Another one rides the bus

Trains Magazine Passenger
1

As someone too young to have ridden on passenger trains (I’m 49), I wonder about the reality of riding them. I think most people are like me. When I think of riding on a long distance passenger train, three basic images come to mind.

The first would be that of the luxury trains, like the 20th Century Limited. The second would be riding in the old time parlor cars on Gunsmoke, waiting for the train robbers to hold it up. The third would be something similar to The Orient Express, with individual compartments, exotic passengers, and usually a dead body or two.

What was long distance train travel really like? Was it more or less like riding a Greyhound bus?

2

I suppose it depends on when. I’m assuming you mean pre-Amtrak. I rode a number of the long distance trains starting in 1956 as a child. The best experiences were on the Sante Fe (El Capitan) and the Burlington, especially the CZ, although the Afternoon Zephyr was nice. The best analogy I can think of is something like an ocean cruise. Very comfortable, good service, nice fellow passengers and great dining cars. Shorter rides, such as on various trains on the IC in college days ran the gamut from cattle car (student specials) to luxury (City of Miami). All in all, it was a great time.

3

I had the joy of riding the following trains in the late 40’s thru the eaely 60’s. City of San Francisco, City of L.A., The Daylight [both steam and diesel] on a number of occasions, the CZ, The Southern Belle, The Super Chief, 20th Century Limited, The Lark and many locals on the SP. Those were the days when travel was elegant, gracious, and great fun! The only negitive I can give you is you had to dress up to take the streamliners and as a kid and teen it was a drag! I still take the train, we get a bedroom and love it but believe me it’s just not the same…

4

I recall a book “To Hell in a Day Coach” or something like that which detailed the horror stories of the worst coach trains during the immediate post-WWII era. But for me, as a youngster, I vastly preferred even such trains, with cinders coming in through open windows that provided the needed cooling with no air conidtioning, trucks that transmitted every rail joint to one’s posterior, lukewarm water in the water cooler being the only “refreshment,” johns without running water, just a dry hopper with a view to the roadbed below, and remember to bring your own bumwad, to riding the comfortable air-conditioned Greyhound, but I was in a minority. But I did enjoy many such train rides, often mostly standing on the back platform, while the rest of the family went by private car or bus. I was, is, and always will be a railfan.

But there was also luxury riding at coach prices aboard the Southerner, Empire State Express, Trailblazer, Red Arrow, most New Haven trains in general and some PRR corridor trains, the Florida streamliners, where the ride was smooth as fast, the food in the diner terrific, the seats comfortable and easy to recline and provide for sleeping, windows clean with intersting and beautiful scenery, and the crew happy to have chance to serve an appreciative young railfan.

And when a Pullman could be afforded, well just heaven on earth.

5

I rode the Lackawanna Phoebe Snow. (I bet you never would have guessed that.)

I always traveled in a sleeper, so I cannot comment on coach, but riding the train is nothing like riding a bus. On the bus you cannot get up and go to the lounge car or the dining car.

I still ride trains today when the train goes to my intended destination. I wish trains served more cities.

6

I’ve ridden trains all my life, mostly Amtrak but I do recall the Long Island when it was a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania. My greatest ride was five years ago, taking a sleeper from Paris to Florence in a first class compartment all to myself. Two sittings in the dining car, all home cooked food (unlike the Silver Meteor which I’ve taken many times) with wine, coffee, espresso and then a couple of beers to take back to the compartment. No, not like a bus at all. I slept like a baby and was sorry to arrive. From Dresden to Prague on a train originating in Berlin and heading to Budapest the dining car was the equal of a fine Hungarian restaurant with white tablecloths and a four page menu! The best goulash I’ve ever eaten. Better than riding the grey dog! I’ve ridden the Eurostar, the TGV and the ICE, all are excellent. Great train rides are still a daily occurance, just not on this continent unless you count the “Canadian” which I have yet to ride.

7

I concur and applaud the testimonies of previous forum members on this new thread. As I have posted before, Amtrak sleeping cars are ABSOLUTELY the way to travel these days, but only if you have the time and the money. A bedroom, for example, is not cheap, though there are five (5) different rates for the same accommodation, depending on when Amtrak marketing releases rooms at each rate. There are, of course, ways to get a reduced rate, such as hoping to get an on-board upgrade, which can be unreliable.

Coach seating is better than that in bus (and certainly airplane) accommodations, for the reasons stated earlier here, but additionally because the seats themselves are quite roomy. But, one never knows who your seatmate(s) will be, an especially sensitive matter overnight. Privacy in coach seating and its associated rest room cleanliness and convenience is also problematic. If your trip can be done within a day, then absolutely go “business class” rather than straight coach, if available. On the other hand, coach seating is definitely cheap, even cross-country, and one can often (luckily) be around quite pleasant fellow coach passengers.

Sleeping car bedroom passengers enjoy a myriad of amenities: large seating and decently large lower bed (and upper fold-down bunk with ladder), private toilet and shower facility, sink and lots of towels, hanging storage locker, suitcase storage spaces, car attendant personal service (including meals on special request), free newspapers, free meals (including on separate dining cars or a part of the main dining car), some measure of baggage and personal possession security, all kinds of lights and plug outlets within the bedroom, can see out the opposite side of the train when your curtain is pulled open, ability to roam at will throughout the train, et al.

On the other hand, sleeping

8

I agree with the comment that riding long distance trains was nothing like riding a Greyhound bus. I have done both. The trains win hands down in every possible category. For gosh sakes, just consider the quality of the ride itself. Next, think of the size of the seats and the space between rows. Then consider the restroom conditions and qualities. You might want to think which has the more interesting scenery outside those windows that you’ll be looking at for hours.

Lastly, consider food. My favorite restaurant on earth is a moving dining car with good food and interesting table mates. Have you ever used a restaurant by the side of the Interstate with 20 other bus passengers with 20 minutes to eat? Not quite the same thing as a dining car.

So, whether years ago, or today, riding coach on a train was and is always lots better than riding a bus.

9

I have ridden Amtrak’s Coast Starlight and the Southwest Chief, Even if you can’t get the deluxe sleeper get the roomette. Why? Because the meals are free, tasty and can be served in your room (in effect paying for the room),there are several bathrooms downstairs and a shower. Sure its a Little smaller but you have privacy and outlets for whatever! You don’t have to put up with unruly passengers kids or adults! You are free to enjoy the scenery and most of the time there will be a vacant sleeper on the other side if you want to jump over and look out, because they don’t seem to mind.

10

Interesting you mention the Orient Express. On July 11, PBS broadcast a drama based on Agatha Cristie’s Murder on the Orient Express as part of the Masterpiece Theatre series and a show about the Orient Express.

I’m only three years older than you and have been on many passenger trains most of which were Amtrak, but I’ve been on some non-Amtrak trains as well.

My experiences Amtrak experiences have varied quite a bit and include the following: Being stuck in Fort Wayne, Indiana when the Broadway Limited froze up in a freezing December Day (Amtrak put up all the passengers in a hotel and then made up a substitute train and I arrived in Altoona, PA 24 hours late!) Suffering through a ruddy dining car experiences in the California Zephyr and enjoying a delicious pasta dinner in the diner as the westbound Broadway Limited west of Harrisburg in 1995. Flirting with young women on the City of New Orleans and being irritated with passengers insisting on using cell phones well after midnight on the Capitol Limited. Marveling at the Columbia River Gorge from the Empire Builder and being bored silly by the non-descript landscape traversed by the Hoosier State. Deighting at the five dome cars on the North Coast Hiawatha and being underwhlemed by the Horizon coaches with their tiny windows.

Let’s not forget stations. Los Angeles Union Terminal, a marvel of art deco and Spanish mission architecture has a wonderful courtyard which is a dignified place to wait for trains. Then there’s the Clev

11

I remember one time I took a continental Trailways, bus from Phoenix to New york when I was around 12, they were better then Greyhound!! this was around maybe 1958 ,but when your a kid who cares about inconvenience…I still would have rather taken a train,trains were my life. I sure rode the long island express and the subways a lot in NY…to make up for it!!

12

Good review, “citidude.” Re: terminals - LA Union Station is, as you say, just beautiful, perhaps surpassed only by the Chicago Union Station. King Street Station in Seattle is pretty sad right now, but is under restoration, with good promise. Memphis station is pretty sad and dreary also, with no apparent intent to upgrade and in a “sketchy” part of town, but there is a police precinct station right there in the building.

As many of us know, sleeping car passengers are entitled to use the Metropolitan Lounge in Chicago Union Station; these also exist in a few other big stations. The Metropolitan truly is a (hidden away) calm amid the cacophany of the terminal itself, with complimentary beverages and pastries, newspapers, comfortable lounge chairs, arrival and departure status boards, and baggage check service.

Cell phone use is another example of the oft-found discourtesies that can be found in coach seating.

Yes, Amtrak takes care of you (as best it can) when there is a missed connection due to delay in arrival. We were parked somewhere in New Mexico for many hours last December on the Southwest Chief, but once in Chicago there were a whole bevy of agents providing hotel vouchers and taxi cab monies.

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I rode a variety of long-distance trains in the 1950’s and 60’s when my parents & I traveled all over the US on Dad’s Frisco pass. The experience varied-B&O actually had stewardess-nurses on board when we went to Wash, DC. We always traveled coach and you never got much sleep with people moving up & down the aisle during the night to smoke in the lounges. UP City of St. Louis was the best, we got on that one because Dad had to pay half-fare on all UP trains, so we got an upgrade from the usual. They had a drawer that pulled out from under the coach seat and hooked over the footrail making a mini-bed and you could stretch out better and rest. The South had older accommodations, I can remember fans in the coach cars even though we had a/c, but they were relics from pre-a/c days. One coach we rode in was half-baggage and half-coach, that was the portion from Lake Alfred to Punta Gorda, FL on ACL. We were visiting Dad’s cousin and had to change often on this trip, mostly in the middle of the night. But it was free, so what the heck.

I did take a Pullman bedroom with 2 friends in 1965 to Calif and back. It was the standard upper/lower bunks with bathroom but that way we could all be together and not have one of us sitting alone with a stranger. We spent time in the dome cars and SP had an automat type of food service in addition to the regular diner. On our return from LA, we were on the all Pullman City of LA and that had a dome diner, which was super. We didn’t have it all the way back to St.L, our cars were cut off at some point and we were put on the City of St. Louis for the rest of the journey.

I’m glad I had the opportunity to experience passenger riding “back in the day” on many fallen flags like B&O, IC, Pennsy, NYC, C of G, ACL, Grand Trunk into Canada and of course, the Frisco. I’ve taken 2 long-distance trips on Amtrak-the Empire Builder and Coast Starlight to San Francisco and Southwest Chief to

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Generally, NO. Other posters have written of great comfort, even in coach, by day and by night.

There were a few long-distance trains in the early fifties that did not have diners or lounge cars, yet they were more comfortable than buses. My first long day trip by rail was from Birmingham to New Orleans on Southern #43, in 1951. Riding on a pass, my brother and I rode in one of the older coaches, which had straight-back seats (I do not know if another coach on the train had reclining seats). We had cold water and restrooms available, and we stopped for lunch in Meridian (there was a nice lunchroom in the station). Somehow, this leg of our trip hooked me on train travel. We had already ridden the Piedmont Limited (reclining seats)from Charlotte to Atlanta and the overnight mail train (again, with walkover seats, which were not as comfortable for sleeping as the reclining seats were) on to Birmingham. From New Orleans, we took the Pelican (diner north of Birmingham) overnight to Chattanooga (reclining seats), the Royal Palm (quite a train, with all reclining seats in the coaches, diner and lounge) to Atlanta, and then #136 (walkover seats for pass riders) back to Charlotte. On the last train, my brother had a good night’s sleep by taking the seat at the end of the car (it stretched all the way across the men’s room, and he lay at full length on it).

Two years later, I was told to ride in the car for pass riders on #36, and had a good night’s sleep from Atlanta to Charlotte.

If there were a train, I rode it in preference to a bus because of the greater comfort and convenience. Bus seats were narrower and did not have as much leg room. In general, when stepping into the aisle, you had to step down. When restrooms were found on buses, they usually had a

15

I’m a little late joining this thread, but I have had some experiences a little different from the others. I remember experiences closer to your second scenario, Murphy Siding.

Growing up in Honduras in the '40’s through 1951, we used to take the train from Tela to San Pedro Sula several times a year. We had to change trains at Barracoa. The coaches were open platform type, and low-slack couplers were apparently not used. We usually rode the last or second-last car, and when the train started (steam locomotives) you would hear the couplers from the front taking up the slack, and you’d brace yourself. It was not whiplash strength, but the jolt was pretty strong. The coaches on the first train were steel, but the ones from Barracoa to San Pedro Sula were wood. We kids liked the steel ones better because the window sills on the wood ones were considerably wider, making it harder to reach out and try to grab the tall weeds along the right-of-way. There was no diner, but at some stops a couple of men would board and walk through the train with a tub of iced soft-drinks and exit at the next town. Also, at most stops vendors would walk alongside the train selling everything from meals of tamales to fresh produce, which you could buy through the open windows. We usually came home with at least a freshly picked pineapple.

I have had no experience with Amtrak, but in 1962 I rode on the Missouri Pacific from Army basic training in Ft Chaffee, Ark. to home in New Orleans. What a great meal in the diner! One thing that struck me as strange was that the waiter handed us the pad, and we wrote down the order. With the train in motion, I still don’t know how the kitchen was able to read the jerky scribbling.

16

Before the advent of Amtrak, this was the standard on all roads–except the Northern Pacific. I do not know the reason; perhaps the waiters were not trusted to write the orders (there was the joke which had a passenger unable to read the breakfast menu because, as he told the waiter, he had forgotten to put his glasses on; the waiter’s response to the effect that he also could not read). In April of 1971, I had my first meals in an NP diner, and I at first was taken aback until I remembered that NP diner personnel wrote the passengers orders.

Now, it is very easy for diner personnel to take orders–they simply mark on the form which food is wanted.

17

I remember having to fill out my dining car orders on the Santa Fe Super Chief back ca. 1970. It was my vague understanding at the time, upon query then, that this was because of union rules. Whereas employees who might give out menus, take orders, and otherwise advise patrons on meals were in one union and those that simply deliver meals were in another union. Thus, having passengers write out orders meant that the railroads need not have aboard employees represented by the first union. In other words, different dining car tasks apparently required different unions, which led to passengers doing the ordering task.

Others of you may have more or different information on my vague recollection that this was a union issue.

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My first experience in an Amtrak diner was in November, 1971. I’m certain that I had to write my order down for my dinner. So this practice lasted at least a while on Amtrak (I have “dog’s memory” of doing that a few times afterwords, as well).

That first Amtrak dinner, btw, was from GCT to Cleveland. We had hotel silver on the table, including creamers, coffee pots, vase, silverware, etc. The silver made the most luxurious rattling sound as we rode up the Hudson that evening. I’ve never forgotten it, and my “curse” is that I remember it each time I have had dinner in The Lake Shore Limited’s diner since.

I was under the impression that the reason customers wrote out the order themselves was simply to eliminate customer complaints about “that’s not what I ordered” etc. To say this had something to do with unions seems to me a stretch.

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You are probably quite correct, “NKP guy,” regarding this issue having nothing to do with unions. It was just what I vaguely remembered.

Yes, how great it was to have such a dining car table experience: heavy (sort of) silver flatware, etc., flowers in vase, starched tablecloth and napkins, “liveried” server, moisture-frosted glassware with tinkling ice. Those were the days, and now precious memories. I am glad that my wife, son, and I could ride the Super Chief before it got gobbled up and changed. Sounds like you had similar and very delightful experiences about the same time.

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My wife, who was hooked on trains when she was about nine years old, remembers finger bowls especially. My only experience with finger bowls was in an N&W diner on the Pelican about 1968; the bowl itself was a paper bowl that was placed in a metal frame-- but it was a finger bowl.

I honestly do not remember many particulars of my trips on Amtrak in the years that much of the old railroad operations were still followed, nor just when patrons of the diners began writing their wishes. I do recall the difference between the two stewards we encountered on the Super Chief in June of '73. The steward who served us westbound was of the old school; he knew what to do, what not to do, and what could be done, and he made our eating experiences truly pleasant, even taking a picture of us eating–without our asking him; I believe that if I had asked him about our (two adults and three children) eating in the Turquoise Room, he would have led us there if it had been available. Eastbound, the steward had an idea about what to do and what not to do, and lacked the graciousness of the first steward. I think that my trip in 1980 was the last one on which I found several of the long-time onboard service employees still working.

On our trip this spring, almost without exception the onboard service employees–even the overworked attendant in the Cardinal’s diner–were wonderful; I had practically no contact with the train crew.