ON BOARD THE ACELA EXPRESS — On the flat stretch past Kingston, Rhode Island, the engineer let her rip, and our Acela Express out of Boston hit its maximum speed of 150 mph (241 kph), according to a wire service report.
A lot late and still a tad slow on the throttle, America at last has joined the era of high-speed passenger trains. Well, it sure is fun and fine to be on board and hear that lonesome whistle moan.
There’s a feeling of contentment, the exact opposite of road rage, looking out those wide (and recently washed!) windows at telephone poles flying by and traffic snarls along I-95 and tandem trailer rigs falling behind. Little commuter stations slip by so fast you can’t even read their names.
Amtrak’s Acela is not quite the “Bullet Train” from Tokyo to Kyoto, nor is it the French TGV (train a grande vitesse — great speed train) outracing small airplanes across the landscape. But it does cut the Boston-to-Washington time from 8 1/2 to 6 1/2 hours. This sounds impressive until you realize the TGV goes from Paris to Avignon, almost the same distance, in two hours and 37 minutes.
Since terrorists crashed highjacked airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon ( news – web sites), Acela has been running neck-and-neck with the Delta and U.S. Air shuttles, which have lost nearly a third of their riders through fear of flying and long check-in lines.
As a new generation of passengers has discovered — and a peek at Bartlett’s Quotations will confirm — there’s a poetry about trains that is lacking in planes. Emily Dickinson comes to mind with the clack of the rails: “I like to see it lap the miles and lick the valleys up.”
Looking out the window at a John Cheever “peaceable landscape,” I summon up lines memorized long ago from one of his short stories about suburban rail commuters: “It seemed to me that fishermen and lone bathers and grade-crossing watchmen and sandlot ballplayers and owners of small sailing craft and old men playing pinochle in firehouses were the people who stitched up the big holes in the world made by people like me.”
The pleasant scenery along the Northeast Corridor sure beats bumpy black-bottomed clouds piled high and TV instructions on where to find that flotation cushion, the emergency exits and the airsick sack.
A nice slice of Americana slid by my window: Back Bay and the clustered spires of Harvard, a ferris wheel and carnival rides in a Providence schoolyard, lobster boats heading to sea off Stonington, Connecticut, a fine view of the New York skyline while crossing Hell Gate Bridge, New Jersey’s busy container ship piers, the flaring stacks of an oil refinery, a grim prison garlanded with razor wire, the
McMansions of posh Yuppy towns punctuated by golfers in little carts, abandoned factories with broken windows and an occasional farm along the old Pennsylvania Main Line.
“What Trenton Makes the World Takes,” a sign boasts, and another proclaims, “What Chester Makes, Makes Chester” Sailboats and fishing camps delight the eye on a lovely long run along Chesapeake Bay.
Depending on where you get on or off there are some wonderfully restored public palaces of the old railroad barons, like South Station in Boston, 30th Street in Philadelphia and Washington’s Union Station back-lit by the afternoon sun on the dome of the nation’s capitol.
Acela’s reclining seats are wide and comfortable, with outlets for laptops and audio equipment and more leg room than first class aloft. Some seats belly up to ample-sized tables suitable for work stations, meals or card games. The decor is a pleasant and politically correct blend of Confederate grey and Union blue, as befits the geography from Beacon Hill to the Potomac.
Dinner in the diner, nothing could be finer; but alas one must settle for the cafe car. This, however, is surprisingly good, featuring beer on tap, a selection of wines, hot and cold snacks, salads, sandwiches, burgers and fries, all at fairly moderate prices. Every Acela train has one first class car where hot meals included in the cost of the ticket are served at your seat.
The other cars are called “Business Express,” which is really coach class with a few welcome frills, like free Red Cap service, clean restrooms, and a train staff especially trained for the Acela run in courteous, helpful service. Kids up to graduate school age are told in the nicest way to get their feet off the seats. The head ticket puncher now has the grand title of “chief of on-board services.”
Compared with the swift, high-tech European trains, however, Acela is still running local and years behind. It hits a top speed of 150 mph (241 kph) only on that eight-mile (13-kilometer) stretch from Kingston to Davisville, Rhode Island. Between New York and Washington it can do 135 mph (217 kph), but sometimes chugs along at a bare 20, sounding its horn for grade crossings that should have been eliminated when steam locomotives were replaced by diesels.
Flying along on a flawless road bed of continuous welded tracks (which eliminates the click and clack), Western Europe’s crack trains average 185 mph (298 kph) connecting major cities in Belgium, France, Germany and Switzerland. France’s TGV Atlantique set a world rail record of 320 mph (515 kph) on the run from Paris to Bordeaux.
The fleet Eurostar, linking Paris to London in less than three hours, streaks across the French countryside at 185 mph (298 kph) then slows to 100 mph (161 kph) through “The Chunnel,” beneath the English Channel.
Italy now has high-speed “tilting trains” that climb mountains and whip around curves without spilling your glass of Chianti. One wonders if on the Pisa run, the “Pendolino,” literally “swaying” train, tilts in the same direction as the famous leaning tower.
Acela trains also use an advanced tilting technology to speed around curves, but estimates are that it would cost dlrs 12 billion to upgrade the roadbed to Europe’s seamless standards just between New York and Washington.
One disappointing down side of Acela travel is that although all seats are technically “reserved,” you may have to lug your luggage through several invariably crowded cars to find an empty one. Sometimes this requires calling on the staff to coax someone’s handbag, lunch or magazine off an unoccupied place.
On most high-speed European trains, your specific seat to any destination from any station is reserved by the computer. Your ticket tells you where to stand on the platform to board the car with the window or aisle seat specifically booked in your name. Karen Dunn, an Amtrak spokeswoman, admits a similar reservation system “is pretty far down the road.”
Baggage storage also can be a problem on Acela trains, especially on Mondays and Fridays when hordes of students attending the many colleges along the northeast corridor crowd aboard with laptops, bulky backpacks and fetid laundry bags.
On my recent trip to Washington, 23 high school seniors from the San Diego area on a “Patriotic America Tour” boarded at Philadelphia. The baggage racks at the end of each car and the overhead bins quickly overflowed. The aisles became an obstacle course of suitcases, book bags and guitars. European trains seem to have more room and frequently have a baggage car for checked luggage that is unloaded at your destination.
Because many business passengers are too busy barking into a cell phone to savor the poetry of the rails, every Acela train has a “Quiet Car,” where “sound emitting equipment and loud conversation” are banned.
This provides blessed relief for those wanting to read, meditate, play solitaire, gloat at the traffic snarls on the Interstate or just lap up the miles (kilometers) of scenery. There are times when the drone of an airplane is preferable to the drone in the adjoining seat. Returning from Washington, D.C. to Stamford, Connecticut, I sat in agony next to a buttoned-down Main Line trader who was frantically trying to beat the closing bell of the New York Stock Exchange ( news – web sites).
“Hi, Nancy,” he chirped loudly into his cell phone, “let me give you a few orders. Buy 5,000 AOL. Sell 8,000 Coco-Cola. Buy 4,000 Procter & Gamble. Sell 7,000 WMT. What’s Bristol Meyers doing? If it’s up three, buy 10. Am I going too fast for you? Shall I repeat?”
He did. This went on for the better part of an hour, concluding with instructions for Nancy to “book a table for two at Le Cirque.” Pocketing his cell phone, he ventured a sort of apology: “Don’t mind me. But now is the time when we all should be enhancing our portfolios with reliable pharmaceutical stocks. Don’t you agree?”
I told him I dropped a bundle in the market last week. My cart turned over in Stop & Shop. He seemed offended and fled either to the cafe or the Quiet Car.
As Alfred Hitchcock showed in a classic horror flic, you can meet some strange strangers on a train. Any day on the Acela, you might sit next to a senate or house representative from any of the eight states along the route rehearsing impromptu remarks. Or maybe a TV celebrity like Dan Rather or Jay Leno ( news – Y! TV) fantasizing ideal camera locations out the window. Or perhaps the entire Philadelphia Eagles football team seeking the comfort of the Cafe Car after blowing one to the Redskins.
Well, I once did encounter a posse of cowboy and cowgirl rodeo champs whooping it up on their way down to get their pictures taken with the president in the Rose Garden. And another time the conductor — sorry, the chief of on-board services — told me “the poet laureate of these United States was on our previous run.” No doubt he was dashing off a couple of sonnets to suburbia at one of those work tables.
Any combination of the above beats the 5-year-old kicking the back of your airplane seat. Aloft you can’t retreat to the Quiet car.
The one-way Business Express fare between Boston and New York is dlrs 116. One-way New York to Washington is dlrs 144. One-way Boston to Washington is dlrs 164.