I have always loved the idea of train travel. My Grandpa worked
for the Milwaukee Road. One time I got to go along when my dad dropped him off
at Union Station in Chicago, and my grandpa showed me a sleeper car and the dining car—it
all seemed so sophisticated and adventuresome.
For a 6-year-old girl, the train
provided a lot of food for thought, too. Beautifully lettered “No Spitting” signs
hung in every car. I couldn’t imagine anyone—much less the sophisticated adults
I pictured traveling by trains—not realizing you should never spit on a train.
It was only recently, over half a century later, that I found out that the
signs had been set out in crowded establishments such as trains as a public
health response to the raging plague of tuberculosis. The mystique of those “No
Spitting” signs stayed with me—when Russ and I brought our kids to a railroad
gift shop a couple decades ago, I bought myself a metal "No Spitting" sign as
well as a "Milwaukee Road" sign.
Except for the Chicago el, I never rode a train myself until
my first two years of college. Russ and I attended different schools then, and
he and I often took the Grand Trunk Railroad between Chicago and East Lansing,
Michigan, and the Illinois Central between Chicago and Champaign to
spend weekends at home or visit each other. Between urban centers, trains pass
through a lot of beautiful and fairly wild areas, and even before I became a
birder, I loved looking out the window and noticing birds, even if I didn’t
know what they were. But once we got married and bought our first car, Russ and
I stopped traveling by train.
So in all the 39 years I’ve been a birder, I
never once rode a train until just last week. I badly wanted to hear Joel
Greenberg, author of A Feathered River across
the Sky: The Passenger Pigeon’s Flight to Extinction, who was speaking in
North Chicago on February 20. I dreaded the thought of driving all the way—I
think I’ve encountered one too many blizzards in Wisconsin in the past several
years—and it suddenly occurred to me that I could take the train. I looked up
the Amtrak schedule, and it was actually affordable, even more so
because I’m 62—exactly the right age to qualify for the senior discount. I did
have to drive to the station in St. Paul, where I left my car in the free parking lot.
After that, I left the driving to Amtrak.
My train was scheduled to leave the Twin Cities around 7 am, so
I had to leave Duluth at 3:30 in the morning—not all that much of a problem for
a birder accustomed to early rising. But the Empire Builder line—the one that
runs from Seattle to Chicago, has been suffering an extremely high number of
delays in recent years, exacerbated by all the oil tanker trains originating in North
Dakota, so my train was 5 hours late arriving in St. Paul. If I’d anticipated this, I’d have slept in and
left Duluth later, but as it was, I got to spend the time working on a writing
project and visiting with one of my friends who lives near the station. The
station itself was very pleasant—quiet, well lighted, and staffed by friendly,
helpful people. There was no Wi-Fi, but my son Joey talked me through setting
up my cell phone as a hotspot, something I used on the train, too.
Once I boarded, I was in heaven. The eastbound
Empire Builder passes through some of the loveliest places along the
Mississippi, and I spent a lot of time gazing out the window at lots and lots
of Bald Eagles along with Red-tailed and Rough-legged Hawks, an exciting
variety of ducks, and a smattering of Snow Buntings, Lapland Longspurs, and
Horned Larks. Sadly, the delay meant I had five fewer hours of daylight for
birding from the train, but that gave me more time to work on some writing
projects after the sun went down.
My return train left in mid-afternoon, when the February sun
was starting to get low in the sky, but in the stretch between Chicago and
Milwaukee, I got a lovely look at a Snowy Owl along with plenty of waterfowl. I
didn’t see a single "No Spitting" sign on either trip, but I guess we can’t have
everything. It also didn't occur to me to take pictures.
We’d had a lot of snow while I was gone, but the parking
lot at the St. Paul station had been plowed extremely well, including removing
almost all the snow from behind the cars, so I only had to clear the snow off
my car and shovel the relatively loose stuff right behind my wheels to
get out of the space. I’m impressed that I could park in such a well-maintained lot for three days for
free.
Russ and I have always longed to take a long trip in a
sleeper car, and now I’m even hungrier for that. Different Amtrak lines take
different routes, and I’d love to try them all. My Amtrak birding list right
now includes about 20 species, and suddenly I’m yearning to see just how high I
can bring it. Riding the train may be a little more unpredictable than driving
thanks to the high number of delays because freight trains have priority on the
limited tracks, but it uses less energy than flying or driving. I wish we had
better rail infrastructure to avoid the delays, but that was a
minor inconvenience in exchange for such pleasant, no-hassle, productive trips that provided
such exciting birding to boot.
