The Virtues of Train Travel

It was spring break and gas prices were at record highs.

So the wife, kids and I packed up and took a train to New Orleans.

If you have never taken a train ride of any length (and judging by Amtrak’s ridership stats, that probably includes most of you) I highly recommend it.

But the first thing you have to know about Amtrak is that you can’t count on getting anywhere on time.

And in this day and age of micromanaging our days and lives down to the minute, there is something very refreshing about that.

We’ll get there when we get there - and you’ve got to be okay with that.

Amtrak’s passenger trains run at the mercy of freight train traffic. If there’s a freight train in the way, the Amtrak train waits until the lines are clear.

This fact left us departing the Houston station (where we boarded and left our car parked (for free!) for four days) an hour behind schedule.

We got to New Orleans an hour late after a 10-hour trip.

Coming back we returned to Houston two hours later than we were supposed to.

You can buy tickets for bedrooms on a train. I hear they are nice, but I have never done that.

Our tickets were in coach, which meant each of us had a nice, roomy reclinable seat – I’d say at least 50-percent roomer than your average plane seat.

Now there are folks who stay in those seats most of their trip. There was a mom with three little kids behind us going all the way from New Orleans to Los Angeles (a 48-hour trip) and they were mostly hanging out in their seats during our trip back.

But I love the observation car. Anybody can go there and grab a cushy seat facing the floor to

Anybody can go there and grab a cushy seat facing the floor to ceiling windows and watch the world go by as the train travels.

It’s from that vantage point that I saw a half dozen alligators sunny themselves in the swamps of middle Louisiana as we rolled past.

But there’s also booths in the observation car where you can sit and watch the scenery as you play dominos, UNO or poker (all of which we did).

Below the observation car there’s a concession stand that sells all manner of meals and snacks and drinks – of both the soft and hard variety.

And then there are the people you meet on the train.

One of our sons ended up playing chess against a guy from Ukraine.

One read an entire Calvin and Hobbes comic book.

Another son met a kid his age from San Antonio who he played with virtually the entire ride to New Orleans. Then that family was on the same train back to Texas we were mid-week – and they played the whole way back to Houston.

We chatted with a couple from Reno.

I met a elderly train aficionado who knew all about Flatonia’s ongoing efforts to get an Amtrak stop.

Instead of sitting behind a steering wheel for a six hour car ride (at $4 a gallon for gas) to get to New Orleans, I actually got to read a book.

The journey there, via train, became part of the vacation.

When we got to New Orleans we had a blast in the city – and their great, historic streetcars lines made it easy for the auto-less Wick family to get around town.

But that long, slow stretch on the rails between Houston and New Orleans was pretty great too.