I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it. Those whistles sing bewitchments: railways are irresistible bazaars, snaking along perfectly level no matter what the landscape, improving your mood with speed, and never upsetting your drink.
- Paul Theroux, The Great Railway Bazaar
One of my favourite books as a kid was Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days. I’d always been drawn to tales of adventure and travel, but the story of Phileas Fogg and Passepartout was the one to capture my imagination. They were pioneers at the dawn of globalization, a romantic reminder of a time when travel was both slower and more deliberate.
It made me want to retrace their steps – to sit on the back of an elephant, to sail the ocean in a steamship. And of course, to ride a train from sea to shining sea, aboard the great transcontinental railroad, whizzing through the American West.
And so, I boarded the California Zephyr, train number 6, eastbound, on a windy Monday morning. We pulled out from the station at Emeryville, just across the bay from San Francisco, and it would be three days and seven states before I arrived in Chicago.
I felt strangely unburdened as I settled in my seat and the train began the first leg of its journey, hugging the coast of the San Francisco Bay on the way to Sacramento. Perhaps it was the fact that most of my bags were no longer with me, but safely stowed in the baggage car ahead. Or perhaps there’s something calming about the gentle rumbling of the train’s wheels turning on the track below, drowning out your thoughts. Worries can’t catch up with you when you’re constantly on the move.
Taking the train seems like an anachronism. Why take the train, especially one that’s not a high-speed service, when you could fly instead? A flight from San Francisco to Chicago takes just over four hours, a fraction of the fifty-one scheduled hours the Zephyr takes to make the same journey. But as Amtrak is quick to remind you, sometimes the journey is the destination.
The First Transcontinental Railroad - the subject of countless Westerns - was completed in 1869, connecting Sacramento and the promise of the Pacific with the rest of America. The California Zephyr retraces part of that historic route as it climbs over the Sierra Nevadas and past the small ghost towns which once housed the labourers who worked on the railroad. Eventually, the train descends the Sierras on their eastern face and the green forests of California give way to the barren desert of Nevada.
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel‘s sake. The great affair is to move.” For me, that was the magic of riding a train, the art of motion made fully apparent as I let the desert landscapes racing past lull me to sleep, only for me to wake up as the sun rose over the buttes and bluffs of Utah. Moving helps bring a certain clarity of mind, the constantly changing landscapes stimulating new thoughts, while carrying the assurance that any false starts can be left behind, falling out of sight as quickly as the mountains beyond.
People often give Amtrak’s train services a lot of flak. Sure, their efficiency doesn’t compare to the on-the-minute accuracy of, say, German trains - mine was delayed by over 4 hours by the time I arrived at my destination. But when you’re taking a train across the continent, you‘ve got time to spare. And there isn’t wifi - or frequently, cell service - yet the human contact with the others on your carriage more than makes up for it. Your fellow passengers are tourists, retirees and train buffs, none of whom are in a hurry, and all of them with interesting stories.
In my view, the advantage of being on an Amtrak long-distance train is that these trains are used primarily for leisure, not commuting. And so they are designed not for the passenger who has to bury his or her nose in a laptop or newspapers, but for the passenger who has come to relax and enjoy the ride. The double-decker Superliner carriages provide an elevated view of the surrounding scenery - especially from the observation car, with its floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall windows.
I spent most of my time in that car, staring out of the windows as we wound through the sandstone canyons carved by the Colorado River, and as the miles fell away, the snow-capped Rockies took their place on the horizon. The sheer diversity of geography was amazing, from forests to deserts, plains to mountains - this is why they call her America the Beautiful.
And when back in my own carriage, the wide seats and abundant legroom gave a comfortable experience, even in coach. On my second night, I lounged across the empty seat next to me, reading my Kindle as lightning flashed far away on the plains of Nebraska.
The last day of the Zephyr’s journey takes it across the plains and endless cornfields of Iowa and Illinois, crossing the mighty Mississippi midway. The observation car had livened up, with new passengers picked up overnight in Denver and Omaha joining us for this final leg of the trip into Chicago.
After hours of trundling through the vast, uninhabited landscapes, stopping intermittently only in small towns - that probably wouldn’t exist but for the railroad - the skyscrapers of Chicago finally appeared in the distance, the gleaming terminus of this long voyage.
Stepping off the train at the platform of Chicago’s Union Station, I was convinced that there is no better way to travel than this. The sights and people of the Zephyr provide an experience more than worth the time spent on the train. And after all, isn’t it better to have travelled well than to have arrived?
United States of America