairs slide out and a bunk can slide down from above. There is only me so he merely takes the thin foam pad and pillows that were stored above and the two seats become a bed. I sleep fitfully, wake often. The engineer loves the sound of his own train horn and it wails in the night. The sheets and thin blanket are somehow tighter than military. I fit in as if in a pod, a shroud in this small coffin of a room. But I am alone, my beloved laptop and cameras safely with me, my teeth brushed and a sink to shave in before arriving in Manhattan. I have stopped in the lounge car and I have looked at the “public” toilets and decided that tiny, private one is worth trying and lo, it works. Why do I have a house? Why do I worry that an apartment might be too small? I have lived in 30 square feet and liked it.

Morning and there is breakfast and a view. We are in Virginia and, finally, enter Washington, D.C. The Monument is visible in the perfect light of a September morning. We stop for a while in D.C. while they change engines from, I think, CSX to Amtrak, and increase speed through the Northeast Corridor, past 19th century trestles and warehouses; the wrong side of the tracks is on both sides of the train now. New Jersey passes in this tired dream and then we are in the tunnels of the City beneath the metropolis.

We dock below Penn Station. I gather my carry-ons, one too many as always, and gird myself for the hot, muggy, crowded chaos of the big waiting room I know to be waiting. Following a Red Cap (they are still there — “Oh, porter... porter” said Fred Astaire wooing Ginger Rogers in The Gay Divorcee) with someone else's baggage, he takes them into a First Class Lounge and asks if I am from the sleeper. Amazed, I find a great perk. This lounge puts many first class airline lounges to shame. Plush, A/C, clean with paintings on the wall, coffee and soft drinks, a “business center” and WiFi, it gives extra value to my room. A red cap is called for me and goes out into the chaos for a long time where he stands in line in the hot sweatiness while I have coffee and chat with a fellow passenger. Then he takes me and my luggage to the taxis for the trek to Grand Central for the last leg of my journey into the New York suburbs on Metro North which have also improved their service for the affluent commuters to Westchester County.

Article Author: Howard Dratch

Howard writes on science, books, movies and news for Blogcritics and on his own blogs from the border of North and Central America.

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