Travel: The Blue Train

I am as sold on plane travel as the next man, but I do believe that something precious and memorable went out of our lives with the decline of the luxury passenger train.

When I was a boy, trains—and above all, on trips overnight or longer, Pullman sleeping cars—were indisputably the way to travel. My earliest memories of lengthy journeys with my parents are redolent of the sights and sounds, even the smells, of the great trains. The huge, hissing engine; the steps too tall for a little boy; the narrow, car-length corridor; the stiff dark green upholstery of the compartment; the musical clank and clatter of the wheels along the tracks; the authoritative note of the train’s whistle; the telephone poles, the cornfields, the crossings, the villages whizzing by. I can still see the heavy white napery in the dining car, and feel that thick, baroque silverware. The Great Age of Train Travel lasted barely a century, but I am glad I shared at least a part of it.

WA

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William A. Rusher

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I am as sold on plane travel as the next man, but I do believe that something precious and memorable went out of our lives with the decline of the luxury passenger train.

When I was a boy, trains—and above all, on trips overnight or longer, Pullman sleeping cars—were indisputably the way to travel. My earliest memories of lengthy journeys with my parents are redolent of the sights and sounds, even the smells, of the great trains. The huge, hissing engine; the steps too tall for a little boy; the narrow, car-length corridor; the stiff dark green upholstery of the compartment; the musical clank and clatter of the wheels along the tracks; the authoritative note of the train’s whistle; the telephone poles, the cornfields, the crossings, the villages whizzing by. I can still see the heavy white napery in the dining car, and feel that thick, baroque silverware. The Great Age of Train Travel lasted barely a century, but I am glad I shared at least a part of it.