The perils of 1968

Of all the crazy years in American history, 1968 is near the top. Entire books have been written about it. Television documentaries have sanctified it. “The most turbulent twelve months of the postwar period and one of the most disturbing intervals we have lived through since the Civil War,” wrote Charles Kaiser in his 1988 book 1968 in America. It was a year defined by the war in Vietnam and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. Riots in cities and on campuses. A bitter presidential campaign. I was a high school kid transitioning from junior to senior year, and, for me, it seemed the only good thing happening was an explosion of great music thanks to the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, et al.

The nightly disturbances brought to us by Walter Cronkite wasn’t all that troubled me. I loved passenger trains, and everywhere the news was bad. In those last years before Amtrak, the decline of train travel seemed to accelerate with each passing month. It got so I was afraid to look at “Railroad News Photos” every month in Trains. “Night shots in Buffalo depict final westbound and eastbound Centurys,” said one caption. “Final southbound train 76 [SP’s Lark] unloads passengers at Glendale,” reported another. The funeral processions never ended. Meanwhile, a new entity called Penn Central was replacing my beloved New York Central. 

In the middle of that long, hot summer, a friend of mine and I ventured out into the forbidding world. Martha Crouch was (and is) the kind of friend who makes adventures happen. We had grown up in the same classes and church choir and over the years managed to do some things that, to me, were extraordinary. Marti loves plants; in fact, she went on to have a distinguished career as a biologist. She got me a summer job tending to flowerbeds and rock gardens at a local nature preserve. We fed our addiction to soul music by going to South Bend for a midnight show by James Brown & His Famous Flames. And in July 1968, we took the train to Philadelphia.

Marti and I were purely friends, so any notion that we needed a chaperone was ridiculous. Just the same, our parents were reassured that our visit would be under the auspices of my uncle and aunt, Mac and Rita Macintosh, who lived in the leafy northwest Philly neighborhood of Mount Airy. It was a simple proposition: my mom would put us on the train at Plymouth, Ind., 40 miles south of my home in Niles, Mich., ride the former Pennsylvania Railroad to North Philadelphia, and be picked up by “the Macs.”

So it was that Marti and I stood along the main line at Plymouth on a muggy evening in late July. Plymouth had a sturdy brick PRR station, but what really sticks in my mind was the long brick platform along the north side of the tracks. The Pennsy was straight as an arrow across Indiana, so we had plenty of time to watch the headlight and hear the horn as PC train 50, the Admiral, approached from Chicago.

My mother had chosen the Admiral. She didn’t have a lot of options. The only decent train left on this railroad was the Broadway Limited. The previous year Pennsy had discontinued trains 28 and 29, the all-Pullman Broadway, and transferred the famous name to the coach-and-sleeper General. Alas, even a downgraded Broadway would not deign to stop in Plymouth.

So we were left with the Admiral, a train of no particular distinction. I didn’t take notes, but I distinctly remember it as a single E unit (still in Tuscan red but lettered for PC) and three coaches, rumbling unceremoniously into Plymouth. I had hoped to show Marti how cool passenger trains could be — but with the Admiral? Forget it. The indifferent PC trainman who hustled us aboard didn’t help.

Had I read the fine print in that year’s Official Guide I would have seen that train 50 was one of several earning the terse timetable note “Trains Not Indicated Below Carry Coaches Only.” My mother must have known, for she had packed two sack lunches.

However basic the Admiral’s equipment was, we left on time at 8:13 p.m. and soon were doing 79 mph. In those days the old PRR was still quite a piece of railroad and the ride was fast and smooth. Marti and I chatted into the late evening and somewhere in eastern Ohio we drifted off.

I kicked myself the next morning because I had wanted to see Horseshoe Curve and the change to a GG1 electric at Harrisburg. Instead, I woke up somewhere east of there, now aboard a much bigger train. We had acquired a few extra coaches at Pittsburgh, plus a “snack-bar coach,” as PC listed it. The train was crowded now, and Marti and I had to wait in line for something to eat. 

At 12:30 p.m. and some 738 miles from Plymouth, the Admiral arrived on time at North Philadelphia, where the Macs were waiting. The rest of the week was a blur of fun stuff as my aunt and uncle chauffeured us, and my cousin Laurie, around to museums and historic sites. We took a train to New York one day (a few years too late for the real Penn Station) to visit the Empire State Building and the Metropolitan Museum’s Cloisters. My favorite part of the trip: the Philadelphia streetcars. The Macs lived four doors north of the Carpenter Lane trolley loop at the end of the Route 53 Wayne Avenue line. The Philadelphia Transportation Co.’s green-and-cream PCC cars were a source of endless entertainment, at least for me. 

Marti headed back to the Midwest after a week, but I had one more destination: Princeton, N.J., where I was enrolled in a music camp at the former Westminster Choir College. I was nervous about the whole thing — hundreds of kids from around the U.S., convening for two weeks of intense study and performance — but the experience netted me a splendid train ride. The Macs drove me to Princeton, but for the return I rode Princeton’s “Dinky,” the commuter train that linked the college town with Princeton Junction, 2.7 miles away. In 1968, the Dinky was still protected by a pair of red Pennsy MP54 M.U. cars. It was refreshing to sit next to an open window on a hot summer day, even for the short ride. A local train got me back to Philadelphia.

Penn Central had no westbound version of the Admiral, so I was stuck with train 23, the Manhattan Limited, which didn’t come close to living up to its name. The train had the snack-bar coach the timetable promised, but otherwise only coaches. Watching the train’s imperious GG1 slide into North Philadelphia was a treat. The rest of the ride was mostly forgettable.

Even on a has-been train, the view the next morning from a coach window was exhilarating as we sliced diagonally across eastern Indiana at the crack of dawn. Peering out at the blur of cornrows and telegraph poles, half asleep, it was possible to imagine there was no Penn Central, no “coaches-only” notations, no surly trainmen, only the enduring majesty of the PRR. But reality returned as the Manhattan Limited creaked to a stop in Plymouth at 5:40 a.m. My mom was waiting for me in the family station wagon. After three weeks away from the world, the car radio brought news of Richard Nixon’s presidential nomination. In a week the Soviets would invade Czechoslovakia. It was par for the course. After all, it was 1968.