Among Friends Have an opinion on this column? Submit a Letter to the Editor Click here to return to archives Stay on track By Tad Bartimus Posted May 4, 2008 Fed up with canceled flights and useless conversations with harassed ticket agents, I was between here and there with a sick husband and two more weeks of vacation when I heard the whistle in the night. The next morning we scrapped expensive New York City sightseeing in favor of mooching off old friends in the Midwest, skipped fighting our way through jammed airports to queue up for flights that might never leave, and opted for the Capitol Limited instead. "A train? You want to take a train from Washington, D.C., to Kansas City?" Our dumbfounded travel agent fretted we'd "lose time." We assured her we had plenty to spare. Which is how, a few days later, we came to be sipping white wine in a rocking observation car as we racketed alongside a wilderness river in spring flood, reconnecting with a disappearing America. Deep in the Appalachian Mountains at sunset, miles from a paved road, we saw a Blue heron dive for its supper. A buck bounded away in the distant twilight as a red fox ducked behind an ancient tree. The last naked branches of wintered-over hardwoods were beginning to be interspersed with dogwood's spring lace. We passed dormant fishing camps where, in a few weeks' time, extended families would reunite to share timeless summer traditions. Motorists who were blocked at railroad crossings waved to us, as we once waved to others in our childhood. Much of the journey was a melancholy close-up of good places fallen on hard times. Abandoned houses disintegrating beside the tracks became more numerous. Broken furniture, refrigerators without doors and a rusted bicycle minus its wheels clogged ditches. Empty storefronts, toxic junkyards, crumbling farmhouses -- the detritus of those who'd moved on -- provided contaminating evidence of our rural-to-urban stampede. As the train clickety-clacked its way through the rust belt, Amish country, and too many towns built and then betrayed by progress, we saw bedraggled yellow ribbons tied to old oak trees, and American flags proudly displayed on porches sideswiped by hard times. Ignoring the books we'd brought to ward off boredom, we stared for hours out the windows of our roomette, refreshing memories dulled by too many trans-continental flyovers. How could we have forgotten the perfect symmetry of freshly plowed fields, the classic beauty of a weathered barn, the majesty of an advancing thunderstorm, the nobility of a calico cat in a passing window? As we rolled past Harpers Ferry, W. Va., through Altoona, Pa., and on to Sandusky, Ohio, our room steward, Arthur, was solicitous of our comfort, though he conceded he was powerless to do anything about the hard, narrow beds. Lawrence, the gregarious dinner steward, seated us with Nancy and Rick from Little Rock. Over well-prepared steaks and vegetarian lasagna, Rick gave us a solemn account of his recent Army tour in Afghanistan. Finishing her cheesecake, Nancy shared her fears about another redeployment. At breakfast we met Chris, who was about to meet her new grandchild, and Tom, who faced possible shoulder surgery. Our last supper was with Aunt Mary, heading to see relatives in Kansas and accompanied by her nephew Irvin. Shortly before midnight and just 10 minutes late, the Southwest Chief to which we'd transferred in Chicago finally rolled into Kansas City's Union Station. This grandly restored landmark was where both my railroading grandfathers -- one an engineer, the other a conductor -- made countless arrivals and departures for the Rock Island Line for four decades. Walking across the station's darkened foyer, I thrilled to the realization that my footsteps not only linked me to every traveler who'd ever heeded an "All aboard!"' but to my own family, as well. My husband and I didn't lose time on the train; we gained a better value of it.