I don’t usually write about my train travels, but every now and then things happen that are so interesting or unusual that I beg your indulgence. This is one such time.
It begins barely a week ago with an email from my buddy Al DiCenso: Would I consider a quick round trip between Washington, D.C., and Chicago, out on the westbound Capitol Limited and back on the eastbound Cardinal? Absolutely. In the space of 15 minutes from receipt of that email, we book space, leaving Monday, January 27 and returning from Chicago the next evening.
Only then do we look at the weather forecast for Chicago for the day we’ll be there. Definitely a sub-zero day. I tell Al to quit whining and to act like an adult.
I’m up and finished with breakfast an hour before the Capitol leaves Elkhart, Ind., a mere 26 minutes late. The fun begins, the fun being getting the 101 miles to Chicago amid several dozen Norfolk Southern freight trains. NS Dearborn Division dispatchers are the best in the business, so watching them do their wonders is always a professional courtesy on my part.
We get exactly one mile from the passenger station in Elkhart before stopping. Ahead of us is a freight train being refueled on the main track. We wait half an hour. But the temperature is minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit, the wind is blowing, I suspect more mischief awaits us, and I am absolutely correct.
So far as I can see, NS has no switch heaters at its control points, and the problem this morning is that none of the switches will reverse themselves, due to weather conditions. So whenever the dispatcher wants to move a train from track one to track two or vice versa, he or she has to locate the nearest signal maintainer to manually reverse the switches. This delays the Capitol a couple of times, primarily in LaPorte, Ind., 60 miles from Chicago.
But the part I love comes 30 miles later, just east of Gary, Ind. Our train comes to a stop at a control point, all signals red. Then we get a proceed signal. The Capitol is going through the double crossovers when the Chicago West dispatcher says:
“Amtrak 29, stop your train. Right now. I’m sorry, but stop your train.” By the time those words are said I can feel the brakes taking hold.
“Amtrak 29 to Chicago West. We are stopped in the middle of the plant. What do you want us to do?”
“Please back your train clear of the control point,” replies the dispatcher. Apparently, he realizes that he was about to create some form of gridlock. A dozen minutes later, an eastbound NS freight arrives on our track, crosses over, and we resume our journey, arriving Chicago just over two hours late. In the lounge car, I nudge Al. Isn’t this fun, I say?
Not so fun is the notice, an hour before the 5:45 p.m. departure of the eastbound Cardinal, that it would be delayed. Roughly half of the short-distance trains were cancelled today because of the below-zero temperatures. But even so, 14th Street Coach Yard cannot produce a thawed-out Cardinal. Six o’clock becomes seven, becomes eight, becomes nine. At the rear of Metropolitan Lounge inside Chicago Union Station, Al and I declare Happy Hour and discreetly consume Jack Daniels and Ketel One.
When finally the Cardinal leaves, almost four hours late, reality sets in. The toilets in the train’s only Viewliner sleeper instantly fail and can never be restarted. Some rooms have heat, temporarily, but mine only emits winter air. I spend the night and all of the next day in a coach seat, sleeping nicely with a pillow borrowed from my roomette.
One might say it was an enjoyable trip if you want to see Cincinnati (scheduled departure: 3:27 a.m.) in daylight, which I did, awaking as we departed almost five hours late.
The truth is, I have a good time, and so it seems does Al, who reports he awakened in the sleeping car with the interior temperature near the freezing point. He joins me in the coach, and Amtrak’s conductor obligingly reverses seats in the Amfleet II car so that we face each other.
This is how Al and I spend the day, seeing the former Chesapeake & Ohio in daylight almost end to end. For hours we follow the Ohio River, then the highly industrialized valley of the Kanawha River. Then east of Charleston, W. Va., we enter the valley of the decidedly undeveloped New River.
Holding a first class ticket but sitting in a coach seat, I am happy as can be. The conductor comes by to report that the assistant engineer, who came through our car on a coffee errand, wants Al and I investigated as terrorists for having employee timetables visible at our seats. Then the real engineer, Timothy Hensley, comes through and introduces himself (the assistant engineer at the helm), and he and Al and I remember all the friends we have in common (hello Don Phillips). I cease to be bothered that I paid for a sleeping car room I cannot occupy (Amtrak later refunds the fare).
One thing I should report about the Cardinal: This may be the long distance train of the future. Amtrak is committed to erasing its food and beverage losses, which exceed $70 million a year and which it attributes almost entirely to the long distance trains. The Cardinal has no dining car. Its menu is managed from the cafe car, utilizing pre-cooked entrees that are heated in the convection or microwave ovens aboard the car. It sounds awful, but I find the service (omlette for breakfast, hamburger for lunch, jambalaya for dinner) okay if not spectacular.
The Cardinal drops me in Alexandria, Va., fully five hours late. My car is in the station’s parking lot, and I head home a happy man, as does Al from Washington (he reports later). You can look upon experiences like these as disasters. Or you can declare you got hours more of railroad enjoyment at the same low price. A day after the fact, I subscribe to the latter point of view. — Fred W. Frailey
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