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Good Train, Bad Train

The Source

There really are good trains and bad trains. I’m not kidding. I love trains, watching them go by, seeing them in movies, but most especially riding on them. I guess since I live in a rural area it’s been more of a thrill chasing the choo-choo’s than if I lived in a Chicago suburb and had to take one every morning, but this country boy likes his trains . . . especially the good ones. Here’s a good train. . . the Amtrak out of Springfield. Used to be I’d take a carload of Triopia seniors and tell them to dress for dinner without telling them where we were going. The kids usually thought that since I was driving to Springfield that we were going to eat somewhere in town, but when we’d pull into the Amtrak station their mouths would drop open. “We’re taking a train? To where? California? Should I call my folks?” I’d put them aboard and we’d go as far as Lincoln, Illinois, have dinner and return later that evening. For most of my students this was their first train trip and we’d have one great evening. This was a good train. Then there are bad trains. I’d taken a group of Jacksonville and Triopia students and adults to Russia in the early 1990’s and part of our adventure included an overnight train trip from Moscow to Leningrad. I’d rented sleeper cabins since the scenery between the two cities was pretty drab so we’d might as well be sleeping. Our guide on this trip was a Brit named Dave. (Everywhere we went they called him Champaign Dave, which sort of scared me.) I told Dave that it would be nice to have the group sleep on our way to Leningrad, and he said, “What? No! No way! You can’t sleep on an overnight Russian train!” I asked him why not. He said, “The employees will rob you blind. The whole railroad is run by thieves.” Darn. This wasn’t starting off well. So I told my intrepid little crew that yes, we would have sleeping cabins, but no, we can’t sleep in them. They were a bit confused but in Russia you believe your tour leader. You have to. The students in my group spent the overnight ride playing cards in one of the kids’ crowded cabins while the adults broke out the Champaign (supplied by Dave) and smoked oysters in another cabin. The kids were very tired when we reached Leningrad. The adults weren’t sure where they were. Bad train. Very bad train. But the memories of that horrible Russian experience were lessened by a very good train, the Caledonian Sleeper Train. You would have thought I’d have learned my lesson about sleeper trains after Russia, but when I was in London I figured that things might be safer since the conductors spoke English. The Caledonian leaves Euston Station in London before midnight and you wake up in Edinburgh, Scotland, as the sun is coming up over the Highlands. It’s advertised as “civilised, romantic, time-effective, and environmentally friendly.” I was hoping that the romantic part of the ad was hyperbole since I had mostly teenagers with me, but we hopped aboard the 16-car sleeper train late one London evening and we were off. Of course it was silly of me to think I could put a couple dozen teenagers on a European train and expect them to go to sleep. I mean, I couldn’t. Each car was allotted one restroom so we spent a lot of time waiting in line in the narrow hallway, but even that became a game of who-can-hold-it-the-longest. The boys were especially excited to try out the dining car since it was advertised as “brasserie-style,” and they assumed this had something to do with girls’ undergarments. Hey, we were country kids, okay? We arrived in Edinburgh exactly on time where an awaiting bus whisked us off for a day of sightseeing without sleep, but who cares? It was a good train. And of course we have local entries in the good train-bad brain contest. The little chugger that takes kids around in circles at the Prairieland Heritage Museum is a very good train as attested by the smiles on the little tykes’ faces, a much happier group than those boarding the El in Chicago at six in the morning. The train engineer who enters North Jacksonville at midnight, lays on his horn somewhere past Lonzerotti’s and doesn’t let up on the button until he’s halfway to Chapin? Bad train. Very bad train. I suppose that any train that delivers you in the same condition that it picks you up should be considered a good train, and if it’s on time then that’s a bonus. But life would be so much easier that if instead of the trains being labeled “Orient Express” or “Murrayville Limited,” they’d simply say either Good Train or Bad Train.