I’m sitting in a train station in La Crosse, Iowa, waiting for an Amtrak train to take me to Chicago, off to the side, typing on my computer. I’ve got time to kill—the man in the ticket booth told me when I got here the train had been delayed by two and a half hours, and the first thing I thought was, “this would never happen at an airport,” even though it does all the time. Still, airplanes wouldn’t be delayed in weather like this, the sunny spring weather that is starting to get just a bit uncomfortable for long sleeved shirts. There are clouds in the sky, but the sun is so brilliant that they all get faded out somehow, so that the sky is a washed-out cerulean, which transitions to green tree-tops, rather than the sharp contrast that is so eye-striking on a clear day.
In fact, the train station couldn’t be a more stark comparison to the airport if it tried. While my apartment says 1920s, this train station seems like it was constructed in the 1950s. I’m not quite sure what strikes me as being 1950s about this place. It has a high ceiling with support beams dividing each section into squares, and in each square a brass light fixture juts down. The benches around the edge of the station and bisecting it remind me of pews. Old, dark pews. You might expect people to be praying rather than waiting for the train.
What really drives home the oldness, though, is the semi-circle ticket office, with its yellow-brown stone base, mini counter and stained wood divider. Two ticket windows are in the center, with a brass cage protecting the Amtrak employee from his clientele. It’s rather ornate, actually, and “TICKETS” is etched into the brass. It’s actually rather calming to be here.
Airports, though, are ultra-modern. They feature the latest in design and architecture, and just walking through an airport makes me feel like I’m a man who is going places, an up-and-comer. Partially, this is due to the fact that everyone is going places in an airport, and everything in an airport is geared toward helping you get where you are going and helping you pass the time while you’re waiting to get where you’re going. When you look at the prices you also get the sense that the stores are there to soak as much money from you as humanly possible while still leaving you with enough cash to get home, but they’re at least trying to make your stay more pleasant.
In the La Crosse train station…I don’t feel like I’m going anyplace for the next two and a half hours. You don’t get a sense of how thoroughly air travel has won over train travel than when you sit in a train station. Instead of bookstores there is a library of sorts where you can take a book at one location and leave it in another location. There is a restaurant here, but it won’t open until 11 am. And there are people here who look as though they just got done working on the farm or on the assembly line. This you would never see in airports. If the prices wouldn’t keep them out, the TSA definitely would. I suspect part of their mandate is to deny anyone with stained jeans access to the airport itself.
That’s what is nice about taking the train, though—you can travel long distances and just be a passenger, and it isn’t prohibitively expensive to do so. While I mostly travel by car, along with 99 percent of everyone else in America, I think the train gets neglected. Granted, this whole two-and-a-half hour delay is pretty irritating, especially when I think that I could be on the road and almost to the Iowa border right now. Not to mention that this is the earliest train available. Seriously, the first train on the schedule is over two hours late. If Congress could fix that little detail I think they’d make train travel much more attractive.
Okay, back to the advantages of traveling by—seriously, two and a half hours! Can you believe that? What could possibly delay the first train on the schedule by two and a half hours? How can I get a job where I can be two and a half hours late and it’s no big deal? Okay, obviously be an Amtrak engineer but still…
Okay, still, if you’re going on vacation in the United States and you are traveling across state lines, a train might be the best way to go, especially if gas prices keep going up. When I actually get on the train, I’ll write more.
No comments:
Post a Comment