North by Northwest
Notes on a Journey Inside The Empire Builder
Five of us stand on the dusty and color-starved platform, waiting for a train. The young couple present is headed to Denver, via Chicago; a woman is riding just over the mountain, to Latrobe; an older gentleman is not traveling at all today, but rather waiting for his daughter, who is arriving from Philadelphia. I’m going to Seattle, which is not necessarily a common destination on rail from this shabby local Amtrak post in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
Our ride is late. Two separate freights — each with many tens of cars — preclude its arrival, likely the reason for the delay on this shared track. After the standard few platitudes shared between travelers moving in the same direction, mulling the change of schedule and sharing destinations, quiet takes back over. It starts to get cold, and the blue-gray light of the late afternoon dims to faint sort of dusk, finally extinguishing into darkness. Not until the next engine barrels around the corner towards our platform is the solitude broken again. I think for a moment about the fact that when light finally returns, I’d be encroaching on the Chicago suburbs. We all jump on and the train roars off into the Eastern American night.
Amtrak’s Pennsylvanian service runs daily from New York City to Pittsburgh. Its two-hour ride in this part of the state is quiet, there’s not many voices on the evening train tonight. Stops in Latrobe and Greensburg take place before arrival at the first of a few Union Stations to be passed through during this trip. Stepping off the train here puts our company directly in the midst of a Saturday night in downtown Pittsburgh, where we quickly scatter. Tipsy parties spill out of restaurants into the few lively avenues in the heart of the city. There’s a Penguins game tonight, and at quarter-past eleven, the arena pumps black-and-gold-clad fans into the streets like an aorta. I ramble around for a bit, walking the riverfront and grabbing a drink before settling in on a park bench with a book and two bags for company. Even the crosswalk voices here have noticeable yinzer accents. A few progressively colder hours pass, reading and people-watching. Chilled, I head back to the station — located in the bowels of The Pennsylvanian Hotel, where a wedding reception is hanging on to a few last moments of buoyancy — and catch a train that began its journey in Washington, D.C. It’s The Capitol Limited, and it’s headed Northwest toward Chicago.
Stepping onto an Amtrak any time after midnight means that the priority of those on-board is sleep, and sleep only. When we board, the engines are off, the cab is near pitch black, and bodies are flopped anywhere and everywhere that could be considered a bed — in a single reclining seat, stretched across a double, directly on the floor — whatever. This ends up being a choppy night’s rest, considering the nine-hour ride with loud stops at both of its three-hour intervals, Cleveland and Toledo. Most people around me seem to wake for both, if only briefly to roll over, check the time, and doze back off. But the view leaving the city, gaze directed backwards across the Allegheny River and set on Pittsburgh’s skyline (which punches well above the normal weight of a city its size) glitters fantastically. Seen through the dark vignette of a train window, the scene is framed as if to commit it immediately to the film of memory. It stamps a clean and encouraging “goodnight” on this first evening of the journey.
The trees lining our track burst with autumnal color upon waking in South Bend, Indiana. A new girl has appeared overnight in the row next to me, she video calls her family back home to let them in on the show. At first glance, the clock reads seven, then six a moment later, then an hour passes, then it reads six again. This Westbound travel — both overland and on the morning of daylight savings — combines with a night of chair sleep to produce an apathetic attitude towards the accuracy of my watch. But spirits are lifted after a change of clothes, a coffee, and a long look outside. The rails reach Lake Michigan and hug its curves in our approach of an expanding Chicago skyline. The conductor displays his emphatic passion, despite the hour and collective grog of those onboard: “This is the stunning Lake Michigan in all of her morning glory, and in a moment we’ll be in the legendary city of Chicago. Beautiful Chicago, Illinois is next folks, fifteen minutes.”
We de-train. The streets surrounding this now midwestern iteration of a Union Station are lined with corporate towers of glass and steel, and are quiet on a Sunday morning. But as I walk closer in proximity to the Riverwalk and Lake Michigan, the vibe awakens and becomes more astir with weekend energy. It’s already turned into a warm November day, and people are out-and-about, keen on runs along the water and early coffees. Most long-distance trains arrive here in the morning, and their connections don’t leave until the afternoon, which allows a bit of time to soak up a few hours and meet a friend before wandering back to the station. The departures board inside this fulcrum of cross-country locomotive travel spurs new trip ideas: New Orleans via Memphis (The City of New Orleans), Los Angeles via Austin (The Texas Eagle), San Francisco via Denver (The California Zephyr).
The Empire Builder isn’t too crowded when it leaves Chicago. Fifty or so passengers are split into ten cars, some will only be on for a few minutes, some — like myself — will be calling this train home for the next two days. But the cabin fills up a bit over the course of the first few stops in Glenview, Milwaukee, and Columbus. It’s eventually clear that there are some regulars on-board, our car attendant greets them warmly and banters with a few. He circles back past a student in a Wisconsin sweatshirt: “…sorry miss, there’s absolutely no mathematics homework allowed to be done on this train! Hyaw hyaw hyaw.”
The beginning of our ride is smooth, weightless even. Being in the upper deck, you can sometimes feel like you’re briefly floating overtop a boarding platform rather than coming to a complete stop next to it. The train pushes on Northbound past wealthy suburbs, bleached strip malls, ranches, lakes, and wheat fields before the sun finally begins to dip away from this Sunday. It will be nearly 900 miles and 13 hours before any of us sees it again. A polite announcement broadcasts that the dining car has opened for dinner, and most rush to its position in the front of the train for a seat. But those few of us who decided instead to spend our evening in the all-glass observation car were lucky to share a blazing, intensely colorful sunset that seemed to last for two straight hours. We each cracked a local beer of Wisconsin flavor from the snack car and chased it West at seventy miles per hour until the lights burned out.
If you haven’t already had the pleasure of doing so, you probably hold some preconceived ideas about what it would be like to travel overland across North Dakota. Flat, begging for stimulation, unsaturated — a brutally boring stretch of a journey best left in a rearview window. On The Empire Builder, however, those fears are unfounded. I wake up just before dawn and roll over towards the window. The train is flying. After most passengers fell asleep following last night’s final lights-on stop in Minneapolis, the train flanked Northwest past St. Cloud, turned due North at Fargo, and then finally pivoted West at Grand Forks in a square confrontation with the plains of North Dakota. It’s now 5:30am, and wonderfully silent on board. For a few serene minutes, the ground outside is completely undistinguishable from the dark sky above, until a red sun rises from directly behind the train and begins to undress the open landscapes on either side of it with light. Passengers stir awake as the day announces its advent, and in another hour’s time we make our first planned mechanical stop in Minot, which is vaguely famous for its Air Force operations.
Leaving town, the tracks are elevated above rolling farmland for thirty minutes, and both sides of the cabin are treated to views. The now cloudless blue morning sky is a powerful backdrop for the golden-brown plains below it. Some, more than others, will be drawn to these amazingly large tracts of unobstructed land; the forced sense of humility often imposed by vast open spaces begs to be noticed here. Maybe this will in fact be the part of the ride that you decide to bury your nose in a book or a downloaded movie rather than staring out the window. But even so, don’t let anyone tell you that the only pretty part of this trip is Glacier National Park. North Dakota is beautiful.
Now that we’re well into some of the most sparsely populated lands in the country, most people on board seem to be heading deeply into the West. The midwestern university demographic that was prevalent between Chicago, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis has melted away. Now, most on the train are older. But, what exactly does one do in all-day confinement inside of a metal tube gunning across North Dakota and Montana, you might ask? Some people sitting in the observation car keep themselves busy — reading, working, playing games. More than a couple have intentionally brought no such distractions along, and choose to absorb the surroundings and read the landscapes outside instead. Some stay in their own personal seats in less-social cars. Some seem to sleep all day and all night, shielded underneath a blanket from passersby and any interaction with the world. One man orders two pre-noon IPAs, finds the most secluded seat by a window, and takes two hours to drink them — his mind lost deep in a morning reverie.
It’s today that I fully connect with Rod. Rod is the attendant of the snack stand, which is located in the basement of the observation car. This somewhat arcane corner of the vehicle is not accessible laterally; in order to find Rod, one must walk to the upper-level of their own cabin, then into the observation car, and finally descend a narrow staircase. The tables on this level, normally open for shared meals and conversation, are completely taped-off in order to accommodate social distancing requirements. Such requirements are highly effective in Rod’s case; he mans the refreshments operation down here largely alone for nearly sixteen hours a day on these cross-country journeys. But no matter what, between the hours of 6:00am and 10:00pm, I could count on being greeted with a warm smile and courteous bow after walking down the steps into his domain, of which, of course, he was the master. “Oh, probably a few more than a million…” he answers in a happy drawl, when I ask on day one how many of these trips he’s been on. Adding a rehearsed wink: “…and I’d like to go on a few more still. What can I getya today, kid?”
We’re able to move beyond the kind banalities of transactional conversation when I notice that today, he has switched out his standard-issue Amtrak cap for one that sports a Pittsburgh Steelers logo. The team plays later tonight. He’s a local; we form a slightly deeper bond over our Western-Pennsylvania roots. It’s apparent that Rod was probably a bit starved for conversation down here, as we launch into more talk about college football, shared travel, and the bar scene at Penn State — him changing topics at a fast clip and me trying to sneak a word in. He becomes a friend both on the rails and when we hop out for stops, even sneaking me a free beer during happy hour later that evening.
Back upstairs, morning turns into afternoon, and we continue to roll along through a series of dusty east-Montana communities. The plains outside are occasionally interrupted by violent and beautiful rock formations, steel gray with sharp black contours that protrude upwards from the bounty. Undulations in the land become more common and longer-lasting. We’ve all read ahead — we know the Rockies aren’t too far away — and with this deterministic viewpoint, it’s hard not to see the growing contours as an exciting bit of mountainous foreshadowing. The sun sets for us in Shelby, which we take as a 45-minute stop, an opportunity that most people use to run across the street to pick up drinks for a third of the price as they cost on the train. This part of town is sleepy and sun-battered; it has seen better years. But the cashier at the gas station (liquor store) is beaming and overwhelmingly polite, her favorite time of day is when the Amtrak rolls in. We get back moving again, and the mountains we’ve been hoping to catch a glimpse of immediately rise from our horizon, lit by the day’s afterglow. They stretch as far as you can see. Now in Cut Bank, Montana, we’ve reached the northernmost point in the journey — the train running only 25 miles from the Canadian border. Just ahead we’ll cross the Continental Divide and enter the Rocky Mountains, those guardians of the North American West.
Our train approaches Glacier in nascent darkness. Its bright lights illuminate the thickening layers of snow outside, the first time we see any on the trip. We curl around the southern border of the national park, passing through Browning, East Glacier, Essex, and West Glacier before arriving in Whitefish for a thirty-minute stop. This feels immediately like a distinct inflection point in the journey — we’re now in Act III, the Pacific Northwest. The air outside is ice cold and perfect. It’s snowing lightly. There is a large statue of a mountain goat watching over the Amtrak platform. People have skis. In just a couple of hours, we’ve transported completely… it’s a reminder of the distinct memorability that only overland travel can offer. About half of the passengers in my section of the cabin step off here — some were coming from Chicago (Bill, a towering man in a Stetson meeting old friends for a fly fishing trip), some from North Dakota (an outwardly standoffish but flirtatious young couple who seem to be carrying their whole lives with them; reminding me of Clarence and Alabama in True Romance). Their places are taken by people hopping on and heading either further into the mountains or outwards towards the sea.
Overnight, the train passed briefly through the vertical panhandle of Idaho and then crossed its final state border before coming to a long stop in Spokane, Washington in dark and scary hours. Here, the final five cars of our train were severed and then reconnected to a new engine, headed towards Portland. Train #727 has officially become trains #7 and #27. Now carrying half the weight, our ride barrels on in the direction of the Pacific.
I wake up early in Wenatchee, the local clock having wound back another hour, and head backwards along the aisle to see Rod and grab a coffee. But I’ve forgotten that those trailing cars were re-routed, and nearly walk off the end of the caboose. Rod’s car is going to Portland. I silently wish him all the best, and hope to run into him in another snack car in another state somewhere down the line. I likely won’t. Another acquaintance made and left on the road. So it goes.
I do eventually get my hands on a hot cuppa from the dining car and settle back into my seat for sunrise. But what happens next isn’t really sunrise — moreso the absolute minimum requirement of what could be considered a night officially turning into a day. A dense overcast hangs above the new forest outside, and blackness changes to a sort of dull, colorless gray. This weather would certainly be ugly in a lot of places across the country, but not here. Everything is covered in heavy snow, and everything that’s not white is black — the trees, the rocks, the water, the rails. In fact, looking outside feels a bit like looking at a black & white photograph (or maybe a painting, as the now-dirty windows are blurring things together) if not for the blue neon aisle lights reflecting from inside onto the glass. This is the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest; she has made her presence known. The ride here is stunning but brief — it’s not quite 7:00am and most on-board miss it — as we turn into the Cascades Tunnel, the longest rail tunnel on the continent, a marker of the final push towards the Pacific coast.
The invisibility of the underpass gives way to a dark green and mist-filled forest in the smartly-named community of Scenic, Washington. Over here it’s lower, and warmer — and raining. The snow on this side of the mountains has completely disappeared. Other things have also disappeared, if not quite as suddenly: I look around and realize that at this point, I’m the only Seattle-bound coach passenger remaining who departed at The Empire Builder’s Chicago genesis. There are surely a few more like me in the sleeper cars, but not much interaction exists between these classes.
An hour longer and we’ve reached the ocean — Washington’s Possession Sound. Shipping containers line the water’s edge, stamped with port calls from around the globe — Busan, Rotterdam, Jebel Ali, Shenzhen, Singapore. We hit the black beach and turn due South for the first time, cruising down what has to be one of the most beautiful stretches of rail in the country. If it’s not, I hope to find its victor. Our track hugs the Sound for the entire 35-mile ride to Seattle. The clouds have now dissipated and cleared the way for a bright, Pacific Northwest sun — completing the display of all four seasons that we’ve had on this morning’s travels. We’re rolling along just feet from the waves, often sprayed by their mist as they chop into the base of the tracks. Looking backward, out of the train’s rear window, the rails disappear around waterfront bends. Looking forward, Mount Olympus unsheathes itself from hiding across Puget Sound.
We pull into Seattle’s King Street Station — 25 minutes early — and come to a slow and final stop. It’s been 2,200 miles since Chicago, over 2,700 in total. The conductor gives a sincere sounding thanks to all onboard, although given the impermanent customer base, I feel that I’m able to take the offering slightly more to heart than those who caught a ride in Everett for just the final 60 minutes. I take a moment — then move off the train, across the platform, into the station, and finally upstairs, West, towards the exit, thinking about the next step. Onward. As I’m leaving, an announcement beams throughout the departures hall: “Attention Amtrak passengers, train #7 has now arrived. After standard refueling and mechanical checks, we plan for it to depart on-time, Eastbound for Chicago.”
/S
Seattle, November 2021
