Trains as Enjoyable and Essential

Those who know me well know that I thoroughly enjoy traveling by train.  It's almost as if something lights up in my brain when I think of myself riding on a train, especially intercity service like Amtrak.  Passing through Union Station, even when I'm not there to board an Amtrak train, it's enough to see the monitors with departure and arrival information, and see people boarding trains headed to other cities to cause that something to light up inside me.  Indeed, the phrase "Thank you for choosing Amtrak" is music to my ears.

I'm not really sure where this all started, but it definitely happened at a young age.  My family's great long trip through the western United States traveling by train may very well have sown seeds of train-philia.  Around that time, Mom found an Amtrak version of the computer game Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego? and I thoroughly enjoyed playing it and riding the rails virtually through the United States while seated in front of a monitor.  There was also all the fun I had playing with Brio, building track layouts and moving the trains around each layout.

I've noticed my endearment of trains growing through the years, especially in recent times, as I've taken advantage of opportunities to travel to various places via Amtrak--with five trips by train since I graduated from graduate school a little more than a year ago.

As great as all those trips were for feeding my philia, a watershed moment came two months ago, when, on the morning of June 17, after a car trip of over 90 miles, I hopped up into a real train engine, and spent the next 30 minutes with a licensed engineer learning how to operate it.

There I am in the engine cab.

This opportunity was part of a Guest Engineer program that is available at the Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum in North Judson, IN, about 60 miles southwest of South Bend.  It's a museum in a historic train depot filled with displays of items from the bygone days of train operations.  Nearby are some old train cars on display, a repair shop, and a tower that was moved from miles away in northwest Indiana to North Judson.

Here's the view of the museum area from the tower.  The grayish building just to the left of the center of the photo is the historic depot.

In addition to operating pleasure rides for visitors, people willing to pay a hefty fee can spend time with a licensed engineer operating a train engine.

This is the train engine I operated.

The key word is "operate".  You see, a car has a wheel, and you can use it to steer the vehicle.  A train, however, doesn't have a wheel in the engine cab, and it cannot be steered.  The train's movements are controlled by a collection of levers that make it move forward, backward, accelerate, decelerate, and brake.  Of course, all these movements have to be done always keeping in mind safety precautions--hence, I also learned how and when to use the whistle, which made an earsplitting blast even when I pulled its lever just a little bit.

Here I am at the controls.  As I recall them, my right hand is on the throttle, which moves the train--it appears to the left in the picture.  My left hand is on the brake.  Above my right elbow is the whistle.

Bjarne was the wonderful engineer who showed me the ropes that morning, with a couple of other people helping out, including one person who used flag signals when I went through a grade crossing.  I learned how to move the train in reverse, pull it into a siding, back out of the siding, and move it forward back to the starting point at the depot.  And towards the end of our time together, he remarked that I was picking it up like a natural.  I guess that reinforces the idea that I can enter something with little familiarity and learn it quickly.

Bjarne (in the orange safety vest) and I with my certificate upon the successful conclusion of my time in the engine.  This photo was taken by the person at the counter in the museum--I believe his name was Bob.  Bjarne took the two pictures of me above in the engine cab.

Given how my love affair with trains started early, it sometimes seems like it's a childish thing such that I'd be better off just leaving it aside.  Some people even feel that passenger train service serves little purpose in the 21st Century United States, and seek to curtail it.  Case in point: a few months ago, the Trump administration's proposed budget called for eliminating long-distance Amtrak routes, based on their running a deficit.

Passenger rail advocates held rallies on June 23 to advocate for long-distance Amtrak service, noting how cutting these long distance routes would leave countless communities throughout the United States without any passenger train service and all the accompanying benefits.  The name of the website for the rallies, Towns without Trains, refers to how for many communities Amtrak trains serve, Amtrak provides the only reliable daily intercity transportation.  Indeed, when I was riding the Empire Builder back in May, I passed through many rural Montana cities that are not within a reasonable traveling distance to any major airport, and so those cities are notable examples of the importance of passenger rail service as a lifeline for them.  That's definitely a major reason to keep the long-distance service running.  Additionally, without long-distance passenger trains, the short-distance train corridors would be isolated from one another, and that would reduce ridership, considering many riders connect between long- and short-distance trains.

On the whole, in the present day, train travel has fallen out of people's mindset as a means of transportation.  I think of the day I left for South Carolina back in May, and when I told someone of my travel plans for later that day, she asked me when I was flying out, as seems typical when going somewhere long-distance.  I then told her I was going by train, and she expressed delight at the idea.  Last summer, after attending the SLA conference in Philadelphia, I was talking with someone about that trip, and she made a remark about my taking the effort to fly there, to which I responded I didn't fly.  After attempting a couple of other guesses regarding my mode of transportation, she then flat out asked me how I got there, as if it seemed like she wouldn't have ever thought to guess train.  Usually, people are rather surprised when I tell them I travel long distances via Amtrak trains.

Given the state of flux for Amtrak service in recent months, it seems appropriate that a few months ago, I got around to reading Waiting on a Train: The Embattled Future of Passenger Rail Service, by James McCommon, a book I had seen often while shelving on the 3rd floor of the Oak Park Public Library.  It was a great read, certainly in large part because of my intense enamorment of trains.  In the book, Mr. McCommons's travels throughout the United States over the course of several months in 2008 to visit with people working for various railroad companies, people in government managing train affairs, passenger rail advocates, and people who work at Amtrak to get their perspectives on the state of train service in the United States.  He traveled from his home in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to all over, including the Pacific Northwest, California, Florida, Maine, Texas, and then some.  He travels almost exclusively on Amtrak, and in addition to sharing what he learned from talking with experts, he also shares his experiences onboard the trains, including the sights he sees and his fellow passengers.

As part of setting the scene, he takes care to tell about the history of railroad service in the United States, which is a complex one because the railroads became a vital part of the nation's infrastructure, moving people and goods fast and efficiently in their heyday.  But they were run by private companies motivated by profit, and that led to some issues.

He makes it clear that train service in this country today is in dire straits, although it's improved some since the shaky nascent days of Amtrak in the early 1970's, which was created by the federal government with some thinking that doing so would make passenger train service die.  Part of the problem is that unlike roads, which are generally in the public domain, railroad tracks are the private property of railroad companies.  Amtrak operates the vast majority of its trains over tracks owned and maintained by the rail companies, and are at the mercy of those companies.  This is a problem with Union Pacific in particular, which has no interest in supporting passenger service.  Union Pacific even flatly refused his requests for an interview for the book.  As the book relates, this leads to some routes experiencing major delays frequently, like the Texas Eagle.  Other companies are more willing to collaborate with Amtrak, especially in maintaining good on-time performance.  One industry expert Mr. McCommons interviews in the book boldly suggested that the rail tracks be nationalized so that they, like roads, are more commonly shared by all users, freight and passenger service.

Other people he talked with shared how they've tried to build up support to secure funding to enhance the train infrastructure to increase passenger rail service on certain short-distance corridors, like the Downeaster Service from Boston to Portland, ME, which now goes all the way to Freeport, and the Cascades service, with service from Vancouver, BC, to Eugene-Springfield, OR.  These are among some of Amtrak's successes.

And then there are people like Rick Harnish of the Midwest High Speed Rail Association who want to take it all many steps further, building rail lines dedicated for passenger service capable of reaching speeds over 200 mph, like trains already running in Europe and Asia.  His vision shows how such a network could bring greater interconnectivity to a region like the Midwest, and with it, greater economic vitality.  It would also more efficiently connect Midwestern cities, since they're so close to each other, enough so that air service isn't as efficient, especially from an environmental standpoint.  Indeed, train service is much more green than auto travel, and especially more than planes, because they can transport large numbers of travelers at once over greater distances, using less fuel.  Trains ought to be a significant part of those advocating for action to combat global climate change.

For me, it's clear that despite the troubles passenger train service has faced in recent decades, it still has so much potential to play an important part in a robust transit infrastructure in the United States. In recent years, I feel our society has come to depend almost too much on air travel, to an almost unhealthy degree--and the airline industry has been plagued by its own share of troubles because people demand too much out of it.

Furthermore, I think we need to diversify our transportation options, especially when we consider situations when the air space has to be closed to all commercial air passenger service for safety reasons, as happened in the aftermath of September 11 or even when the Eyjafjallajokull volcano erupted in 2010 and spewed volcanic ash all over European airspace.  Even the damage caused by a fire at an Aurora FAA facility in 2014 was enough to disrupt air service in the Chicago area.  Even when it comes to inclement weather, trains run when planes can't.  Mr. McCommons talks about heading out of Chicago in the midst of a blizzard while flight cancellations abounded at Chicago airports.

Speaking of safety, it's clear that any expansion of passenger rail service will require adherence to the highest standards of safety.  Around the time I started reading Waiting on a Train, I watched the PBS science show NOVA program "Why Trains Crash", focusing on train safety, and included telling the stories of three incidents that highlight the importance of safety standards: the May 2015 crash of Amtrak train #188 north of Philadelphia, the September 2008 Metrolink commuter train crash in the Los Angeles Metro Area, and the Lac Megantic freight train crash in July 2013.  The program extensively mentions Positive-Train Control (PTC) as a means to prevent crashes when a train surpasses speed limits.  While the federal government has passed legislation to require the implementation of PTC, the railroads have delayed in the installation because of costs.  (When I was headed to Seattle this past May, someone remarked how some mechanical devices installed on tracks could be a cost-effective alternative to PTC, and that suggestion got me thinking about its large-scale feasibility.)

The program holds up Japan as a paragon in train operations, and safety.  They have a well-developed network of high-speed bullet trains, which are a significant part of the transportation infrastructure there, factoring into even urban planning, as train stations function also as major shopping centers.  The program showed how in a city in Japan, all rail service shuts down every night at midnight, at which time workers come out in force to do maintenance work, to ensure that the train can continue operating safely at their high speeds.  Train systems like the one in Japan are what MHSRA point to as examples to be emulated in the United States.

Indeed, passenger rail service, including high-speed rail lines, have so much potential to benefit society in the United States.  But as Mr. McCommons makes clear in the epilogue of Waiting on a Train, it's going to cost money, which I think is the single biggest obstacle to expanding passenger rail service in the US.  There are people who are just plain unwilling to pay.  In fact, Mr. McCommons shares an anecdote that when people think of developing transportation infrastructure, they talk about "investing" in roads, but "subsidizing" train service.

As a result, train service is in rather poor shape.  One anecdote that highlights this is how there is no direct rail service from Chicago to Houston.  Passengers have to transfer to a bus at Longview, TX, and then ride it south for a few hours to reach a dingy shack of a station that is tucked away among the freeway sprawl in Houston.  Even in major cities like Chicago, there is so much need for money to improve light-rail rapid transit service, but the money is not readily available.

Meanwhile, other places in the world are really taking off in developing amazing train service, like in Europe and Asia.  Perhaps those regions are more closely connected, and so the task of creating a high-speed network is not so daunting as doing the same across the United States, though the MHSRA says that the Midwestern United States is a region close in size to Europe.

China already has a commercially-operating Magnetic levitation train, which basically use the force of magnetism to move the train as it hovers over the track.  Japan is also developing this train technology.  These trains can operate at speeds of 375 mph. If such a train operated commercially in the United States, a passenger could get from Chicago to St. Louis in less than an hour.  Think of what kind of impact that could have on increasing mobility and interconnectivity.

With my immense enthusiasm for train travel, I'm hopeful that creating big plans will at least get our society moving in the right direction to change attitudes about train travel and take little steps toward realizing more ambitious goals.  Meanwhile, I'll do my part by seeking out opportunities to ride the rails and show that it works, and it's worth focusing on as we blaze ahead in efforts to enhance our transportation infrastructure, as more than lofty dreams, but a solid vision for the future of travel in the United States.  With focus and a steady hand, like I used when learning how to operate the train engine, I'm sure trains will make a significant comeback, and once again take their place at the table of major players in society, just like in their golden days, even as I continue to feel my passion for trains.

A fellow passenger got this photo of me in the lounge car of the eastbound Empire Builder, while we were in North Dakota, as I show my passion for train travel, with a shirt from my cousin's company, Belong Designs.