A Romanticized Defense of Trains
in a world of efficiency and individualism, the train lives on
This past week, I rode the train on America’s favorite (and only) long-distance passenger rail. While I didn’t plan it that way, I rode it over Amtrak’s birthday weekend (happy 54 years, Amtrak).
I’ve been interested in train history and policy for a while, but I don’t often talk about it. While researching the Carolinian Amtrak route, I found a piece by a Duke student, who wrote, “I’ve learned that the more you talk about trains, the more people curiously nod and start asking whether you have special routines you feel compelled to follow or an intense fascination with specific topics, so we’ll skirt those questions for today.” This is true. But I’m bravely putting that issue aside for the moment and giving you more train information than you have probably ever wanted.
I was going to travel a couple states away, I didn’t have a reliable car to use, and I took one look at flight ticket prices before realizing that plane was unfeasible for my current budget. Google helpfully suggested Amtrak, and an hour later, I was the proud owner of a round-trip ticket from the Raleigh Station to the Baltimore Station.
The train is by no means an efficient way to travel. It took nearly twice as long to take the train as to drive. The Carolinian train has to go down through several bygone towns before it can go up—making the route less direct (see the orange line). There is a new line in the works (blue), but it will likely take years to develop and still have the same issues with speed.
What issues with speed, you ask? Well, in North Carolina, most tracks are independently owned and leased out to Amtrak. Different tracks have different classes, dictating maximum speeds allowed. The vast majority of passenger rail tracks are Class 4, which have a max speed of 80 mph for passenger rail (aka, about as fast as the average freeway driver). From Washington DC to New York, the tracks are Class 6, allowing trains to reach 110 mph. The fastest class of tracks (very rare) in the United States is Class 8, with a top speed allowance of 150 mph.
This is pitiful, when compared globally. When I took the Eurostar train from London to Paris, the train was traveling 100 mph, and it took about 2.5 hours to go 300 miles. When I took the train from Raleigh to Baltimore, the train took 9 hours to go 300 miles. (And while the Eurostar typically runs more expensive, I was able to find Eurostar tickets that were the same price as I paid for my Amtrak tickets.) That’s not to mention the high speed rail developments in places like Japan, Russia, and China. (Certain Chinese trains have average speeds of 198 mph.)
That’s before the issue of delays. On the way there, we were delayed because the tracks were too hot and we had to slow down. On the way back, we were delayed because it was windy and we had to slow down. Both ways, we had delays due to train traffic. While law requires freight trains to yield to passenger trains, in practice, that doesn’t often happen. Part of the reason there are freight delays is because Amtrak doesn’t own its own tracks. Amtrak wrote in 2022: “Amtrak owns only 3% of the 21,400 route-miles traveled by Amtrak trains, primarily on the Northeast Corridor. The rest are mostly owned by freight railroads.” Amtrak was created so that there could be a separation between freight and passenger trains—before, passenger and freight used to be combined.
At any rate, in 2022, only 63% of Carolinian train riders made it to their final destination on time.
All that. And yet there is still something charming about taking a train. Consider:
The Vibes
The train is the most aesthetic way to travel. Looking out of a bus window? Boring. Crying on a plane? Yikes. Staring moodily out of a train window as the rain falls in the fields you whisk by? Peak.
The Silliness of It All
The PSAs on our train were wide-ranging, and sometimes disturbing: “Please shut the bathroom door while using the bathroom;” “Please wear shoes while walking down the aisles;” and “Please do not trash another bathroom; we will close each bathroom that gets trashed, and when there are no bathrooms left, this train will cease to be in service, and we will bus you to your final destination.” Where else can you be so disappointed by your fellow humans?
On my way up, multiple people in my car were playing from their devices without headphones. The conductor made multiple PSAs for people to “Puh-LEASE use headphones when on a mobile device,” to no avail. Alas, I was two rows up from someone who played a mobile game with the same high-pitched electronic song on a loop for two hours. The train teaches long-suffering.
The Environmental Aspect
The train is more environmentally friendly. Amtrak reports that taking the train is “46% more energy-efficient than driving and 34% more than flying.” If you don’t trust Amtrak’s word on why trains are the better way to travel (fair enough), Our World in Data also found that the carbon footprint of taking the train for medium distances was better than plane and car. And as far as the environment of the train itself goes, space-wise, you’re a lot better off in the train. There is also plenty of legroom, large seats, footrests, free WiFi, and outlets. Many people were working on laptops.
The Community
My mother told me, after my 9 hour train ride back to Raleigh, that she took the train one (1) time in California in the late 90s. There was a death on the tracks, causing their train to come to a complete stop for 2 hours. Someone had a portable dvd player in their cabin, so everyone huddled around it watching a movie until the dvd player cut to black and died, along with the collective hopes and happiness of the people in that cabin. She never took the train again, but still, there is something to the camaraderie built on a journey (even a frustrating one) with strangers.
On my way to Baltimore Station, I was a bit frazzled and took the first open seat that I could find. I shoved my luggage into the overhead and fell into a seat next to an elderly black lady. Once the train took off and we passed through the first few stations (in little dilapidated towns that don’t have much exciting going on), I asked where she was heading, mostly to see if I had any hope of taking her far superior window seat. She was heading to the end of the Carolinian line, Trenton, NJ. There went my hopes of the window seat; we were in it for the long haul.
Along the way, I got her whole life story. About 30 minutes into our hour-long conversation, I realized I never got her name, and at that point, it felt too late to ask. I’ll call her Reba. Reba told me about how she was traveling to New Jersey for her deceased-husband’s-cousin’s funeral. She is the eldest of eight children, and they are all scattered across the East coast now. She only had one remaining brother (I didn’t find out how many sisters she had left), and three children of her own. She showed me a picture of her deceased husband (there’s no good way to respond to that), and while she was talking on the phone to a friend, I heard about the new man she’s seeing (tea!).
She is an active member of her church, and she told me about her “church ladies.” They’ve been trying to do new things lately, so they’ve been learning line dances. She’s not very good at line dancing, but she has a lot of fun. They do it every Tuesday and Thursday. Her favorite is the Jerusalem, though she admitted that she looks up a YouTube video every week and practices at home before she goes dancing with her church ladies.
She told me about her garden (flowers and tomatoes), and how she believes that humans are meant to be in gardens. (I quite agree.) She was a little scatterbrained, and jumped all over the place in our conversation. At one point, she randomly asked me, “Do you like fishing?” I said, “not particularly.” She said, “I love fishing. Bass. Trout.” There was a pause. “I just looove seafood.”
I laughed because I had no response.
On my way back, I sat by another older lady (old ladies by themselves in public = safe and cool people, in my mind). Based on context clues from the stories she told me, she was in her mid-60s. I didn’t get her name either, but she looked like Jamie Lee Curtis, so I’m going to call her Jamie.
Jamie was a reform Jew. We were kindred spirits because she was an English major and considered going to law school. She went to architecture school instead, after a few detours: a year in Israel, and nearly immigrating there after volunteering in a kibbutz (a sort of agricultural commune); and working in DC as a writer, and having architect roommates who helped her realize that the good life wasn’t just about making money. “They were poor,” she said, “but they were happy.” She got a job working for a carpenter, saved some money, and then went to architecture school.
We talked about our English programs, I talked about going to a seminary school, and we found that we both love Mary Oliver. At one point she laughed and said, “I feel like I’m a wizard that you met on the train to impart wisdom to you.”
I asked her what kind of architecture work she did, and she said that she works solo. She doesn’t often do whole houses, but prefers to work on smaller projects within existing structures. “Not building something completely new, but taking something old and working with it and making it usable in new ways for people.” Her face lit up when talking about her work, and I could tell that she had found her idea of the good life. She was a woman at peace with herself: “I took an interesting path through life, but I’m happy with that path. There are always going to be forks in the path that I look back at, and I’ll wonder how life would’ve turned out if I took the other fork, but that’s life.”
You could be better than me, and ask for people’s names. But in some ways, I prefer not knowing their names. It was a fleeting moment of connection. I’ll never see these people again. But I know about their children, their dreams, and their hometowns, and the world feels bigger for it.
Of course, one can only romanticize public transit so much. You are still dealing with the public, which is always a mixed bag. On the platform to get on the train, there was a clear socioeconomic divide between the business class passengers and us peons going to the coach class.
But I still think we should keep passenger rail and improve it. Reba refused to drive on I-95 and refused to step foot in a plane, so the train was the only transport she could use to see her children, who lived in the North. Train tickets are still cheaper than plane tickets, and if you don’t have or can’t use a car, it might be the best way to go long distances.
Efficiency is kind of a joke with Amtrak, but our world is obsessed with efficiency. It felt healthy (sometimes it felt healthy in the way that eating lima beans feels healthy) to do something in the least efficient way possible and appreciate the opportunities that I was given as a result. For example, I have never been offered food by a stranger on a plane before, but Reba offered me a banana. I didn’t take it, but still.
There are more opportunities for connection with people you wouldn’t normally connect with on the train, something rare in our individualized and siloed culture. While I was talking to Reba, I watched two guys in their twenties become best buds. They started as strangers, and I eavesdropped on their wide-ranging, 3-hour-long conversation that covered everything from their childhoods (one guy’s parents made moonshine), to their workout routines (they had notebooks out and were taking notes), to the merits of Super Smash Bros. These sorts of connections can’t happen when you drive a car.
So despite all its flaws and me gritting my teeth at hour 8 when the conductor announced yet another delay, long live the American train. (Just let’s make it a liiittle faster, please. Thank you.)