I read a piece in Orion Magazine last night about traveling on trains as opposed to traveling via air. Train travel is compelling on many levels. It is a reconnection with our past — trains built America in many ways. It feels much more civilized than air travel. There are no full body scans, no metal detectors, no long lines. While a train is similar to a plane in that it is a long tube with seats on either side of an aisle, we don’t all board through a single entrance.
There is little hierarchy to train travel. While trains may have First Class cars, a ticket for the First Class coach is not a seat reservation, at least this is not the case on most rail routes in the United States. And the First Class coach boards at the same time as the rest of the train.
Where I can afford to sit (in a coach class seat) everyone is equal. Everyone must find a seat on their own, present their ticket upon request, and be responsible for their own trash. Of course, there are folks who are incapable of producing their tickets or keeping up with their trash.
Years ago, I lived with a woman who frequently had to travel to New York City from the Washington suburbs. She insisted on taking the plane for reasons that are still unclear to me. There’s a lot about her that remains unclear come to think of it. Her argument was that it was faster.
The train from Union Station in DC to Penn Station in NYC takes about four and a half hours. A flight takes about one and a half hours. On the surface this appears to be faster. But it never works out that way. First, there is no airport in Manhattan — one must land at either JFK or LaGuardia. In either case one needs to tack on 45 minutes to an hour to get into Manhattan. Second, one needs to arrive at the airport early enough to clear security (which in DC means about an hour and a half), where as with the train one can literally arrive and board. Finally, the flights in and out of JFK and LaGuardia are perpetually delayed. So, an air trip ends up taking as long or longer than a rail trip.
Leaving the time out of the equation, the rail trip to NYC from DC is much more interesting. The Amtrak line runs up the east coast, through Baltimore, Philadelphia, Trenton, Newark and finally New York. There is a lot to see on the way including the seedy sides of Baltimore, the countryside north of Baltimore, a trip over the Susquehanna river, and a very unique view of New York as you approach from the south. Who would have known that there are grasslands and marshes right outside of NYC?
For me, the train is the only way to go from DC to New York. More »
Two years ago, I read One Square Inch of Silence by George Hempton. I wrote a rather critical reaction to the book on this blog. One of Hempton’s arguments is that we no longer hear our footsteps when we walk, and he attributes this to the fact that there is too much ambient noise in our environment. When I read this book, there were many things that resonated, and not being able to hear our footsteps was one of them 
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