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January 28, 2004
TT: Riding the rails
A reader writes, apropos of my piece in this morning's Wall Street Journal:I love the stuff about the trains. I had the good fortune to take a train to New York (not a sleeper, alas, but from Wilmington that would have been just plain silly!) with my mother when I was very, very young. My father usually drove us to New York. I have no idea why we took the train on this one occasion, and without my Dad, but the memory is incredibly vivid for me and fills me with the most incredible nostalgia. I would imagine that traveling by train for the first time would be pretty exciting for a young child even on today's much diminished Amtrak experience. Still, I somehow caught the last gasp of traditional railway service, and it made an impression, even though I could have had no idea that I would never see its like again. I swear the best eggs I ever ate were on that train! Can you imagine getting farm fresh eggs cooked to order on an Amtrak train? The dining car was the most miraculous place. It was like a fancy restaurant that moved! The tables were covered in white table cloths, the cloth napkins were neatly folded next to the silverware, a bud vase graced each table. And the black waiter in his white jacket made a fuss over my brother and me. No doubt we were all dressed up in matching Florence Eisenman outfits. People dressed up to travel in those days, and my mother kept my brother and me looking like we came off a band box (what does that mean, anyway?). I can remember walking from our seat to the dining car and being terribly scared of the connection between the cars. We must have walked through the old Penn Station when we arrived but, unfortunately, I have no memory of the station at all. I must rely on pictures to imagine what it must have been like. Thanks, I think, for reminding me of a time gone by.
Nice. And thanks to you, too.
Posted January 28, 2004 4:29 AM
