2023-07-22 08:13:08
The woman is honestly surprised. “Are you real passengers?” she asks. As if the American train operator Amtrak had money to hire passenger actors and group them at a village train station in West Virginia.
No, we really want to travel. To do this, we sit, suitcases next to us, on a beautiful old wooden bench in front of the beautiful old Harpers Ferry station. The woman comes out of the exhibition that the wooden building has housed since the impeccable renovation. However, the 1931 structure with the cantilevered roof and turret where Baltimore & Ohio personnel once watched mainline traffic still serves as a traffic station.
Meanwhile, another real passenger has arrived. Her son drove her to the village train station. She also wants to know something: “Where is the train going to Pittsburgh?” A legitimate question, because passenger information is not capitalized here. For the Marc commuter train, which runs three times Monday to Friday to Washington, you can find the note with the travel times in the former waiting room for men with luck. Nothing points to the Capitol Limited to Chicago.
In the countryside, Amtrak is often the only public transportation option
We know Amtrak train #29 will stop on the second track. And so the woman from Pittsburgh heaves her suitcase over the gravel and the rails, on which a loud, rumbling long freight train with open coal wagons has just dusted the station, to the other side. “Is this the right place?” she calls from across the street.
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This is how you travel in Coach Class, the seated car, on the Amtrak. In terms of soft padding and legroom, the planners of the German ICE might have learned a few lessons. The train attendants noted the destination stations on the yellow slips of paper on the luggage rack.Peter Neumann/Berliner Zeitung
Time to clear up a prejudice. Of course, it is possible to travel by long-distance train in the car country USA. Between October 2021 and September 2022, Amtrak carried nearly 22 million passengers. Okay, the line network has gaps, to put it politely. So is the timetable: on long-haul routes outside the Northeast, Amtrak runs once a day, sometimes just three times a week, and delays are always to be expected. If you want to travel with us, you should make a decision quickly, because the short trains are quickly “100% full” due to the lack of carriages.
Nevertheless: You can not only travel by train in the USA, you should. No billboard, no motorway junction disturbs the view of nature. In small towns, where Amtrak is often the only public transportation option, they roll through the middle of residential neighborhoods, past patios and sandpits, to stop on Main Street. The passengers are already lined up, kept in check by one or two Mr. Important with radios. Not infrequently, the gateway to the distance is lovingly cared for, volunteers keep many rural railway stations clean and in good shape.
Amtrak train 29, the Capitol Limited from Washington, makes a prompt stop at Harpers Ferry at 5:15 p.m. He’s supposed to be in Chicago at 8:45 the next morning – that doesn’t always work out. Tickets are available from 89 US dollars. Peter Neumann/Berliner Zeitung
The station rituals are old-fashioned, like in the 19th century, with stools to help you get on. But also pompous, because the locomotive crew pulls off a show with a loud chime at every entrance. There are loud horn signals throughout the journey. At some stations, suitcases are checked in and driven to the baggage car, where they are loaded as in the old days. On the train, the plentiful staff rigidly allocate seats and clip small cardboard signs with destination station codes to the luggage racks above them. The soft upholstery and the legroom in the Coach Class, the seat cars, make German ICE appear spartan.
Suddenly horn signals blared through the valley. And then it breaks in, diesel noisily, train 29 with unfortunately only three double-decker cars, almost 100 percent full. The train driver will have to maneuver because the stopping area is too short. The boxes in which the plastic containers for the microwave food will end up have already been set up in the dining car. But the bourbon for the sundowner is also waiting. A magnificent sunset cruise along the Potomac River awaits. But this is another story.
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