Number 6's Blog

I was thinking about a friend who is a train aficionado. That got me to thinking about my experiences in trains. Back in the dark ages (1960s) I’d take the Zephyr from Chicago to Galesburg on those weekends I traveled home from college. Two hours from Chicago to Galesburg was much faster than driving. During the winter months the Zephyr was packed with people taking a few days off their normal routines for the ski slopes. The party atmosphere on those evenings filled the train.

A few years later married with three small children we took the Santa Fe from Cleburne (south of Fort Worth) through Kansas City to Galesburg. Those trips were not as enjoyable:

• The trip was much longer (15 hours as opposed to 2)
• We rode coach – Gwen’s dad was a Santa Fe brakeman – relatives of employees were free in those days
• We had three small children
• The ride was rougher
• On one Summer trip the A/C broke. That was a killer

I’ve avoided U.S. trains ever since.

However time rolled on and our excursion from Alice Springs to Adelaide on the Ghan was “Most Excellent” as Bill and Ted would say. We had our own compartment. The service was top flight. The food was world class for Australia. Of course we were leaving “The Alice” after 17 months where fine dining was meat pie floaters – a meat pie filled with meat of unknown origin floating in a bowl of pea soup. Plus, our itinerary included a few days in Adelaide. I love that city. If I could have worked there instead of Alice Springs we would have stayed permanently and I would be typing this memory from my back porch looking out on a grove of eucalyptus trees.

In the later years we rode the rails so to speak in Europe several times. Our experience there was much more enjoyable than our Santa Fe trips. If only train service in the U.S. was half as good as The Ghan or European travel.