Amtrak Flashbak

More about the events I mentioned yesterday:

When pulled up to the Toledo Amtrak Station–third largest train terminal in
the U.S. (said an announcement justifying departure/arrival delays)–I had no
idea it was only open from 9 p.m. until 12:30 p.m., seven days a week.
When we arrived at the station straightaway from Tony Packo’s, it was 7:40 p.m.,
so there would be a fair amount of waiting around given that my train was
scheduled to pass through between 3:30 a.m .and 4 a.m. Waiting, reading. I
finished Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous and glanced Rice and
Reynolds’ Portfolio Teaching pamphlet, which I grabbed from the Bedford
table at C&W because Old U. aims to add Portfolio Keeping to their online
FYC sequence by September.

Other than the ticketing agent, I was the only person in the station from 9
p.m. until 10:30 p.m. The worst thing about the Toledo station is that the
benches are deliberately uncomfortable. High, rounded cushion backs and narrow,
slanted bench seats made it impossible to sleep. The second worst thing about
the Toledo station is that the channel cannot be changed on any of the three
televisions broadcasting CNN Headline News (which, on Sunday night, included at
least three full airings of Larry King featuring the whole gang from
Dancing with the Stars
). The third worst thing: only Pepsi products.
Even so, I did enjoy one Dr. Pepper. And the fourth worst thing?

The 2:00 a.m. train to Pittsburgh was delayed for a full hour, to those who
would have boarded it at 2:00 a.m. were mulling around. I talked for a
while with a retired elementary school teacher from Saginaw who had many
concerns about No Child Left Behind and who, for other reasons altogether,
waited with her NYC-bound artist-daughter to make sure she wasn’t left behind.
The late train arrived. Those departing on it went out to the platform;
those arriving made way into the station.

Next–ten feet in front of me–a woman in her fifties was walking into the
station, wheeling her luggage into the terminal when the floor mat folded under
the short wheels of her suitcase, instantaneously creating a tripping hazard of
the worst sort: one that could hardly be anticipated. And she fell with
alarming force to the floor. We helped her up and over to the nearest
bench–the same one I had been sitting on. She would be fine, although she
insisted on having the ticketing agent call 9-1-1 and mentioned that her
daughter was a lawyer at Toledo U. I won’t go into all of the details of
our conversation, but because I was already sitting there and had all of my
luggage parked by the bench, I was the only one who remained within earshot,
near enough to listen to her rail against Amtrak (It’s not even raining! and I
just want my medical bills paid for! and Did you see what happened?). Living
it–perhaps because I’ve done a poor job of capturing the mood–was somehow more
surreal.

Compared to the trip and fall, most of the other incidents were minor. In
Buffalo, a mass of passengers crowded onto the train and there was a tussle
between a couple of folks in front of me over who would have the window seat.
Nothing major. I will take the train again, but I can’t say that I have
any immediate plans to do so. For the $57 bucks I spent, I might not have
been able to drive a car from Toledo to Syracuse. And all of the flights,
besides costing several times more and piling on one or more layovers, would’ve
taken the same amount of time as Monday’s eight-hour train ride.

2 Comments

  1. That’s too bad. The one time we did Amtrak – PA to NY – it was longer than car, but very pleasant.

    Btw – any reason you went from Toledo and not Detroit? There’s a station not too far from campus.

  2. Yeah, it wasn’t altogether unpleasant aside from the few minor happenings. Waiting around any station for hours and hours would probably turn up something out of the ordinary.

    I think that most of the routes from the Detroit Amtrak station run back toward Chicago. The only option for getting directly to Toledo from Detroit was a bus, and the schedule for the bus (a 9:00 p.m. departure) would’ve had me waiting in the station for just about as much time, anyway. So my brother and his family figured they’d drive me the short distance down there, take in the zoo and Tony Packo’s, and make an afternoon of it. I’ll definitely take Amtrak again, especially for regional travel because Syracuse’s airport almost always requires connecting flights anyway.

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