Across the USA by train

[John Ashworth]

Across the USA by train

The States were made for train travel. Irma Kurtz goes from Atlantic to Pacific on an Amtrak adventure

From The Sunday Times
March 1, 2009

Irma Kurtz

A All aboard!” The uniformed conductor at Manhattan’s Pennsylvania station called out the classic summons to adventure. “All aboard!” he called again. But he overstated the case. Trains are not for all — not in a nation where daily commuters are the only regular rail travellers and many citizens have never boarded one.

Cross North America by plane from New York to Los Angeles and you are in the majority travelling for work or a holiday; cross by car and you remain par for the tourist’s course in the world’s pre-eminent road country; cross the same immense and gorgeous continent by rail and you become an adventurous eccentric.

I had booked my transcontinental travel online in London: overnight from New York to Chicago, with a change of trains for the two-day journey to Los Angeles. Nevertheless, I turned up at Penn station hours before the afternoon departure; several garbled phone calls made me suspect that when it comes to snafu, Amtrak makes the British rail system look brilliant, and I wanted to be certain I had indeed reserved window seats.

Amtrak’s far-flung network is maintained by the federal government, which perhaps explains the wry tone of its employees when announcing late arrivals or, as often, early ones. Pamphlets distributed in the main stations urge neophyte rail travellers to “Tell your Congressman you ride the train!” and demand a dependable service.

The Lake Shore Limited to Chicago was overheated and outmoded; the seats, however, had a generous extension, allowing those of us who are not very tall almost horizontal comfort even in lowly coach class.

Experienced travellers equip themselves with a neck pillow, a coat or blanket for chilly spells and, above all, a sleeping mask; Amtrak dims its lights, but never extinguishes them. I was going to upgrade to a “roomette” for my return journey — one advantage being the curtains between the bunk-wide compartment and the hall, which impose terrestrial darkness, thus rendering visible streamers of stars over the prairie outside my private window.

Manhattan’s aggressive verticals soon retreat and the great land known to Madison Avenue admen of the 1960s as “out of town” begins, first with the commuter belt, where countless empty cars at passing stations await the return of their lifeforce. “Park ’n’ Fly”; “Everything for Windustry”; “Get divorced, not broke”: signs of the times pop up on billboards.

Gradually, porches start to outnumber Porsches, and industrial architecture, most of it abandoned and elegiac as it can only be seen from a train window, is decorated with graffiti not as witty or sophisticated as Banksy — more impassioned and political. “Look alive!” outside Syracuse. “Your country is damned!”

I was tempted to nip off the train in Albany, but even American rail-pass holders like me, entitled to a specified number of stops and days, are hedged in by limited seating and the requirement to make reservations “as far in advance as possible”. As I carried only an overnight case, with nothing in the hold, a conductor I consulted suggested, sotto voce, that I simply disembark then turn up for a later train, hoping for the best. But the threat of being stranded in the imperious cityscape I saw through the window outweighed hobo spontaneity.

Passengers in relatively spacious “rooms” and two-bunk “roomettes” are summoned first to dinner in the dining car. “Wait at the door for myself to seat you,” a stern woman commanded over the intercom. Plebs, meanwhile, ate in the buffet car, or reserved places for later sittings in the dining car to lay out $22.50 for 8oz of marinated steak and $5 for a glass of merlot. Hard liquor is absolutely forbidden on board. Later, I discovered that meals are included in the swingeing upgrade from coach class. Meanwhile, I embarrassed hunger with a weirdly sweet cheese-on-rye.

Then, in the encroaching darkness, I stretched almost full-length, the seat next to mine blissfully empty. Trains keep to regional rhythms; Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue was inspired by the riffs and bluesy syncopation of a westbound American train that now sent me into an easy sleep, barely interrupted until the stunning dawn over the Midwestern flatland.

CHICAGO IS my kind of town. Six hours between trains allows a sample of world-class architecture, tantalising galleries and the nervy street savvy Manhattan used to have, but sacrificed to become a tourists’ photo opportunity. The Southwest Chief from Chicago to Los Angeles turned out to be a sleek double-decker with a smart observation car open to all passengers, even those who preferred card games on their computers to the changing world outside.

In gliding darkness, we pragmatists of the rail crossed the great Mississippi, mainstay of American romance and history that has always been of roads and the river. In the morning light, a Model T Ford on a plinth outside a clapboard farmhouse marked the start of a landscape that would soon monumentally transcend the man-made as we began the climb to 7,000ft.

I envied geologists their knowledge of the natural history displayed in the canyons we passed through, layered in places and chiselled like the walls of ancient fortresses. In the space of miles, they turned from creamy yellow to deep red. And every tunnel opened into a new vista. “Was that a deer?” a woman behind me asked as we broke into open country. “I ate one once,” her male companion replied. “Tasted better than steak.”

Coyotes, solemn, attentive and inedible, watched us pass. In the distance, two riders sped along on horseback.

“That’s how they do it out here,” said the man behind me. “They still herd their cattle on horseback.” Overheard conversation was a relief after the exuberant snoring during the night had prompted me to add earplugs to my list of rail-travel necessities.

“We’re on honeymoon,” the young woman told me; she and her husband walked single file ahead of me towards the dining car, the aisle too narrow to accommodate their impressive girth. “He’s afraid of flying,” she said.

How many others on board, I wondered as I accepted a “cursant” offered by our breakfast waitress, were driven to rail travel by a similar phobia?

The cars were not full, as they are in holiday seasons, when very young and very old nondrivers head out to visit families. There were no foreign tourists; an attendant said they preferred the Pacific coastal route from LA to Seattle. We made 14 stops between Kansas City and Albuquerque, some long enough for panting smokers to indulge their habit.

“We do not pick up hitchhikers,” warned a disapproving woman over the intercom at Albuquerque. “And a hitchhiker is what you become if you are not back on this train before departure.”

“I never get off,” a stout middle-aged woman volunteered as I passed the door of a “roomette”, where she was perched on a hillock of suitcases. “I stay right here to watch my stuff.”

We had arrived an hour early, and a contingent of Native Americans was hurrying to lay out handcrafted jewellery for our appraisal and purchase from stalls on the platform. There was time to stroll the quiet streets under the glowing mountains of New Mexico: America’s designer state. I promised to plan a weekend in alluring Albuquerque next time I made this journey; and why not a day in Trinidad, Colorado?

Ordinary though it had appeared through the passing window, I overheard it referred to as the “sex-change capital” of America. Before impetuosity was stymied by requisite advance planning, I might have boarded a southbound train simply to send a few friendly postcards from Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.

On the fourth morning, I woke with a longing for the sea that was deeper than thirst as California gathered itself together outside. And finally, there was Union station in Los Angeles, an unexpected masterpiece of art deco where it was hard not to see the ghosts of old movie stars with their borzois on silver leads disembarking next to us.

Travel details: Bon Voyage (0800 316 0191, bon-voyage.co.uk ) has seven nights from £1,299pp, including British Airways flights from Heathrow to New York and back from Los Angeles, two nights in New York, three nights’ train travel to LA (via Chicago, with two-berth roomette sleeper accommodation and meals) and two nights in LA. Adding two nights in Chicago takes the price to £1,399pp. Or try Trailfinders (0845 058 5858, www.trailfinders.com ).

For more information, visit amtrak.com , which sells one-way fares from New York to LA from £219pp, based on two sharing a two-berth roomette and including meals. Flights to New York and back from Los Angeles start at about £300 through Opodo.co.uk or Kayak.co.uk .