The US Should Care About National Public Transportation?
John Warner, professor emeritus at West Virginia Wesleyan College, in yesterday’s Charlston Gazette is guessing that you:
know not one darned thing about how the Chinese coolies and the Irish laborers laid the track between Omaha and San Francisco, and how they tunneled through the Rocky Mountains and met to drive the Golden Spike in Promontory Point, Utah. Nor do you care.
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Or you are likely guilty of the above if you haven’t read Stephen Ambrose’s Nothing Like it in the World, according to Warner.
I think what Dr Warner means is that he loves trains in America. He loves where they take you. He loves what they sound like. He loves their history. He loves their world.
And he believes they provide America with an answer for dependence on Middle East oil. He believes in this form of public transportation.
He starts his piece telling us how we can catch the Super Chief out of Lawrence, Kansas, at 2:07 am from a “tiny, seldom-used 1950s-style station” before heading west to Topeka, Dodge City and on through New Mexico and Arizona to L.A.
I’m a little confused as Santa Fe made Amtrak go through some name changes due to perceived decreases and then increases in standards, so that the current train that runs from Chicago to L.A. is called, and has been for over twenty years, the Southwest Chief, which of course stops at Kansas City - and by virtue of a rather long walk, has been reunited with Union Station, that shopping entertainment center based in the old railway station and themed rather cruelly on a railway station.
I’ve been lucky enough to have been on the Southwest Chief three times, and I think that everybody should do it. But I don’t think me liking trains means other people are unaware of the work of the Chinese and the Irish laborers in building the railroad. Most Irish-Americans have an idea what their ancestors were up to, especially on this side of the ocean, and know that the railway is what brought so many Irish to Kansas City and places throughout Kansas and Nebraska.
So I’m guessing you just might know a darned thing or two about the laying of America’s transcontinental rail tracks.
See Also:
• You Travel By train in Ireland, Don’t You?
• Cycling Across America: The Beginning
• What’s it like driving on the left-hand side?
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
Checked out a holiday to tour the US using Amtrack instead of planes a few years back. The price was astronomical!
Yep iRank, he doesn’t address the very significant cost issues.
A couple of years back I went on holidays to New York from here in Kansas City. I wanted to go on trains there and back but the cost was prohibitive so I broke the bank to go there by train and fly back.
For a good while Amtrak had their own eBay store, with amazing bargains, whihch may work well for people on their holiers, butis not a great option for just general public transportation.