TheBanyanTree: The Train's to Blame

[B Drummond]

A Whole 'Nuther Experience


That would be the train ride from South Bend Indiana to Atlanta
Georgia that ended yesterday morning.

This was to be a much longer train ride than the ATL to NYP (train
speak for Atlanta to New York Penn Station).   And, boy howdy, was it!

Without knowing it, I booked myself to ride the train with the worse
on-time record in the ENTIRE natonwide Amtrak system.  (and there's
nothing to note that about the Capitol Limited on the amtrak.com site
either -- imagine that, huh!)

So, fat, dumb and happy I hitched a ride on said train from the SOB
(that's train speak for South Bend, Indiana) station at approximately
10 pm. on Thursday night. (The Capitol Limited, which runs from
Washington DC to Chicago and back was only 10 minutes late arriving
in South Bend from Chicago's Union station.)

And from there things went slower than poured molasses . . .  in  
Antarctica . . .
in July . . . in the shade of an iceberg.

By the time we arrived in Toledo, we were 4 hours late.  Toledo is
just on the other side of the Indiana line, for gosh's sake.  By the
time we got to Pittsburgh we were 5 hours late.

And by the time we got to Washington, DC, we were 7 1/2 hours late.

They held the southbound Crescent -- bound for New Orleans (my train
to ATL) -- over an hour so we could connect and not spend the night
in Washington, or have to bus us down to some other terminal to catch
the Crescent down the line and eventually end up at our destination
via the train.

All along the way the conductors joked about how the Capitol Limited
"was always late."

The reason?  the amount of freight trains on shared tracks, and, in
our case, sabotage of a switch between SOB and TOL.

Those were the minuses.  Now for the pluses.

Pittsburgh has a beautiful station smack dab in the middle of
downtown.  It reminds me of those in the old movies.  You're enclosed
in glass-like tiles and the platforms are kept tidy and have an
elegant touch.  Downtown Pittsburgh is pretty, sitting at the
confluence of the Allegheny and the Monongahela rivers where the Ohio
river forms.

Following the Monongahela (Muh-nong-gah-HEE-lah) river and the
Youghiogheny (Yak-uh-GAIN-ee)* river through the Appalachians was
priceless.  You pass through some areas of breathtaking beauty (and 8
miles along the "Yak" where it cuts through a gorge that offers some
incredible whitewater rafting possibilities).  You pass through coal
mining country, steel mill country, coke plant country and incredible
rock formations viewable all through an almost all glass sightseeing
car on the train, if you wish.  Harper's Ferry, at the confluence of
the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers is gorgeous via train.  Some of the
tunnels the train passes through are cool and the vistas of the areas
around the Eastern Continental Divide through the Appalachians were a
thrill to see.   * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youghiogheny_River

The old C & O (Chesapeake and Ohio) canal runs alongside the train
from Washington DC to Cumberland, Maryland for 184 miles and is now a
national park -- all 184 miles of it.  It was almost turned into the
path for a superhighway recently but common sense prevailed.

In retrospect,  if I could think of a place to run two extra hours
waiting on a train, passing through the Appalachian mountains from
Pittsburgh to Washington, DC would, no doubt,  be a favorite.

Washington, DC's Union Station is arguably Amtrak's best station.
Modern, clean, with helpful personnel and well laid out, it's a
pleasure to travel from or through.

So, they held the southbound train in DC, escorted us personally to
the waiting train and we left Washington, DC late, but on the same
day and I arrived in Atlanta only one hour late (since we left DC and
hour and a half late)  I missed being able to tool around in DC,
taking the subway and going to some of the memorials there by being
late.  I had planned on doing that if the train had arrived on time.
Maybe next time.

But now I want to make that 184 journey up the old C & O canal one
day, either by foot or by bike.  I want to walk over the oldest
existing railroad bridge still in use.  I want to see that mile long
tunnel they carved by hand through the ancient mountains on the
canal.  I want to go back to Harper's Ferry and spend a few days just
soaking in the beauty of the place and canoe the rivers.   I want to
go whitewater rafting on the Yak and hike up a mountain on the
Eastern Continental Divide and watch the rain fall, knowing that the
rain falling on the eastern side of that mountain will continue for
hundreds of miles to the Atlantic Ocean via the Chesapeake bay and
the rain falling on the western slope of the same mountain will
travel for more than a thousand miles and end up in the Gulf of
Mexico via the Yak, the Monongahela, the Ohio, the Mississippi.  Aint
it a wonder!

And the odds are that I will owe it all to a slow train ride from
South Bend, Indiana to Washington, DC.



   bd
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