From the publisher – My brother RJ Chulski and his wife Ginger Royston enjoy using Amtrak for long distance travel. They enjoy the leisurely pace with neither of them driving. They ride in a private roomette, not in the coach as columnist Colleen O’Brien wrote about a week ago.
In September they took Amtrak’s Southwest Chief to see their Michigan State Spartans take on the University of Southern California Trojans in football. RJ, whose stories of Mitch Egan, a boy of Paul Bunyan stature who grew up in the house we later lived in during our growing up years are almost ready for publication, chronicled their train trip in third person. Excerpts follow, with his permission.
“September 16 was Ginger’s and RJ’s day to leave on Amtrak…
“Ginger started getting emails from Amtrak a few days before the trip started. The first leg, the Blue Water route from East Lansing to Chicago would use a bus, not a train. They tore down a coaling tower near Michigan City and closed the track. The coaling tower filled steam locomotives. It was built in 1923, became obsolete with diesel locomotives in the ‘50s and finally, in 2025, right during our trip, they decided to tear it down. Amtrak made the decision after Ginger got the tickets.
“After the decision, Amtrak stopped selling tickets altogether for the Blue Water during demolition and put all the ticket-holders on buses. Lucky thing about getting tickets early.
“RJ had seen people’s imaginations soar when he told them they were getting on the Amtrak in East Lansing, going to Los Angeles and watching the Spartans play the Trojans in football….
He described entering Chicago.
“Train tracks go by the back side of industrial spaces. They saw loading docks, storage yards and the hard-working parts of Chicago. Industrial spaces gave way to old neighborhoods with homes and stores. Old neighborhoods gave way to new suburban neighborhoods then to farms….
They boarded the train and were on their way to Los Angeles. RJ and Ginger travel in a sleeper car, a more expensive option that provides some privacy, room to play cribbage, meals, and a place to sleep.
“Meals on the train were tasty and nicely presented. They had linen table clothes and napkins, steel silverware and glass glasses for wine. Entree choices were flat iron steak, salmon with rice, chicken breast or pasta primavera, which was a vegetarian choice. Dessert was either chocolate spoon cake or cheesecake. Breakfasts were a continental breakfast, scrambled eggs, French toast or a breakfast quesadilla. Lunches were a chicken Caesar salad, hamburger, patty melt, grilled cheese sandwich or “beyond burger”.
“Ginger and RJ had supper with a Chinese couple who were returning from visiting their daughter at Northwestern University. They lived in China. They rode Amtrak to Los Angeles, then a flight to China. Their daughter was studying statistics. They were very proud of her, their only child. She had done very well in school and earned a scholarship to Northwestern.
“The couple’s English was good, but still a communication barrier. RJ asked about high-speed trains in China – 300 kph and very smooth. Amtrak was a flaw in democracy. In China, somebody would decide and it would be built. Amtrak was 80 mph and terribly bumpy….”
This is how riders keep busy on a train.
“The main events on a cross-country train are looking out the window, reading, playing cards, sudoku or crosswords and looking to see if anything out the window changed. Audio books, podcasts and music as long as you used air buds. The train did not have Wi-Fi. Internet access depended on cell service, which was spotty in rural places. Download podcasts, books and music when cell service was good for times when cell service was gone.
“Announcements directed to the coach riders were pointedly patronizing. If you take your clothes off in the observation car, they’ll put you off the train. Only low talking and no audible electronic audio. Flush the toilet. Nobody wants to see your business.
Later, as night fell…
“Mike, our attendant, put down the beds and we settled in for overnight. The train stopped for a long break in Kansas City. RJ was aware when the train stopped, but not awake enough to look or step out for fresh air…
“The roomette was a bit stuffy overnight. An Amtrak roomette has floor space equivalent to a picnic table. Seats face one another with a collapsible table between. It makes into two berths overnight, one below and one above. The door to the corridor locks and curtains give privacy. Three lavatories and a shower were elsewhere in the car. The roomette had temperature and lighting control and a single outlet for charging devices one at a time…
“The roomette was a bit stuffy during the day, too, when the door was closed a long time. Mostly, it was pretty nice.
“At night, the attendant put the beds into bunks. Ginger took the top. RJ was on the lower. The top was claustrophobic.
“The roomette was too small for luggage. Two carry-on bags might have had space, but Ginger and RJ had a suitcase and a duffel bag. A rack nearby was for storing luggage and completely unsecured. Anybody could rifle through bags. Only on-your-honor prevented it. They put their luggage there.
“They were in Kansas when the sun came up the next morning. Everywhere looked like low- income communities. They had stops in Topeka, Newton, Hutchinson, Dodge City and Garden City.
“Just like leaving Chicago, the train entered and left towns along their industrial corridors. Junk yards, run-down businesses and the kinds of homes where the residents tolerated train horns several times a day. You think of trains as having whistles with a nostalgic tone and lilt. No. This was a horn: obnoxious and noisy rather than melodic and quaint….
“The Southwest Chief was in Colorado only a half hour when RJ’s ears started popping with elevation gain. Across the northern tier of New Mexico and Arizona, the terrain was flat, scrubby and monotonous. Raton, New Mexico was the high spot on the route at 7,000 feet. Flagstaff was high elevation, too…
“As they entered Los Angeles, the scenery went the same but in the opposite direction as in Chicago. After the scrubby grassland, they saw light industry and retail. Those and some neighborhoods got more frequent, then parking lots for companies’ fleets, loading docks and the train yard. The train inched up to the boarding platform and they were free to off- board and experience Los Angeles.”
About the return trip…..
“The train was underway. There was normalcy. Just a few hours before, an active shooter was near enough to the tracks that they shut down all the trains. The Southwest Chief had been in the station before the shooting started, so it wasn’t affected….
“At Sunday supper, the dining car staff sat Ginger and RJ at a table for four. They usually pair diners with another couple. In this case, a middle-aged man appeared from the coach observation car for supper in the dining car.
“The coach ticket didn’t include the dining car. The snack bar in the observation car had ‘per item’ prices. The dining car dinners included an appetizer, entree, dessert, one alcohol drink plus non-alcoholic drinks. They charged $45 for coach riders. It was part of the ticket for riders in the sleeper cars.
“Matthew sat with us. He had quite a story to tell and he started it enthusiastically. He grew up in W. Virginia, no electricity or water at home and a dirt floor. He was class president, valedictorian and earned a football scholarship to Harvard. 2,200 students were in his high school.
“At Harvard, he met his wife, who grew up in Seoul, S. Korea. After Harvard, they went to Stanford. She became a surgeon and did a rare recto-colon cancer operation. She was in high demand nationally and internationally and she traveled a lot. He became an executive consultant and equity fund banker. Starting pay at his firm was $260k. They had a 14-year old daughter and had just adopted an autistic child whose parents died and they were his and his wife’s friends. He had authority to officiate weddings.
“Matthew was on the train from San Mateo to Los Angeles and Flagstaff, then to Provo, UT, a road trip to Miami to help a friend move, then to Boston for a friend’s wedding and he was unsure what after that.
“At the end of the meal, Amtrak asked him for $45. ‘It’s on my ticket…’ Matthew answered. No, that’s not how it works. What’s the issue? He makes at least $260k plus a high-dollar wife. Just swipe a card and move on. $45 was a little high for the meal, but he was good for it.
“They put him off the train. They kicked him out. The whole storywas fake. He was fabulously charismatic. Only a few things raised doubt. The jump from W. Virginia to Harvard was too big for anybody. No electricity and water would be a rural thing, not where the school had 2,200 students. He hesitated when Ginger asked what surgery his wife did. Other than that, the story flowed well.
“What? Was he a scam artist? Was he the 21st century version of a hobo? Did he have the money and chose not to pay based on principle? Was he desperately needful of a meal and knew the risk? Whatever, he told an interesting story.
“The sleeper car attendant was “Richie”, a long-time Amtrak veteran, past retirement age and concerned about their new CEO who had worked at an airline before Amtrak. Change was coming and he worried. He was wonderfully friendly and familiar. When he started chatting, he was apt to talk a while.
“At lunch on Monday, Ginger and RJ sat with a 20-something man who was on active duty in the Air Force in Dayton, Texas. When it was his turn for “what do you do?” he said that he tested weapons on aircraft.
“Bullets and missiles?” RJ asked. Much more than that. The new thing was aerial-launched drones. RJ asked if the drones communicated with Blue Tooth – some kind of drone-to-drone radio? “Yes,” he said. Can’t the enemy just jam the radio and everything crashes. He explained that Ukraine bought a lot of drones and they adapted them by connecting thin, fine wire. As they flew, wire spooled out, keeping the drones in communication with one another without radio. After the sorties, the battlefield was covered in wire. It wasn’t biodegradable. It would be there until someone removed it…..
(The USC Trojans had won the Saturday night football game by a score of 45-31. RJ ended the story concluding…)
“It was a perfectly good train ride ruined by a football game. This was life as a Spartan fan.”
