TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=90TT1870> <title> July 16, 1990: Trains:What A Way To Go </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990 July 16, 1990 Twentysomething </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> TRAVEL, Page 72 What A Way To Go </hdr> <body> To get back on track, try taking the train this summer By J.D. Reed--Reported by Lee Griggs on Anchorage-Fairbanks Express, S.C. Gwynne on the Cardinal and Richard Woodbury on the Texas Limited Psyches unravel. Odysseus and Chevy Chase become role models. Marriages crack. And the kids? Don't ask. It's summer-vacation time. The skies are jammed, the interstates gridlocked. Getting there demands endurance, adrenaline and maybe a good lawyer. Hardened travelers know the holidays do not really begin until they arrive at their destinations--and the luggage is finally found. But these days a growing number of savvy vacationers are leaving the car in the garage and bypassing the airport. They are going in style, taking scenic and luxury train trips on which the fun--and a bit of fantasy--begins with the venerable two-tone cry "All abooo-ard!" Recreational rail travel is on a roll. Some 4.8 million passengers toured the country on specialty trains last year, in contrast with 2 million riders ten years ago. The attractions can include unspoiled panoramas, relaxed atmosphere--with someone else in the driver's seat--comfortable sleeping quarters and lively service. No matter what the setting or the destination, there is a special drama about a train. The rules of the everyday are suspended, moments are easily shared. Observes Kenan Lott, operations manager of the Houston-to-Galveston Texas Limited: "People get on board thinking that two hours will be too long. But by the time they get off, they're old friends." Mesmerized by the clickety-clack of wheels on track, you have time to dream. You can find yourself or lose yourself as the cars rock along. Hollywood has long understood the state of suspended animation on the tracks. It has used the train to evoke adventure, mystery and romance in films like Orient Express and North by Northwest. Nostalgia is a great magnet for the iron horse, as is curiosity for a generation that grew up speeding down the interstates and making bicoastal parabolas at 30,000 ft. A train ride is a visceral excursion into history. You can hear, if you listen carefully, the hiss of escaping steam, the chime of crystal goblets and the rustle of starched table linens. You can see, if you open your mind's eye, a lone Navajo saluting the Super Chief as it pulls into Albuquerque; buffalo racing alongside the Empire Builder in Montana. On board there are movie stars and Senators, Vanderbilts and Astors dining on fresh-caught trout. Today that quality is mirrored on some private lines. The Napa Valley Wine Train, which rolls sedately through some of the best wine country in the U.S., serves elegant meals accompanied by wines from the vineyards that it passes, including Domaine Chandon and Grgich Hills. California-based Sentimental Rail Journeys offers vacation packages in restored vintage and Pullman cars that are attached to Amtrak trains, complete with porters skilled in turn-of-the-century attentiveness. Sample fare: $565 a person for a four-day San Francisco excursion. Michigan's Shiawassee Valley Railroad provides drama at a more modest price: for $55, a traveler on its Murder Mystery Train can watch a whodunit performed by a professional theater group as the cars roll from Chesaning to St. Charles. Not all rail rides are luxurious. On Amtrak, the national line, the amenities are fewer and the service spottier. The food may be microwaved mediocrity. In the aging coaches, the decor runs to implausible orange and tepid yellows, the odor is museum quality. A $274 sleeping compartment on Amtrak's Cardinal, from Chicago to New York, manages ingeniously--and torturously--to cram sink, toilet, passenger seat, closet, water cooler, trash can, storage compartment and shoe locker into a space about 4 ft. by 7 ft. But whether the accommodations are cramped or commodious, on every railway a different America floats past the window. The paths of trains are like those roads that author William Least Heat Moon called "blue highways," the forgotten byways that lead into the heart--and the soul--of the country. Such a trip unreels a documentary about smokestack America that pans across abandoned factories, stockyards, waste dumps and prisons. It is also a voyeuristic voyage more real than Roseanne, crazier than A Current Affair. For the train catches the nation in its undershirt, unguarded in its backyard after work, quarreling amid rusting engine blocks, scrawny chickens and mail-order guitars. But a train trip is more. It provides a window on majestic nature that is often inaccessible by other means. That's not Busch Gardens out there in the Alaskan outback, nor are you riding past the robotic ape at a theme park. Those are real moose in rut careening toward the train, real bears, mountains and mud slides on the other side of the window. Elsewhere, American rails wander beside breathtaking canyons, mountain ranges and waterfalls. So, wherever you're headed, climb aboard this summer. The experience will help put you back on track. COLORADO Blocks away from the depot in Durango, Colo., there is an odor of history: coal smoke. At the station, a panting steam engine hooked up to bright orange coaches with open vestibules welcomes you to the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, a huffing, puffing legend from frontier America and a sight that would thrill Butch and Sundance. At its peak in gold-rush days, the D.S.N.G.R. carried prospectors, cardsharps and camp followers the 46 miles between Durango and Silverton, Colo. Most of the mines played out long ago, but one remains, producing 2,000 oz. of gold a month. Today the D.S.N.G.R. is perhaps the nation's most popular tourist line. More than 200,000 people swung aboard last year for the 3 1/4-hr., gravity-defying 2,768-ft. climb to Silverton. The steam-powered haul is a dizzying experience. In some places the train hugs the canyon wall next to a 400-ft. drop straight down into the roaring Animas River. The round-trip fare is $37.15 in coach. A ride in an 1880 parlor car with bar costs $63.85, and a lavish private car can be rented for $1,086.20. The D.S.N.G.R.'s 1878 Nomad is the oldest operating private car in the world. Presidents William Howard Taft and Gerald Ford and other notables have used its brass bed and plush chairs. Alas, tiny Silverton is less authentic than the ride. After a chili dog at High Noon Hamburgers or a stop at one of the ersatz frontier shops, it's back on board for the real thing. ALASKA Railroads are Alaska's lifelines. Some 70% of the population lives near the single track that stretches 470 miles north from Seward, on the coast, to Fairbanks, deep in the interior. Along the way: some of North America's most dramatic wilderness. From May to late September the blue-and-yellow engines of the Anchorage-Fairbanks Express traverse a 356-mile route, pulling the railroad's own cars, plus the more luxurious domed cars of private lines. One-way fare for the 11 1/2-hr. trip: $98, or up to $140 for a seat in a private tour car. Just north of Anchorage the line winds through the Matanuska Valley, where 19 hours of sunlight a day produce turnips the size of soccer balls and carrots almost as big as baseball bats. The favorite destination is Denali National Park, which is about the size of New Jersey, and home to grizzlies and Mount McKinley, North America's tallest peak (20,320 ft.). Since daylight goes virtually round the clock, passengers can ride in both directions within two days and not miss a thing. VIRGINIA Other Amtrak expresses make the Chicago-New York run in 17 hours. The languorous Cardinal takes 27. But it does so through the most beautiful and inaccessible landscapes in the Eastern states. After departing the Windy City at 7:05 p.m., riders awaken the next day to catch the sun glinting gloriously off the Ohio River in rural Kentucky. Several hours later, the Cardinal winds along West Virginia's tempestuous New River. For slow, stately miles, walls of green mountains rise from the rushing waters. The area was once a boom zone, but most of the mining towns have disappeared into the foliage. Smartly dressed vacationers disembark at the quaint station in White Sulphur Springs, site of the famed Greenbrier hotel. Then it's on to the rolling farmland of Virginia. Hours after the eye has adjusted to the timeless bucolic greenery comes the shock of the new: the marble tombs of Washington and the metal towers of Manhattan. TEXAS Riders on the Texas Limited don't shell out $27.50 for the scenery. The vistas on the 2-hr., 50-mile trip from Houston to the coastal resort of Galveston consist mainly of hardpan and warehouses. What passengers most like to see is the bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-45, which parallels the track. While beach-bound motorists sweat, Limited riders are clicking along, cool and happy. The short-haul line began last year, the brainchild of former Santa Fe brakeman Franklin Denson, who wisely provides decor more dramatic than the landscape. Some of the Limited's faithfully restored cars, from the 1930s and '40s, boast brass lamps, mahogany paneling and luxurious settees. The motion is also authentic: first-time riders may be caught off-balance by the lurching. But for others, that's part of the charm. Gushes Jimmie Dean, 65, who came out of retirement to resume work as a dining-car waiter: "The ride is a little like buying a fire truck for a child: instant love." </body> </article> </text>