I'm coming to you from the Auto Train, a truly unique train on Amtrak or anywhere else, for that matter. It is passenger railroading on a grand scale. Consider tonight's stats: 2 P40 locomotives, 17 bilevel passenger cars, 29 auto carrier cars (all told 4,035 feet long), 458 passengers with 225 vehicles (which include a few motorcycles), 26 on-board service employees, and an operating crew of four (two engineers, conductor, and assistant conductor). The operating crew will change at Florence, S.C., midway on the trip from Sanford, Fla. (suburban Orlando) to Lorton, Va. (suburban Washington).
Encountered on the ground in darkness at 70 mph, the Auto Train is a fearsome sight. It's like being attacked by a whirlwind that won't stop. Watching it go by never ceases to awe me (the most recent occasion being last Wednesday morning at sunrise, near Rocky Mount, N.C.)
The Auto Train being a regional specialty, most of you reading this have never ridden it. So I decided to share the experience. By the way, you should approach a trip on this train with high expectations, because they will be met. How many other Amtrak trains can we say this of?
Let's look at the train's lineup of cars. Sleeping cars come in two configurations. One is the standard bilevel sleeper: 5 bedrooms, 14 roomettes, 1 family bedroom, and 1 accessible bedroom. The other is unique to this train: 10 bedrooms on the top level and 4 roomettes, 1 family bedroom and 1 accessible bedroom on the lower level. So behind the locomotives, the cars are aligned this way today:
Bilevel crew sleeper
Bilevel sleeping car (5-14-1-1) Rhode Island
Bilevel sleeping car (5-14-1-1) North Carolina
Bilevel sleeping car (10-4-1-1) Palm Harbor
Bilevel lounge
Bilevel dining car
Bilevel sleeping car (10-4-1-1) Palm Beach
Bilevel sleeping car (5-14-1-1) Mississippi
Bilevel sleeping car (5-14-1-1)
Bilevel coach 74-seat
Bilevel diner
Leaving Lorton tomorrow night, on the way back to Sanford, the car order will be reversed.
Last call for automobiles to be turned over is 3 p.m. (Hint: For the best chance of getting your car early at the other end, wait until the last 15 minutes to surrender it.) At 2:45 p.m. the Sanford switcher couples onto the first of five cuts of auto carriers. It has them all coupled at 3:20. Then the auto carriers are attached to the rear six bilevels on one of the station tracks and this ungodly string of cars is coupled to the front of the train on the other station track. The air gets a test and we're on our way 10 minutes early, at 3:50.
I enjoy the rhythm of the passing scenery as we head north: DeLand, Palatka, Solite, Tocci and two hours into the trip, Jacksonville, starting at the south end of town with the Naval Air Station, where my son Patrick is stationed (except that his air squadron is doing drug interdiction now in Central America). A few miles to the north, at the south end of the Jacksonville yard near Beaver Street, is the incredible left-hand curve that causes our train to practically meet itself going the other way, at a crawl, of course. Moncrief Yard glides by, then the Amtrak station in the north end of town and suddenly we're heading back to 70 mph in The Funnel.
The Funnel is the almost 40 miles between Jacksonville and Folkston, Ga., and it has one of the highest (if not the highest) concentrations of trains on CSX, easily 60 a day (although I've read higher). If half an hour ever passes between trains, you should ask for your money back. At Folkston, most of the freights head northwest toward Waycross, Ga., Atlanta, and various destinations in the Midwest; all of the Amtrak trains and a few of the freights head north toward Richmond, Va., and points in the Northeast.
Passing Moncrief at 6:10 reminds me that the 7 o'clock dinner seating (there's also 5 and 9) is less than an hour away, so excuse me while I mix my martini. Ah, that's better. My choices on the menu tonight are Black Angus flatiron steak, chicken du provence (breast and chicken sausage and white beans), breaded and grilled catfish, vegetarian pasta Florentine, and breaded chicken tenders with mac 'n cheese. They usually do a good job on this train with the steak, so that's my choice. By the way, the sleeping car diner of this train is the only one of Amtrak's that serves complimentary wine. Forgive me for bringing up alcohol again.
This is as good a time as any to divulge what truly sets the Auto Train apart. The staff is so doggone nice! To a person, they are friendly, professional, and eager for me to enjoy my trip. To be fair, I find almost all Amtrak on-board service people this way, with occasional exceptions on a few trains that I won't name. Everyone I ask has the same opinion. My Trains Magazine co-author Al DiCenso traces this to the deal Amtrak president Graham Claytor struck with unions when he revived the service in 1994 after the collapse of the Auto Train Corporation. To be put on the Auto Train roster, employees have to be accepted after an interview and give up prior seniority. To put it another way, these people sign on for life. Al, who authored the January 2013 cover story on the Auto Train, recounted seven instances of marriages between crew members that resulted. Did I say these people are friendly? Oh, sorry. (By the way, the equipment is all maintained in Sanford, but the on-board crew comes from the Lorton end.)
We're easily on schedule (although there really is no schedule between end points) passing Folkston at 6:55. But guess what? We meet but a single southbound freight train between Jacksonville and Folkston. We charge northward through the Okefenokee Swamp to Jesup, Ga., then turn east toward Savannah. It's dark now.
Dinner is a fun. The rarest of all men, someone else named Fred, is seated beside me. Across from us is a woman and her seventh-grade son, she employed by Amtrak Customer Relations and he a train lover just as I was at his age. We have such a good time talking that I forget that I am an introvert.
When the sun goes down, which was two hours ago, you turn inward, to a book, movie, emails or what have you. I open a book on my Kindle. We glide through Savannah at 8:45, the part you never see if you come there on vacation but the only part I ever remember seeing. By daylight it's ugly but totally railroad.
At 9 on double track we pass the southbound Palmetto. Then the dark miles roll on. Bored, I ask Amtrak.com our expected arrival time in Lorton. Answer: 7:42 a.m., almost two hours early, a calculation based upon our lack of delays thus far. Seldom does such good news last.
Charleston, S.C., 11 o'clock. Our early arrival in Lorton depends in large part on how we meet two opposing trains between here and Florence. One is southbound New Jersey-Jacksonville intermodal train L031. The other is the southbound Auto Train. L031 awaits us in the siding at South Moncks Corner. That's one down. I decide not to worry about our southbound counterpart and go to bed.
Hello, I'm back. CSX continues to treat us we'll. I wake up at 5:45. On the railroad radio the engineer calls the clear signal at Stony Creek, Va. This means we're about 45 minutes from Richmond and suggests our train could reach Lorton about 8 o'clock, 90 minutes ahead of schedule. It does us no good to show up earlier, because 8 is when the station switcher and car jockeys start work.
A sunny day begins north of Richmond and reveals I have returned to winter. Lots of snow on the ground. Breakfast is continental: cereal, muffins, and bananas. Instead, I bring a donut I bought yesterday to the lounge car, pour some coffee, and take a seat at the window.
CSX is quiet this morning, as it has been the entire trip. On the north side of Richmond we pass a trash train on the other main track waiting to enter Acca Yard for a crew change. Fifty miles go by before we pass the next train, full of Appalachian coal headed toward Florida. But just when I think we're on the glide path home, we hit congestion at Quantico behind an Amtrak train making a station stop while the southbound overnight passenger train from Boston occupies the other track.
Our train comes to a brief stop in Lorton at 8:47, to uncouple the auto carriers, then pulls into the station. I get no thrill from all the snow outside; my weather app says 25 degrees.
To end our story: The switcher spots the first cut of cars at 9:05. First off are the 20 vehicles whose owners paid $50 for that privilege. How close behind those is my Durango? It is the 32d car to emerge thereafter. You decide whether my tip is worth pursuing. Ten minutes after the scheduled arrival time of train 52, I’m on Interstate 95, headed home, my expectations definitely met.—Fred W. Frailey
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