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Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy train rides. I always have, and expect I always will. But my latest trip on the Amtrak Auto-Train with my wife tested that notion to the max.
We were supposed to ride on Amtrak from 4 p.m. Sunday to 9 a.m. Monday, going from Lorton, Virginia (near Washington, D.C.) to Sanford, Florida (near Orlando.) About 17 hours in all.
Instead, it turned into a long night’s journey into day, and back again. You could likely blame the horrible blizzard that had struck D.C. in the previous days that caused our trip to figuratively head south into the Twilight Zone.
It lasted from 1:30 Monday morning when we finally departed from Lorton until our arrival at our final destination in Sanford around 11:30 that night. The train was 14 hours behind schedule.
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My dizzy state along the lines of vertigo resulting from the long ride made me feel as though I was still on the train hours after we finally got off and stumbled into the Amtrak station at Sanford. Once there, we experienced another two-hour-wait for our car to be off-loaded from the auto carriers.
Don’t interpret what I say as passengers feeling sorry for ourselves. We also felt bad for two of the Amtrak drivers off-loading the cars from the previous auto-train journey, who had been injured doing their jobs in the slippery, icy conditions.
We were told by an apologetic Amtrak conductor that these problems added to our delay. You had to have sympathy for him as well, as he continually told the passengers he was sorry for all the turmoil.
That 14-hour delay might not sound so horrendous, compared with much worse disasters occurring in the world. But what made our trip from hell crazier was that it was problematic right from the start -- even before we officially got on track.
(Photo Credit: Depositphotos.com)
That’s when we joined hundreds of others sitting in our cars for six hours wasting gas, while testing our endurance waiting for the gates at the Lorton Auto-Train entrance to open.
The line of cars stretched out to the Virginia state highway, causing a horrendous traffic jam that concluded when the police had to be called in to prevent anyone experiencing road rage from taking up battle stations against their fellow travelers.
What made it torture for some solo drivers sitting on that long line was the urgent need to use the bathroom. One lady said she was thinking of heading into the nearby trees to do her business on the icy ground, hopefully unseen. But she was afraid to leave her car unattended. She decided it was wiser to just suffer.
Adding to the festivities was the conductor announcing that some guy was caught on a surveillance camera illegally smoking a joint in, yes, the “joint” -- the space where the railcars are connected.
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Maybe this pothead thought he could clandestinely smoke weed and no one would notice. The announcement said the smoker was seen wearing a blue shirt and was subject to ejection from the train.
I, and probably many other male passengers on the sold-out train trip, were wearing blue and maybe we were all under suspicion of smoking marijuana. I was tempted to change my shirt to thwart the conductor’s attempt to eject me from the train.
Sure, sitting too long in an unmoving train allows for too much time to wonder about all the bad things that could still happen before the night was through. Such as when the trip finally, mercifully ends, and you start driving to your final destination in the wee morning hours before sunrise.
Florida, is after all, Florida. And perhaps they do strange things in the Sunshine State. But there on a deserted rural road in the pitch-black darkness of this freezing night, my wife and I were scared as we came to a stop sign and saw the ghostly figure of a burly man holding what appeared to be a weapon of some sort.
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He started walking toward our car. Was he planning to hold us up at gunpoint? We were ready to surrender. Give him anything he wanted, so he wouldn’t shoot us.
I suppose I’m being overdramatic. He announced he was the flagman for controlling traffic on this one-lane road under construction. Finally, he waved his red flag and said we had the green light to go.
“You all stay safe, you hear,” he cheerfully signed off to us.
We eventually arrived at our relatives’ house south of Jacksonville around 1 a.m., where my wife’s nephew groggily answered the doorbell. The sound set off howling by the guard dog patrolling a neighbor’s home, which caused other dogs in the neighborhood to join in the excitement. We’re truly sorry if we woke up the entire residential community.
Despite the commotion, there was an unexpected welcome surprise after we returned home a week or so later. When I opened up my email, there was an apology from the Amtrak “Loyalty & Customer Experience Team,” thanking us for our “patience and understanding” in enduring the train trip.
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Amtrak wrote that a $350 travel voucher had been created for us for any future ride on Amtrak and that “your loyalty and confidence are very important” to the corporation.
Yes, with that money and words of consolation, my loyalty and confidence in Amtrak had been restored.
Amtrak added that it valued us as “part of the Amtrak community and are committed to delivering the safe, comfortable, and dependable travel experience you expect.”
I never knew I was part of the Amtrak community. As Amtrak said, the trip was definitely “an experience.” But comfortable? Indeed. Perhaps it was comfortable – no doubt for that bloke in the blue shirt smoking weed.
Author Bio:
Eric Green, a Highbrow Magazine contributor, is a former newspaper reporter, U.S. congressional press aide, English-as-a-second-language teacher, and now a freelance writer in the Washington D.C. area. His articles have appeared in various newspapers and websites, including the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun.
For Highbrow Magazine