The Romance of Trains!
I’ve been saying this for a while. The United States needs to return to train travel. And not just in the big cities. It used to be you could travel a short distance to a train station and ride a train to almost anywhere. Now, we get in our big cars and clog the highways for our excursions to Gatlinburg, the mall, or other travel sites. For my job, I travel to Cookeville on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and what I would give for a nice train ride there and back. I could sleep, grade papers, daydream, and grade some more papers!
In our recent travels in Europe, we rode a bullet, fast train from Nice, France to Paris. It was absolutely lovely! We were exhausted after 10 days of non-stop walking, bus riding, packing, unpacking, and sleeping on lumpy beds. Although the train approached a top speed of about 200 mph, the train ride was about 6 hours. At first, it made a few stops and traveled rather slowly through the French countryside, but it was spacious and comfortable. We were on the top deck and thus had long views of the scenery. We had room to stretch our legs, and although we tried not to fall asleep, the gentle rocking of the train soon lulled us into naps. We ate our sandwiches we had bought at the train station and walked through several cars to the dining car (rather informal) to buy Cokes and used the better-than-an-airplane toilet!
The getting on the train proved to be sort of an adventure in itself. Our excellent tour guide Alex had a plan: “When the train pulls in, boys put on the luggage, girls get on the train!” He was emphatic about this plan. It seems the train is only at the station about 10 minutes, and we had quite a bit of luggage. The station is generally crowded with lots of people trying to get on. Our large group of 31 was separated, and my group was in the last coach of the last set of cars.
The good old days could be good again. Think of the gas and pollution we could save by traveling more by train! Terry and I hope to return to Europe on our own in a few years and ride trains from country to country. Our country did it once; we can do it again!
(Note: Hopefully, I will learn to post pictures soon to go with my posts!)
