(The following column by Ed Kemmick appeared on the Billings Gazette website on March 31.)
BILLINGS, Mont. — Here’s a sure sign that riding a passenger train is a civilized, pleasurable experience: On a recent trip to Minnesota and back aboard Amtrak, I didn’t see a single person working on a laptop.
I saw passengers watching movies and playing games on their computers, but I didn’t see anyone sweating over a spreadsheet or otherwise slavishly bowing down to a computer screen.
I also saw people reading, napping, eating, drinking, strolling and playing cards and board games. There was a lot of conversation, with some of the most animated chatter taking place among groups of people who had just recently met. And of course there was a lot of sightseeing.
I’m convinced there is no finer way to see this or any country than by train. High up in the observation deck, sitting in chairs that face the big, wide windows on either side of the train, you have an almost unobstructed view of the landscape.
In a car, it’s not just the immobility that’s so annoying, it’s the necessity of looking straight ahead, out the windshield, which you must do unless you want to damage your neck.
And what do you see? The road, endlessly disappearing under the hood of your car. It’s similar to what my father said (no doubt repeating a nautical chestnut) about serving on a submarine in World War II: “I joined the Navy to see the world, and what did I see? I saw the sea.”
By in a blur
Even if you do occasionally look out a side window of a speeding car, objects in the foreground – fence posts, telephone poles or even high grass and weeds – are blurred, so that you never have any sense of calm or relaxation.
In the observation deck on a train, you sit too high to see that blurry foreground and seem to be floating on a cloud. The landscape sweeps by slowly, even though you may be traveling at nearly 80 mph.
Sitting in a train, it is even possible to enjoy the empty immensity of Eastern Montana and North Dakota. I say that advisedly, as one who has often cursed that same landscape when I was plowing through it in a car. Then, I sought only annihilation, the killing of time and the obliteration of miles.
Traveling by train isn’t for everybody and for all occasions. Sometimes you have to be somewhere fast and flying is the only option. For short trips, driving is the best alternative, and even with gas over $3 a gallon it’s almost always the cheapest.
The biggest drawback to rail travel is that Amtrak, for most people in Montana, is not exactly handy. Because there is no passenger service on the southern rail line through Montana, we had to drive three hours to Malta to catch the train. But three hours on that lonely, nearly deserted road went by in a flash, probably because it felt so good knowing how little driving we had to do.
Wanting more
I should mention that my 17-year-old daughter, not quite as sedentary as her parents, thought 15 hours on the train was plenty long enough.
My wife and I, content with reading our books, playing Scrabble and watching the world unfold at our feet, would gladly have kept rolling for another half a day, at least.
Oddly enough, I might have enjoyed the train most when I was in the Twin Cities, thinking how soon our four-day visit there would end. If we had been facing the prospect of getting back in the car and driving to Billings, it would have put a damper on everything we did, especially since it snowed most of the time we were there. As it was, I couldn’t wait. The train ride home was the icing on the cake, the culmination of our too-short vacation.
There were some disagreeable changes since I last rode a passenger train 30 years ago, but these had more to do with the decline of the culture at large. I’m thinking mainly of the two oafs who slept on the floor, one of them with his legs sprawled across the aisle.
Nor was the dining car as elegant and polished as it was back when, and the old bar car, complete with an actual bar and stools, has been replaced by a snack bar.
But these are small complaints. Compared with the indignities of modern air travel – the endless lines, the frisking and wanding, the removal of shoes and the confiscation of toothpaste – traveling by train is a pure delight.
Did I mention the price? Two hundred bucks per person, round-trip from Malta to the Twin Cities, riding coach.
I won’t be waiting another 30 years to get back on the rails.