Amtrak Osmosis

Amtrak Osmosis
April 23, 2003
by John Bloom

ON THE CITY OF NEW ORLEANS, April 23 (UPI) There are two levels of Amtrak service: Apocalyptic and Merely Panicked.

Those of us who are regulars on the long-distance trains--a coterie so small that we sometimes recognize each other in the corridors--don't really bother to read the newspapers anymore. You can tell Amtrak has gone into Apocalyptic Mode when suddenly everything stops being repaired. This is a sure sign that Congress is in session and considering one or more Amtrak bills. Speeches are being made. Dire predictions are being voiced. And at least one person will point to the poor ole Texas Eagle, with its enormous deficit and abysmal on-time rate, and suggest that the government has better things to do than subsidize diehard railroaders travelling between Chicago and San Antonio who spend most of their time sitting on sidings in the swamps south of Texarkana.

I don't have to follow this anymore. I know this is going on because of the little metal attachments to the bedroom drapes in my sleeping compartment. They tend to come loose, get bent, get stuck, and fail to stretch all the way to their Velcro connections, thereby making it impossible to black out the windows at night. If we're in the Apocalyptic season--which tends to start in September, I've noticed--these will go unrepaired, as will the door locks, heating vents, and occasionally the little TV monitors, which is actually fine with me, because there are only so many times you can watch "Catch Me If You Can" anyway.

You can tell the first-timers on the train, though, because they want to chat with the attendants about the future of Amtrak. "You think you guys will survive?" is a not uncommon question, inevitably answered with a shrug of the shoulders and a smile. Amtrak employees stopped paying attention, too. This happens every year.

And then, on a certain day, you never know quite when, but usually in January or February, everything will suddenly be working again. The observation car will be restored to the Texas Eagle. The bartender in the lounge will have three kinds of Scotch instead of two. The dining car won't run out of prime rib before the 8:30 seating. And we'll all realize, mostly by osmosis, that we've downgraded from Apocalyptic to Merely Panicked. Amtrak will run another year.

Actually, in checking the clippings, it seems that Amtrak press runs about 10 to 1 in favor of the "Can Amtrak Survive?" think piece, as opposed to the "Discover Amtrak!" summer vacation travel feature. When Congress finally does break down and approve yet more emergency funding, the event is scarcely noticed outside the railroad world. But as soon as the Transportation Committee goes into session, get out the 48-point Boldoni Bold, because "Amtrak Approaches Its Twilight" editorial essays are sure to follow.

For the record, Congress approved Amtrak appropriations on February 13 this year, and President Bush signed the bill on February 20--for the fiscal year that began five months earlier. David Gunn, the latest to occupy the spirit-sapping chair of Amtrak president, says that, yes, he can get to September 30th of this year with the $1.05 billion he has to work with.

I already knew this, though, because there were three kinds of juice and two kinds of coffee at the Acela Lounge in New York's Penn Station. Any day now they'll start putting the floral arrangements in little ceramic vases back in the bedrooms on the Silver Meteor, which runs New York to Miami in 29 hours and just makes the ladies feel better when they have their flowers and complimentary shampoo. I happened to be on the Crescent during the Easter weekend, and the dining room manager--an effusive woman with a hearty laugh--had splurged on stuffed bunny rabbits, party crepe, streamers and pastel napkins to make a festive dinner for the occasion.

For those of us who know the drill, we can have shorthand conversations about the current condition of Amtrak that would normally require 30 minutes of preparatory education in the rarefied ephemera of Amtrak policy.

"Dining car back on the Three Rivers?"

"Not yet."

"Heritage sleepers?"

"Nope, they took equipment from the Silver Palm."

"What happened to the smoker on the City of New Orleans?"

"They stopped using the Empire Builder equipment out of Chicago and switched to the Texas Eagle cars."

Two minutes max is all it takes to have these conversations. You don't get angry about cuts in service. You don't get excited about promised expansions in service. It's as though we're all inmates in the same prison, with the important difference that we're lifers. Even if they let us out, we would find some way to get back in. There's nothing Amtrak can do to us. We'll still be standing on the platform in Greensboro at 12:58 a.m., which is when the Crescent arrives there, having a smoke because the lounge car got diverted to the Miami run. We'll still be drinking Mystic Mist in the afternoon, because the Mystic Mist complimentary soda contract is apparently cheaper than Sprite. We'll still be trying to sleep during the bone-rattling southern Illinois portion of the City of New Orleans route, where the track appears to have been laid down by drunks with jackhammers.

Over time we become enormously grateful for the smallest signs of Amtrak affection. On April 1, for example, the whole system started offering "specials" at dinner--liberating us from the Bennigan's-style one-size-fits-all menu instituted last year as a cost-cutting measure, and making it necessary to actually look at the menu instead of ordering from memory. (Ah, for the days when every train had its own distinctive regional menus, with cooks from the region. But I'm going to stop right here, because the cardinal Amtrak rule is: never look back.)

We all have a special affection for the small out-of-the-way trains, so we were especially thrilled recently when the Missouri legislature ponied up some supplemental Amtrak money for the two daily St. Louis-Kansas City runs, which are, of course, the Ann Rutledge and the aptly-named St. Louis Mule. Last year's big news was the inauguration of the Downeaster from Portland, Maine, to Boston. But even as Amtrak gives, Amtrak takes away. We live daily with the somber knowledge that the Kentucky Cardinal-- running from Chicago to Louisville--is apparently not going to survive the year.

Sometimes we even allow ourselves to dream. Steve Wynn, bless his heart, talked about getting the casinos of Las Vegas to pitch in on a three-hour bullet train between Vegas and L.A. Unfortunately, he sold his casinos before he could get the idea off the ground. (Steve! Open your new casino! Soon!)

Then there's the whole Meridian, Mississippi, debate. Plans are afoot--who knows if they survived the latest lean budget?--to make Meridian the southern crossroads of Amtrak, just as Chicago is the northern crossroads. The Sunset Limited (Orlando to L.A.) would be diverted northward to hook up with the Crescent at Meridian and the Texas Eagle at Dallas, with a stop in Phoenix instead of Tucson, where it could conceivably connect to the Southwest Chief, although that might be redundant.

And, of course, there's always the dream of shiny new high- speed European-style track. Dallas to Houston, two and a half hours. Chicago to St. Louis, three hours. New York to Niagara Falls, five hours.

It will never happen, of course. Don't even talk about it. And don't tell us any of your stories about riding the high-speed trains of Japan or France, or the elegant Canadian from Toronto to Vancouver, with its 30 sleeping cars and its four restaurants. We don't want to hear that.

Now if you want to talk about that banjo picker that used to perform in the parlor car of the Coast Starlight between Seattle and L.A., go right ahead. We liked that guy. We can find him. That's doable. That's an attainable goal. Or the Indian guide who gets on the Southwest Chief at Albuquerque and lectures about Native American reservation life all the way to Gallup. That's a distinctively Amtrakian perk, available nowhere else in the world.

But let's stay real. We're merely panicked right now. Let's enjoy that.

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