New York to Oklahoma by Train

All my friends that I'm meeting now at the Beta Theta Pi Convention are asking me the same question:  "How was it?"  This of course is in reference to my 56-hour train trip from New York City to Oklahoma City.

The answer depends on the fact that I treat a trip like this as a cruise, where the travel is itself the experience.  Delays and such are simply a fact of life in rail travel, and I try not to get too wound up about them.  At the same time, my methodical mind wants to know if we are ahead or behind the published timetable, and by how much!

The trip began at Pennsylvania Station in New York, which occupies several underground levels beneath Madison Square Garden.  From the street, you simply walk in and immediately ride an escalator down into the station concourse.  It's very crowded -- the station is not nearly big enough for all the commuter trains and intercity trains using it.  After a short lineup, I got my big bag checked to Chicago.  The agent offered no explanation of why he couldn't check it all the way through.

I then made my way to Amtrak's Club Acela lounge to wait for my train.  This lounge is for first class passengers and for sleeper passengers, but is about 1/10 the size of the Business Lounge at Toronto's Union Station.  I got one of the very last seats left, and the lounge stayed that crowded until after a Florida train, a Washington DC train, and a Boston train had all boarded.  In due time a call came for us to assemble outside the lounge, and then an Amtrak agent walked us to the right escalator, down onto the platform, and along to where the train's chief conductor awaited.  In quick time we all got into our correct cars and rooms, and started figuring out where to put things.  Those sleeper compartments are very cosy!

The Lake Shore Limited rolled away about 15 minutes late -- that was a sign of things to come for sure!  The track rolls north for quite a distance through tunnel and then under cover of the West Side Highway, and finally emerges onto the bank of the Hudson River in the north end of Manhattan, just before we passed under the George Washington Bridge to New Jersey.  And wonder of wonders, for the first time in four days, the sun was actually shining.

Soon after that, we rolled across the short bridge off the island of Manhattan and north through the outer suburbs along the river.  In fact, the old New York Central Railway line sticks right to the east bank of the Hudson River almost the entire distance from New York to Albany.  Among the interesting sights was this construction site of a new double bridge across the widest stretch of the river, known by the old Dutch name of Tappan Zee.

Farther north, the mountains close in on either side and the dramatically-sited Bear Mountain bridge provides another crossing point.

Beyond Bear Mountain, the train for several miles gives a grandstand view of the imposing buildings of the U. S. Military Academy at West Point.

More mountain landscapes continue along the way.

Not far north of West Point, Pollepel Island is dominated by the crumbling ruins of Bannerman Castle, a replica Scottish Highland castle begun in 1901 by munitions dealer Frank Bannerman.

A power plant appears as the backdrop to one of the many barges and towboats which make the Hudson a busy commercial waterway.  

Finally, two and a half hours after leaving New York, the train rolls across the river itself at the state capital city of Albany -- and it's worth noting that even this far north the river is still a tidal estuary.

At Albany, there's a lengthy stop while the cars coming in from Boston are spliced into The Lake Shore Limited.  During that entire process, about 25 minutes, there is no power, no light, no air conditioning on the train.  This means that the dinner seatings in the dining car are at 4:30, 5:00, 5:30 (before the stop) or at 7:00 (after the train leaves Albany westbound).  We were actually a bit later even than that, and with the clouds moving in again it was soon dark.  I had my bed made up at 9:00 as I was pretty tired, and was soon asleep.  The roomette bed was so tiny that I was bumping my tailbone on the window frame and kissing my bag at the same time, except when I turned over and reversed that!  But I still managed to get a fair bit of sleep and woke up for good around 7:00.

By this time we well into Ohio and shortly after we stopped at Sandusky.  Since we should have been there at 4:30 it was obvious that we were about 3 hours behind.  Well, that left plenty of time for breakfast and to while the morning away.  It was now very sunny, but there was surprisingly little variety of scenery: level farm fields, an occasional village or belt of trees, and every so often a rough looking ex-industrial town.  That, for instance, was all we saw of South Bend, Indiana -- the famous campus of Notre Dame University is several miles north of the train line.  But then, railway lines rarely show you the best of any city.  Still, I think you have to admire the skill, tenacity, and bravery underlying the decor on this abandoned building in Chicago.

After South Bend it was time to reset to Central Time, and we arrived in Chicago still 3 hours behind schedule.  I then had to wait 40 minutes for my checked bag to come into the baggage claim area, and barely had time to make it back down to the gates before the boarding process began for the Texas Eagle -- the daily train to St. Louis, Dallas, Fort Worth, and San Antonio.  That damn big bag had to come on the sleeper car with me, as it was too late to check it in for this train.

It was such a rush that I had no time to eat lunch in Chicago, so I made a beeline for the cafe lounge car as soon as it opened.  A giant sandwich gave me enough fuel to get through till dinnertime, and a half bottle of wine rubbed off the remaining edges of stress from the Chicago connection.  

As the day wore on, the landscape remained much the same as in the morning -- it doesn't lend itself to pictures since you can't really tell what you're seeing.  But there were a couple of more interesting towns -- and it's hard to imagine a Middle America town more normal than this one in Illinois:

Shortly afterwards, we passed through the Illinois state capital of Springfield, early adulthood home of Abraham Lincoln, and one of no less than 22 Springfields in the USA.  The state capitol building is certainly imposing.

Although The Simpsons creator Matt Groening has stated that his Springfield is loosely modeled on his own home town of Portland OR, it's kind of tempting to imagine that station wagon racing into a driveway on a quiet peaceful street like this one.

After that super-late lunch, I opted for a 7:00 pm sitting for dinner.  And that was my undoing.  We weren't seated until 7:25, and 10 minutes later I watched, helpless, as the train rolled south down the Mississippi River past the iconic Gateway Arch, then across the river with a spectacular sunset view of all the bridges and into the city of St. Louis.  All that was clearly visible out the right side of the dining car.  I was helpless because I was stuck over on the left-side window seat at a full table, with a splendid view of an endless freight train on the Mississippi River bridge.  I couldn't even get out of the train for a walk during the 30-minute stop in St. Louis (and another brief power outage) as I was still waiting for my dinner to arrive on the table.  *SIGH*

It was almost full dark by the time we left St. Louis, and if there's one unfortunate aspect of the Texas Eagle's timetable it's the way that the train rolls through the beautiful scenic Ozark Mountain plateau country of Arkansas in the middle of the night.  At least I slept well again.  By the time I was awake, showered, dressed and eating breakfast we were stopping at Marshall TX only a bit late.  Then we got held up by a track repair job ahead of us -- a cracked rail.  Once it was repaired we had to keep waiting while a series of freight trains, half a dozen in all, rumbled past us in both directions.  When we finally got to Longview, we were three hours late.  So we had the regular extended smokers' stop in Longview instead of Dallas.

All through Texas the track was lined with belts of forest.  Sometimes they just screened the view of whatever farm or ranch lands were close at hand, but sometimes they were much denser.  Here are a couple of representative views:

Eventually we rolled into Dallas.  We got some splendid views of the city's burgeoning skyline on the way into town.

The station here acts as a terminal for the express train to Fort Worth and for the local light rail transit in Dallas, shown here.

Looming directly behind the station is the 561-foot Reunion Tower, a major Dallas landmark.  The lights studding the spherical top are illuminated at night in multiple colours, and the tower contains multiple restaurants and observation decks.

The stop in Dallas was cut as short as possible, and at the moment we started out of the station I was glued to the window with my phone in hand.  Remember this historic moment?

The railway line rolls right across the underpass at the bottom of Dealey Plaza, mere feet from the spot where the President was shot.  Here's how the scene looks today.

The leg from Dallas to Fort Worth is not long, and we made up some time but were still over 2 hours late.  Well, that was okay.  It meant a much shorter wait before the Heartland Flyer loaded up for the 4-hour run north to Oklahoma City.  Once again, though, we were the victims of freight traffic, and the train took almost an hour longer than scheduled -- all this on a super-hot day, with the air conditioning running at a minimal level, although it was running.

We passed through some characteristic ranch country as we headed north.

After the town of Ardmore, with night coming down fast, I got one final view of the serene Washita River as the train crossed.

It was almost 10:30 pm as we finally backed into the platform at the old Santa Fe station in the heart of Oklahoma City.  With the building and parking lot both under renovations, we had to walk out through construction hoardings and fences.  It took me a few very hot minutes to walk to my hotel, just a block away.  This morning, from my room, I got one final picture of the train at the station before it left to head back down to Fort Worth.

Beyond the station is Oklahoma City's crown jewel, the Bricktown historic restoration area, filled with shops, galleries, and restaurants.