Trains

When I was a tyke we lived about a block from a mainline with 10 sets of rails and a lot of traffic. I remember hearing steam engines in the night and wondering if any went to the station downtown where my father worked.

The tracks were high on an embankment that ran along the northern edge of West Chesterfield, our neighborhood on the far South Side of Chicago. The embankment was nearly a block wide, so getting caught by more than one train at once was a possibility for a little kid, and I was strictly forbidden to go on the tracks. I could see really far from up there.

Pete, my father, worked for the Chicago & North Western Railway until the mid-’50s, and I felt connected to railroads. I got a model train very early; I don’t remember not having a train until I got to high school, when I think I let my mother give it away. When I was little, because Pete worked for a railroad, my mother and I would ride the Illinois Central’s City of New Orleans out of Chicago and end up in Fairhope, Alabama, near Mobile.

In the ’70s I was a charter member of the Windy City Model Railroad Club, and I worked briefly as a brakeman for the Baltimore & Ohio. I got to ride on the engine, hanging on a boxcar, and in the cupola of a caboose. Very cool.

My train friends always wanted to travel cross country by train, especially on a name train—The City of New Orleans, the Broadway Limited, the Empire Builder, et al. Some had done it, but not many. Simultaneous money and time was rare.

I rode Amtrak a couple of times between the Twin Cities and Chicago, and even Amtrak is better than no train at all, but not by much.

My wife and sons wanted to see our oldest in Chicago and friends in the Twin Cities this summer, and a tax refund meant that I could not only go, I could ride the train and meet them there. Hallelujah!

With the right sort of planning and a little luck, I can also see a cousin in a nursing home on the way. I can ride the Coast Starlight to Los Angeles, the Sunset Limited to New Orleans, and the City of New Orleans to Union Station in Chicago; then maybe a bus to Saint Paul, the Empire Builder to Portland, and the Coast Starlight again back to Chico. Bliss. I’ll be gone about a month, and I’ll let you know how it goes.