Washington — I am a conservative. To be precise, I am a
libertarian-conservative. That is to say I stand for personal
liberty and tradition. In the scheme of government bequeathed to us
by the Founding Fathers (and Mothers) those value are maintainable,
with various requisite adjustments, all depending on the passing
imbecilities of our fellow citizens.
As a conservative I have for decades found myself in the
pipe-puffing presence of traditionalists who adore the railroad.
They patter on about the serenity of travel by rail, the
graciousness of the service, the quality of the café car.
Doubtless there are some who sing in praise of ye old cowcatcher.
They do not mention that travel by rail is slow, old-fashioned, and
stupid. That has been my position through all their nostalgic
harangues for the railroad car. At least that has been my position
until technology heaved up the Acela Express, Amtrak’s high-speed
train that takes me from Washington to New York as fast as the
Delta or US-Airways shuttle and at a cost of about 25% less.
Hence, once again the conservative fuddy duddies are vindicated.
The rails, at least on highly traveled routes such as the New
York-Washington corridor, surpass air travel. I would not advocate
the rails for transatlantic travel, but from Washington to New York
they are superior. On the Acela I do not have to arrive an hour
before departure (and on busy days an hour and a half). I do not
find myself grievously limited in the baggage I carry. My points of
departure and arrival are near the center of town, cutting down on
travel time and taxi cost. And I have available to me the heaven
that is Acela’s “Quiet Car”-more on that later.
One of the problems with rail travel that the fuddy duddies
rarely addressed was the constant swaying one experiences owing to
the ancient road beds and the dreadful suspension systems still
used on conventional railroad coaches. These are problems that have
made dining difficult, walking from car to car hazardous, and
reading unnecessarily dizzying. Long periods of undisturbed reading
is one of the famous promises held out by rail travel, but the
swaying and bumping that most enthusiasts of the railroad leave
unmentioned makes reading difficult — not so on the Acela.
The Acela, at speeds reaching 140mph, glides along the tracks.
Noisy cars filled with commuters on cell phones and barking to
their fellow passengers are still a challenge to us marathon
readers, but this is where the Quiet Car comes in. On that oasis of
good sense cell phones are malum prohibitum. Conversation
is kept to the level of pianissimo. Even computers are
ordered to quiet their bells and whistles.
Now the enforcement of these strictures can be amusing. The
Quiet Car is increasingly patrolled by stern Acela
gendarmerie whose officers, I have noticed in recent
months, are getting trigger happy. This I believe is because,
though many of us in the Quiet Car are benign readers, worldly
enough to understand when a forgotten cell phone goes off or a pin
drops, many habitués of the Quiet Car are obvious neurotics,
waiting to erupt over that offending pin-drop, to say nothing of
the errant cell phone. The neurotics, I believe, have prevailed on
Amtrak to enforce an Abu Ghraib mentality in the car.
This encourages pranksters to call their travel companions’ cell
phones just to see if they can cause a scene on the Quite Car. A
friend seated in front of me last month, suspecting (correctly)
that I had forgotten to silence my phone, stepped out of the Car,
rang me up, and all hell broke loose. He was vastly amused — and I
admit I too had to laugh.
The gendarmes of the quiet car have yet to receive the
full authority of the Homeland Security Department and are thus not
much more menacing to adults than school crossing guards. Moreover
one can easily spot the neurotics among one’s fellow travelers and
they are delicious targets for practical jokes, for instance, a
coughing spell or leaving one’s cell phone out as if in wait of an
urgent call from a loud-mouth pal.
Now do not misunderstand me. The Quiet Car is not Animal House.
We devotees of the Car are there to read or to rest. The remainder
of the train is also mostly peaceful. It is a civilized two hours
and 45 minutes between cities, and the stress factor is almost
non-existent. Even seasoned flyers suffer stress in air travel.
There is none on the rails. I am proud to say I am a big enough man
to admit past error. The railroads have a future.
