(The following story by David Casstevens appeared on the Fort Worth Star Telegram website on May 12.)
FORT WORTH, Texas — As the Heartland Flyer sped toward the Red River, the woman in Seat 33 gazed out a window, a faint smile on her face.
It was twilight, that winding-down hour when the day starts to soften.
Willa Spencer, traveling alone, silently took in the familiar scenery, a fleeting glimpse of grazing cattle, the budding trees, the miles of greening countryside, a cloudless blue sky.
Once a month, she boards at the little station at Pauls Valley, Okla., and rides three hours to Fort Worth to visit her daughter in Irving.
This spring evening she was headed north.
Going home.
The train whistle sounded its lonesome note. The gently swaying car rocked her into reverie.
When Spencer was 8 years old, she rode a train from her home in Wisconsin all the way to Oklahoma.
Now a gray-haired widow, she fished into her purse and produced a snapshot of two small children — her grandkids, adults now. Both are dressed in blue-and-white pinstriped bib overalls, like train engineers once wore. Willa recalled how she had found matching caps at a garage sale and knew she had to have them. She paid a dime apiece.
She brought the denim keepsakes on this trip to show to her friend, the conductor.
“I just love seeing things,” she said, looking out, expressing her preference for the leisurely adventure of train travel.
“I like the clickety-click, clickety-click. It’s kinda soothing to me. I can take my time. Drink my coffee.” Her round face brightened. “And I get acquainted with nice people on the train — every time.”
The Heartland Flyer is a three-passenger-car train that runs daily between Fort Worth and Oklahoma City, a 418-mile round trip. The Amtrak Superliner carries an average of 5,500 travelers a month, about half its capacity, and makes brief stops at Gainesville, Ardmore, Purcell, Pauls Valley and Norman.
Pauls Valley is 23 miles from Spencer’s home, in tiny Lindsay, Okla.
As gasoline prices soar, ridership on the Heartland Flyer and other trains in Texas and across America continues to increase.
In fiscal 2007 more than 25.8 million passengers traveled on Amtrak, the most since the company began operation in 1971. From last October through March, ridership on trains, which offer more leg room than a typical first-class airline seat, is up 12 percent nationally, Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said.
The round-trip fare on the Heartland Flyer is as low as $48.
Amtrak, which celebrates National Train Day today, touts affordability and the comfort of traveling by rail, and the Flyer consistently ranks No. 1 among all trains in the system in customer service satisfaction surveys.
Spencer became a regular customer a few years ago after the last airplane she boarded encountered a patch of violent weather.
The wings seesawed. Suddenly, she felt as if an elevator cable had snapped.
“Oh, Lord,” she gasped in fright, and grabbed the hand of a stranger seated next to her.
“It’s all right, ma’am,” he said. “It’s just a downdraft.”
“I don’t pay for downdrafts,” she comically shot back, saucer-eyed.
The Oklahoman made a solemn vow the moment her feet finally touched firm ground. “I said to myself, ‘It’s the train from now on …”
Spencer shifted her gaze as a familiar figure in a starched white shirt with epaulets filled the car’s doorway.
The Amtrak employee oversees the Heartland Flyer’s crew.
“He’s the best,” the traveler said appreciatively. “I feel good when I see him. I feel safe.”
All aboard!
Robert Villarreal’s dark-suited uniform is similar to an airline pilot’s, with one notable exception.
His visored hat is an old-fashioned black pillbox, round with a flat crown, the distinctive style that railroad conductors have worn for generations.
Villarreal and assistant Doug Berg stood on the platform before departure, extending greetings, helping with luggage, and checking the tickets of the 59 passengers before they stepped onto the idling train, scheduled to leave at 6:25 p.m. — an hour later than the regular schedule — from the Amtrak station in downtown Fort Worth.
Villarreal, 52, a Frisco resident, glanced at his watch.
In keeping with tradition, he looked right, then left, and delivered the conductor’s last-second, signature command.
It’s the voice of yesteryear.
“All a-B-O-A-A-A-R-R-R-D!”
The Heartland Flyer eased smoothly away, right on time, and then stopped a few feet down the track.
“Is that as far as we’re going?” a passenger jokingly asked.
The dispatcher told Villarreal that a southbound freight train was blocking the track.
“Well, we’re off to a good start,” the conductor said to himself. He used the p.a. system to inform passengers about the 20-minute delay.
Scheduled travel time from Fort Worth to Oklahoma City is 4 hours, 15 minutes, but the trip usually takes longer because of speed restrictions on some sections of track — the train sometimes slows to 25 mph for several miles — and freight traffic.
A San Antonio native, the conductor joined the railroad at age 21 and went to work in the freight yards as a switchman. Now three evenings each week he and his crew ride the Heartland Flyer to Oklahoma City, spend the night at a motel and return to Fort Worth the next day, leaving in the morning.
Villarreal punches tickets, communicates frequently with the engineer and the dispatcher, makes periodic announcements, fills out documentation and serves as genial host, working to make passengers feel welcome and answering questions of all kinds.
“Can I blow the whistle?” children — adults too — ask.
“Could I buy your hat?”
For first-time riders, rail travel is a welcome novelty. Many passengers are clueless about a train’s operation. When passengers spot Villarreal walking the aisle, moving from car to car, some suddenly are struck by an alarming thought as the train travels 55 … 65 … up to 79 mph along the tracks of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad. “Who’s running the train!?”
They are unaware of Gary Elliott, the locomotive’s unseen engineer.
“Oh, we just let it roll,” the conductor playfully told one rider.
Smoking is not permitted, but customers are alerted to the opportunity to light up at the Ardmore stop.
“There’s a two-minute smoke break on the platform,” Villarreal announced. “T-W-O.”
During the trip riders are invited to visit the lower-level cafe car, where lead service attendant Connie Thurston stands behind a counter and offers a variety of items — pain relievers, playing cards, hot dogs, cheeseburgers, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (only $2), coffee, soft drinks, beer, wine and cocktails. The Brooklyn-born former flight attendant is a responsible bartender.
“I love people, and I love laughter,” she said. “But …” With a flattened palm, Thurston made a back-and-forth gesture beneath her chin. “I’ll cut ’em off.”
The Heartland Flyer carried 18-year-old Amada Boyd of Stillwater back to Oklahoma, after her visit to see her boyfriend in Arlington. She makes the trip twice weekly, riding much of the way in the cafe car.
A group of 70 children and parents from the Lighthouse Christian Academy in Prague, Okla., boarded the next morning in Oklahoma City for a field trip to Fort Worth’s Stockyards.
Along the way the conductor served as a travel guide, describing upcoming points of interest.
The Heartland Flyer hummed through Oklahoma’s Big Canyon in view of the rushing muddy-red Washita River.
The train rolled past a piece of history in downtown Ponder, Texas.
“If you look out the window on the right side of the train, you’ll see an old red brick bank.” Villarreal described how Bonnie & Clyde attempted to rob the Ponder State Bank in the 1930s, only to discover the institution had gone bust and had no money. The landmark, he told riders, appears in a scene of the 1967 Hollywood movie about the legendary outlaws.
In 1999 the Heartland Flyer restored rail service between Oklahoma and Texas after a 20-year absence.
Villarreal has worked this route six days a week for the past eight years.
As the train approached the Cowtown station the engineer hit a push-button switch and blew the whistle — again.
The warning blast pierces the air at every road crossing.
One wondered if the man in the pillbox hat hears that whistle in his sleep.
“No,” Villarreal said, “but I can hear it in the distance from my house.”
The conductor smiled.
“I tell my wife, ‘Honey, I think they’re calling me.'”