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Trip on Zephyr Gives Time a New Meaning

Posted on: Wednesday, 27 July 2005, 03:00 CDT

Somewhere in the middle of the day in the middle of Iowa, where all the train stops seemed to be in towns that began with the letter "O" (Osceola, Ottumwa), I began to think of it as "train time."

We'd boarded Amtrak's California Zephyr at Denver's Union Station around 8 the night before, slept through eastern Colorado and most of Nebraska and now found ourselves drifting through the cornfields in Iowa.

What time was it? I hadn't a clue, really, and it didn't matter. Time seems to lose its sting when you're on board a train, bound for Chicago, with 6-year-old and 9-year-old girls and little to do but watch the small-town steeples and grain towers slip by.

There's flight time -- the two or three or even four hours it takes to get to the coasts on a plane. There's drive time -- dividing your miles by 50 to figure out how many hours it will take to get to your destination. And then there's train time. Train time happens when you're on an Amtrak line, heading through three or more states, crossing time zones and watching a sunset, then a sunrise, from your seat.

I began to think of "train time" as an alternate universe, one marked by the conductor's call that "the next stop will be Osceola, Iowa." Was it time to wander into the lounge car to see which seats had opened up for a rousing game of Uno? What time was it, anyway? The passing of time was marked not by minutes or hours but by the swaying and "clackclacking" of the train cars. It made for an unhurried but steady march forward.

The California Zephyr leaves Emeryville, Calif. (near San Francisco), travels across Nevada and Utah, crosses the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, stops in Denver and makes its way toward Chicago. Going by train seemed the right mode of transportation for our adventure, a trip to Chicago, highlighted by a day at the American Girl Place.

Car trips mean car seats, long hauls between fast-food stops, a night in a motel and highway construction. Airline travel requires security checkpoints, carry-on baggage restrictions, tight seating and a long cab ride from the airport into town. Train travel? It was a breeze.

We boarded in Denver and arrived about 18 hours later smack in the middle of downtown Chicago, a block away from the famed Sears tower. With advance reservations, we paid $417.60 for three roundtrip tickets, a bargain compared with car or air travel.

"So you slept on the train?" everyone asked. Yes, we slept on the train, and no, we didn't get a sleeper compartment. After the movie in the lounge car, we returned to our seats, unfolded the footrests, pushed back our seat backs, then pulled out the blankets we'd been advised to bring along. As the sun set on Colorado's Front Range and we raced toward northeastern Colorado, the train hushed, the lights dimmed and passengers began to drift off.

It was dark when I awoke about 2 a.m. The train whistle, which I'd barely noticed before, took on an eerie, plaintive sound. We were slowing, then we stopped.

A woman and boy had just boarded the train. They settled in, and the train resumed its gentle swaying.

Sunrise -- by "train time" -- was Omaha, Nebraska. We pulled in as I awoke to a pink sky, a slowing train and that whistle again. Passengers began to rouse themselves, adjust their clothes, put on their shoes, return their seats to their upright positions.

Morning was marked by a call over the address system that the dining car was open for breakfast. Who needed a watch with the conductor keeping track of time by way of the dining car's schedule?

On the return trip, Vickie Jasmann was traveling with her grandchildren, ages 4 and 6. She'd boarded the train with them a day earlier in Harper's Ferry, W.Va., and had already spent one night on the train when we met in the lounge car for that evening's movie. She planned to get off in Denver, too.

"I'm retired, so I have time," she said, explaining why she was traveling on Amtrak.

Time, indeed.

Source: Gazette, The; Colorado Springs, Colo.

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