Ridin' the Rails, part 2

On a train you experience the contrasts between the grubby and the grand, the seamy and the sublime.

To ride the rails is to understand the meaning of “the other side of the tracks.” You see the backsides of houses and businesses: junked cars, dilapidated buildings, tarpaper shacks, debris-strewn yards. (The graffiti is outstanding, however). And in these post-modern railroading years, you pass railroad depots in all stages of disrepair. Even some of the stations where Amtrak stops look like sets for a Stephen King movie.

On the other hand, to take the train is also to see grandeur from vantage points the automobile cannot provide: the untamed woodlands and rapids-laced streams of West Virginia, the sprawling cornfields and wheatfields of the Midwest, the raw majesty of the towering Rockies. The surgical cut made by the railroad right-of-way inserts the traveler shoulder-to-shoulder with the surrounding landscape. You feel like you could almost reach your hand out the window and touch that scampering deer or shake hands with the farmer on his tractor.

The train itself is a study in contrasts. Amtrak uses the names of glorious streamliner routes of the past such as The Crescent, The Empire Builder, and The Hiawatha. In reality, Amtrak service is more freightliner than streamliner, a Greyhound with flanged wheels. The facilities are adequate, the food is mediocre, and the staff ranges from gracious to grouchy. All this is not surprising, given the paucity of federal support for passenger railroading.

On one leg of my trip, the snack bar menu posted on the wall had cancellations and price changes scribbled in ink. As I sat waiting for a breakfast table, I heard a woman behind me exclaiming to her traveling companions, “In the brochure it all looked so nice.”

In addition, trains run habitually behind schedule. My eagerly awaited visit to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry is scuttled due to the hours we sit waiting behind a broken-down freight train on a single track main line in southern Indiana. Even without such mishaps, passenger trains often run infuriatingly late because of the heavy freight traffic on the lines Amtrak leases from railroads such as CSX and Union Pacific. It’s more cost effective, a conductor tells me, for those roads to keep their lucrative freight traffic on schedule and to pay Amtrak the contractual penalties for the delays.

Nevertheless, it’s still a lark to take the train. I love the size and power of those diesels. The rocking and lurching of the coaches. The excitement of racing past grade crossings with their flashing gates and lines of cars. The sights of wide-eyed children running toward the tracks and construction workers laying down their tools to wave.

All of this reminds me why a place like VMT is so important. The railroad is wound tightly into the strands of America’s DNA. At levels deeper perhaps than we sometimes understand, trains still lure us, charm us, and speak to our hearts. You cannot really understand this nation until you understand its history with trains.

In the last couple years, congressional funding for Amtrak has become more generous. Given the concerns about global warming and fossil fuels, perhaps some of the more fascinating chapters of America’s rail history have yet to be written—a dream both grand and sublime.

Ridin' the Rails, part one

I anxiously drive north from Roanoke on a gorgeous autumn afternoon. My train is scheduled to depart Clifton Forge at 4:08 and I can’t afford to miss it—the next one won’t come for two more days. I whip into the CSX parking lot and hurry with my luggage to the makeshift waiting area.

I needn’t have worried; the train is running 30 minutes late. After all, this is Amtrak. The half-dozen waiting passengers have plenty of time to gab, and we do. It’s my first reminder today of how different train travel is.

We talk of freight cars and end-of-train devices and reminisce about previous rail journeys. You seldom find airline passengers engaging total strangers in conversation like this. Besides, what can you tell about a previous airline journey: how much turbulence you encountered or how stirringly the flight attendant gave the mind-numbing safety recitation?

These people are the first of many I will encounter on my trip to St. Louis. Many of them are not riding the train just to get somewhere but to get there by rail. Whether they prefer the meandering pace and unique panoramas or seek a slice of nostalgic Americana, how they get there is almost as important to them as the destination itself.

Some pretend the golden age of American streamliners still exists and they have boarded the posh Broadway Limited or the gleaming Silver Meteor. Others relish the chance to see the countryside from a different perspective, glimpsing towns and fields and mountains from angles you can’t reach by car. The serious rail buffs among us are delighted to watch train operations at point blank range—rail yards, sidings, spurs and the “business” side of industries.

In the diner I meet an 81-year-old lady, who obviously doesn’t lack for money and who can barely walk. She has had joint replacement surgery on her knee and needs it on her hips. Yet she is determined to have what she calls her “last hurrah,” one final glorious train trip. In Chicago she will board the Empire Builder for Seattle, then roll down to Sacramento on the Coast Starlight, and finally reach Reno via the California Zephyr. She doesn’t sound nearly as excited about her two weeks in Reno as she does about the process of getting there.

Back in my coach I converse with my seatmate, who is from Wyoming. The county. In West Virginia. She regales me with tales of growing up as one of 15 children of a coal miner and moonshiner and of her 20 years as a long haul truck driver. She is headed for Kansas to see her first great grandchild.

And my destination? I am traveling to St. Louis by way of Chicago to spend a week with my daughter and son-in-law. For me also the ride is half the fun. I haven’t been on a passenger train since my trek from Richmond to Orlando years ago. Too cheap to reserve a sleeping berth, I will ride in my coach seat all night long. My body will get too little sleep and my clothes will get too many wrinkles. By the time I reach the windy city, I will have been aboard for 19 straight hours.

And I will not care, for I am riding the train.

Carol of the Bells

I couldn't help myself. I read over some of the old posts here, and noticed a trend -- we complain about money a lot. I'm not saying there isn't a good reason for that, nor that there isn't some interesting stuff there. Just an observation, that's all. So, in our continuing effort for consistency, here's another rant post about money.

Hark! how the bells, sweet silver bells, all seem to say "Throw cares away."

Last year, we sold a locomotive (a sentence I never thought I'd use before I started working here). By the calendar, that happened this year, but as far as our finances are concerned, that was last year. Anyway, if not for that sale, we'd have ended up in the red. This year doesn't look a lot better, and we're all out of locomotives to sell.

Christmas is here, bringing good cheer to young and old, meek and the bold.

The situation isn't terrible, as we've still got some chunks of local money and other donations coming in, but the outlook is not good. Citizens of Virginia are well-aware of the budget crunch facing the Commonwealth, and the murmurs in Richmond say that there will be no state funding for non-state agencies. As a tax-payer, I can't personally fault this sentiment, but working for a struggling non-profit, it's a dark cloud. It's also worth noting that your Virginia Museum of Transportation is the Official Transportation Museum of the Commonwealth. That designation isn't just fluff -- it came directly from the legislature in Richmond years ago. While the title is nice, it does not make us an agency of the state. Ergo, when goes the money, so goes the show.

Ding, dong, ding, dong -- that is their song, with joyful ring, all caroling.

The City of Roanoke hasn't been much help, either. We expected and accepted that long ago, so this is no great surprise. Our funding from the city is at an all-time low, but the city has its own budget needs, too.

So what does that mean for the 44-year old caretaker of Virginia's transportation heritage?

One seems to hear words of good cheer from everywhere, filling the air.

It means we've got three possible futures.

In the first, we receive a substantial donation from a major player, to be continued in perpetuity. The B&O Railroad Museum receives substantial funding from CSX. They get a lot of donations, too, of course, but this is an example of what a large corporate partner can do. Last year, Norfolk Southern very generously contributed tens of thousands of dollars to us. This year, they're again doing so with the caveat that we now match their donation. However, in neither case was the money enough to get us through a year. We're no less grateful; merely honest.

In the second, we become a state agency. This is probably the most ideal course for us. State funding ensures our continuation, and provides resources beyond our current means. This would resurrect our restoration, curatorial, and education departments -- three neglected and presently inactive areas of our operation forced into dormancy by a lack of funding. It would also help us cross the hurdle we've been stuck on for a while, and get out of the rather regional focus we have in our collection and exhibits. At its last meeting, the VMT Board of Directors voted to pursue this course, but their consent is not the only cog in this wheel.

In the third, we continue as we are. The only end game for this particular circumstance will be the closing of our doors. We could get by a few more years, but if we made it to a 50th birthday, it would surprise everyone involved.

O, how they pound, raising the sound, o'er hill and dale, telling their tale.

Virginia's Explore Park just shut down, largely for the same reasons. The brand new Art Museum of Western Virginia has not yet opened, now costing nearly double its initial $40.5 million price tag. The History Museum of Western Virginia resembles a ghost town. Despite some [reasonably] successful events and increased attendance, your VMT in the same trenches.

Gaily they ring, while people sing songs of good cheer. Christmas is here!

During the holidays, everyone has a hand out, asking for toys, clothes, money, food, time, prayers, and company. There's never enough to go around, this is true. What we don't seem to realize is that this holds true during the rest of the year, too. We just don't notice it unless we stand outside in a Santa suit and ring a bell.

Merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas!
Merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas!