did you ever use the the train to get you there or go to 'the big game'?
With apologies to Gilbert Norman......but how about a thread where we can talk about where we went to school, who we root for, and did you ever take the train in connection with your alma mater?
I'll start - I have a Bachelor's degree from tiny Mars Hill College in Western North Carolina and a masters from the University of Maryland. My chief rooting interest though would be the University of Kentucky which is where my dad was a graduate student and where we lived when I began paying attention to such things. (I can recall seeing the remnants of Southern Railway's 'Royal Palm' in the late 60's passing through Lexington and Georgetown, KY) We Kentucky fans, naturally, are entitled to no opinion about football.
As for connecting this to trains - the nearest railroad station to Mars Hill, Marshall, NC, became freight only when the last Carolina Special ran in December 1968. However, a couple of years before that my father, who was the band director at Mars Hill College, took his band on a chartered train (with other supporters from the college of course) from Marshall to Jefferson City, TN for an away football game with Carson-Newman College.
My own train, college, big game saga is limited to College Park, MD where my apartment was just two blocks from the MARC platform and there were, at-the-time, baseball specials up to the Baltimore Orioles games in then-new Camden Yards Stadium. I'm not a baseball fan but I went to a few games just for an excuse to take the train. I also once used Amtrak's Silver Star from DC down to Columbia, SC to see a Kentucky at South Carolina basketball game. That was back in the days when Kentucky was likely to win any basketball game they played.....this season.....well......it won't last forever!
Posted by Gilbert B Norman (Member # 1541) on :
As I've noted at various topics around the forum, I am a graduate of the University of Illinois/Urbana Champaign - BS Accountancy June 1970. I also hold a Feb 1974 certificate as a CPA, which in Illinois is administered by the University (even though I surrendered my license to practice when I retired during 2003, I can say "I'm a CPA" for so long as the Good Lord allows me to remain on this planet).
Residing either in Manhattan or in the New York area during my college years, there was many an opportunity to sample all routings including rides on both the Century and Broadway. I had to contend with my train-hating Father whose only comment regarding the "folly' was "why can't you just fly like everybody else?" (I guess he had some "answering' to do on the party circuit - even forty plus years ago).
FWIW when at University of Illinois, I was always willing to do with a few less suds at Kams to save up for a ride on the Panama's Parlor Car (no Coaches) and a French Toast Breakfast.
For the benefit of those who went to schools away from the Big Ten, here are the songs to which Mr. Kisor and I both know by heart from out respective schools. While "Illinois Loyalty' is likely the best known, but I certainly respect Mr, Kisor's "Go You Northwestern".
Back to rails, as I inferred above I went to the Rose Bowl for the Jan 1964 game (season 1963). Outward, I rode the Golden State to El Paso, then the Sunset to LA. Return was on the "City". From those who took package tours, flying out on DC-6 aircraft and bunking four to a room at the Biltmore (boys with boys; or at least "for the record"), I think I had the better deal even if more costly. The horror stories abounded, especially about some of the flights on "NVRHURDOFEM" airline.
But the Rose Bowl is the granddaddy of them all; it is not some "Toilet Bowl" that some well regarded teams find themselves playing at today. Those from SoCal around here will surely concur, but it is simply the most magnificent sports venue on this planet. The natural beauty of the venue is simply awesome.
But alas, I guess I haven't been "generous" enough to the AA since graduation to find myself on any kind of an "invitation' list, so I guess we pass this upcoming journey, even if I do not think there will be "too much joy in Mudville' come 5PM PT or thereabouts.
As I freely note, I dropped from school during June 1965 to wear the uniform of and serve our country. I had every intention of returning at a time when I wanted to go school as distinct from someone else. But when I returned for Summer Session 1969, I had an auto, I-57 (the last major interstate to be completed) was almost complete, the Panama existed in name only as just another Coach and Sleeper train, and it seemed as more trips than not were by auto. In fact, IIRC, I traveled to my second interview with the MILW by auto. When I graduated during 1970 and hired on with MILW, it was now a case of 'I work for 'em now, I no longer fan 'em" (especially as I learned first hand the potential exposure to liability sinply in the act of a person simply standing about railroad property).
Posted by tarheelman (Member # 6095) on :
I have a Bachelor's degree from UNC-Chapel Hill and a Master's degree from UNC-Greensboro. Unfortunately, there's no passenger rail service to Chapel Hill (and very little freight rail service), so the train was never an option when I was an undergraduate. Likewise, there's no passenger rail service between where I live and Greensboro, so the train wasn't an alternative in graduate school, either. However, given the traffic on Interstates 40 and 85 these days, you can bet that I'd be taking the train to football games in Chapel Hill if rail service was available through there!
Posted by sbalax (Member # 2801) on :
I got my BA and teaching credential at UCSB (University of California, Santa Barbara) shortly after the move to the Goleta Campus. I didn't have a car the first year and sometimes rode the EssPee from Glendale to Santa Barbara (Not the Daylight and most likely not the Lark. It must have been a local of some sort.) Usually a group of us would get together and hire a cab for the trip to "Slough U". I'm pretty sure that the Goleta Station had been closed by then. It's now the Goleta Valley Railroad Museum and has been moved to a location several miles away.
Thanks, Mr. Norman, for the kind words about the Rose Bowl. I am a native Pasadenan and remember many 4th of July celebrations there and also my own high school graduation from John Muir High School. Pasadena itself has changed dramatically in the last few years (mostly for the best) but I'm not sure if the Santa Fe Station renovation has been completed.
Frank in sunny but cool SBA
Posted by Mr. Toy (Member # 311) on :
I never cared much for football, and I never went to college. But I did attend a private boarding school in my teenage years, 1974-1978. It was located in the mountains about 100 miles north of San Francisco.
I logged many miles commuting on the Starlight between home in Salem and school. The school administrators didn't want us to become too isolated from our families, so they scheduled week-long breaks about every 6 weeks. A handful of fellow Oregonians joined me on several of these trips.
I probably flew as often as took the train, and when I went to my sister's in southern Oregon, I took the Greyhound a time or two. I became very familiar with the advantages and disadvantages of each. My experience in those four years planted the seeds of the rail advocate I have become.
Posted by NativeSon5859 (Member # 2993) on :
I have a Bachelor's degree from Johnson and Wales University in Providence, RI. I took the train one time from Providence to New Orleans (via NYP) in Fall of 1999. Also, we frequently took Amtrak to BOS for Red Sox and Celtics games...and sometimes NYC to do the tourist things. The Bonanza Bus was always cheaper but it's a bus. Give me the train any day of the week over a bus.
Posted by Doodlebug (Member # 4564) on :
I was born and raised in Hamlet, N.C., the Hub of the Seaboard (Airline Railroad). Hamlet High School always played one road football game each season when the booster club would charter a Seaboard train to take our fans to the game.
I rode trains as a child with my family to games against Sanford (north on today's CSX "S" line) and Lumberton (east on SAL's line to Wilmington, which features the longest stretch of tangent (straight) track in the United States). Once I was in high school in the late 1960s, I was a football player and rode the team bus, but played in games that our fans took the chartered trains to including Sanford, Lumberton and Monroe (west on SAL's line to Atlanta and Birmingham, route of the Silver Comet. I was a regular on the Comet to Atlanta once or twice each summer to see Braves baseball games: $17.85 round-trip
Then I went to UNC-Chapel Hill. If I visited Hamlet for a weekend, I took the bus to Raleigh on Friday afternoon after classes and rode the Silver Star home and enjoyed a steak in the diner. My sophomore year at Chapel Hill, Carolina played Georgia Tech in the championship game of the National Invitation Tournament (basketball) in Madison Square Garden. My roommate and I caught the Silver Meteor north from Raleigh about 3 a.m. to New York City, arriving midday, rode an escalator from Penn Station into Madison Square Garden to see the Tar Heels win, and then flew back to Raleigh-Durham Airport that night.
Later, as a sports writer in San Jose, I looked for ways to take the train rather than fly. That included traveling to and from San Diego on the Coast Starlight to cover America's Cup races, to Eugene, Ore., to cover track meets, and between St. Louis and Chicago on the Texas Eagle to cover Major League baseball games.
Posted by notelvis (Member # 3071) on :
Doodlebug - My first Amtrak trip originated from Hamlet (to DeLand, FL) in 1975 on the Silver Star. I've been back many times......particularly during a four year period when I lived in Fayetteville. Not nearly as much going on there as before CSX but still an interesting train spotting location.
I'm curious whether you have been back since the NCDOT has restored the classic SAL depot in Hamlet? (cick the link for project details) They did a phenomenal job.
Posted by Kiernan (Member # 3828) on :
My ex father-in-law was an engine mechanic for Seaboard Coast Line. I think he started with Atlantic Coast Line on steam engines. I went to Hamlet for his retirement party and we got the grand tour of the maintenance facility. It must have been around 1980. I remember the Terminal Hotel. It would have been a good black and white photograph in the style of Edward Hopper.
Posted by Liberty Limited (Member # 4300) on :
Morgan State - c/o '94. Only thing I took to and from school was the big blue bus.
Did cut school at least one day to take Amtrak up to Philadelphia to get some transit photos in the closing days of the PCC surface streetcars, and knew others who regularly used AMTK to head home to New York for holidays.
Sorry, but that's as exciting as it gets.
Posted by Railroad Bill (Member # 5097) on :
As mentioned on the "French Toast" site, I graduated from Ohio State, B.A History, M.A. History, BS Education. Did not need to ride a train (of course there were none to ride in Central Ohio)since I lived only fifty miles from Columbus. But very much enjoyed spending some afternoons in the old Columbus Union Station and harking back to its heyday when it was once full of passengers. Unfortunately it was torn down for a freeway and new convention center. All those Rose Bowls we played in in the 70s were also beyond my meager budget. When I attended graduate school later at the University of Florida, I would drive up to Waldo and watch the Amtrak trains. Probably could have ridden back to Ohio on the train but never crossed my mind as a 22 year old with little cash. Did enjoy riding from Parkersburg, WVa to Cincinnati to see Reds games. Of course that track is now history as well. Great memories of Ohio trains that are no more. But wife and I are making up for lost rides as we travel on Amtrak across the country every chance we get. Seven days and counting for CZ and SWC. Can hardly wait!! Railroad and Mrs. Bill Posted by AHALL (Member # 3515) on :
I graduated from West Virginia University in Morgantown, no passenger rail service there in the 1970s. My graduate work was at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, but I didn't travel there by train, but did enjoy the use of Cleveland's commuter rail system there. My hometown of Marietta, Ohio lost passenger rail service in 1953 when the B & O Doodlebug quit operating between Parkersburg, WV and Zanesville, OH after a short run. Our family would sometimes go to neighboring Parkersburg to watch the "big trains" on the B & O as they arrived in town, and then crossed the huge Ohio River Bridge. The Pennsylvania RR brought freight into town on a slow spur line, now long gone. Trains on double tracks operating with some speed were a fascination to me! I made my first Amtrak trip in 1991 and have been hooked ever since.
Posted by Doodlebug (Member # 4564) on :
Notelvis, I have indeed visited the Hamlet depot since its restoration. This picture of it is the desktop of my computer, although the fellow in overalls appears much fatter because my screen is wide. Next time you visit, check out the HO scale layout downstairs. A model of the station is the central feature of the layout, which is Hamlet in the 1950s with the Silver Meteor and Orange Blossom Special as two of the passenger trains stopping through.
The Terminal Hotel, Kiernan, sounds ominous to those who don't realize it got its name from the depot. Scenes from the 1991 Dustin Hoffman, Nicole Kidman, Bruce Willis movie "Billy Bathgate" were filmed inside the Terminal and a neighbor of mine appeared as an extra in one of them. Other exterior scenes were filmed on Main Street outside as Hamlet was a stand-in for Saratoga, N.Y.
When the station was restored, it was also moved, which required demolition of the then-vacant hotel and relocation of Main Street through the old hotel site. There is now a small park and picnic area on part of the old hotel property with an old SAL caboose and an SDP35 passenger/freight locomotive on which I once worked on a piggyback freight run. During the time I was at Carolina, I worked summers and Christmas breaks on the SCL as a brakeman, mostly on the yard extra board but occasionally on freight runs.
Posted by Kiernan (Member # 3828) on :
Doodlebug, thanks for the info on the Terminal Hotel. I've missed my chance to get the picture. I went to undergraduate school at N.C. State and graduate school at Carolina. I used to watch the Amtrak trains-- and the freights-- pull up the grade through State.
Posted by Gilbert B Norman (Member # 1541) on :
Mr. Hall, lest we forget your "people mover' - your tax dollars at work, or shall we say Sen Byrd's famous Pork Loin recipie.
On several occasion, I have stopped, on my auto journeys via I-68 (no tolls, no 18 wheelers) at your Computer Center, flashed my UofI Alumni card, and have always been extended the greatest of courtesies (sometimes by a "not bad looker').
Posted by Henry Kisor (Member # 4776) on :
A Mention in Dispatches about riding the train to the Sugar Bowl . . .
My bachelor's and master's degrees are from Florida International University in Miami. Because FIU was busy developing extensive research facilities, including law and medical schools in recent years, only in the last few seasons did they finally get around to adding football. The most notable result of this was a huge brawl with their crosstown rivals, the University of Miami, during the 2006 season, resulting in numerous suspensions for both schools. Prior to the arrival of the Golden Panthers on to the NCAA football scene, I rooted for Florida State and Notre Dame. Train talk: I have ridden the Silver Service countless times to and from New York and Washington.
My specialist's and doctoral degrees (the latter currently in progress) are from Kennesaw State University, northwest of Atlanta. Train talk: I have ridden the Crescent countless times to New York, but not so many times south.
Posted by AHALL (Member # 3515) on :
Yes, I forgot the WVU People Mover. Tricia Nixon dedicated it about 1973 trying to get the jump on Sen. Byrd. When I was there it was operational in what we would today call "beta testing" and the diesel busses continue to run to cover "down time" for the PRT (Personal Rapid Transit). Since it runs on rubber tires, I don't think of it as a train. My niece is now a student at WVU, and says the 30+ year old PRT operates successfully with its 6 stations moving students between the downtown and Evansdale campuses and such.
Posted by notelvis (Member # 3071) on :
Super photograph Doodlebug. There were a couple of students with at Mars Hill in the early 80's. Daughters of SAL and later SCL men. At that time the Terminal Hotel housed railroad retirees and they used to giggle about that. The movement of the Hamlet station (as well as the relocation of Main Street) were huge events that made news statewide at the time. The Hamlet station (along with Greensboro and High Point) is among the top depot restorations the NCDOT has done.
Funny that you mention FIU Chatter. At the moment you posted I was in Lexington, KY watching FIU's basketball team play Kentucky.
Posted by RRRICH (Member # 1418) on :
I graduated from DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, in 1970, and on a few occasions I rode the Monon line from Greencastle up to Chicago. I don't remember what station the Monon went into in Chicago, however -- Gilbert, can you refresh my memory? (I have probably asked you this before, but I forgot......)
Posted by Gilbert B Norman (Member # 1541) on :
Dearborn Station, Mr. Rich.
Secondly, although it would be nice if the likely outcome of the game could be different, but the Rose Bowl quite simply looks "just the way it did" 44 years ago when I sat on the press box side at about the 20 yard line some 10 rows up.
I commend the game's sponsors for downplaying commercialism to the extent they have. "The Rose Bowl presented by Citi" is far less offensive than would be 'The Citibank Rose Bowl".
Posted by Henry Kisor (Member # 4776) on :
My condolences to Mr. Norman on the outcome of the game. Looks like the controversy over the ersatz Indian mascot hexed the team.
Posted by RRRICH (Member # 1418) on :
Thanks, Gilbert! I'll try to remember that now. Dearborn Station, Dearborn Station, Dearborn Station, Dearb.............
Posted by HopefulRailUser (Member # 4513) on :
Sorry Gil - those red and gold guys are our nemesis too!
Posted by palmland (Member # 4344) on :
Trains were definitely part of my college years. First at Randolph Macon in Ashland, VA where I often took the evening mail and express train RF&P No.5 from Washington (it continued on to Atlanta/Birmingham on the Seaboard) as I returned to school from holidays at home in Wilmington, DE. I could always count on a couple guys playing cards to greet me in the fraternity house with a cold one on my Ashland arrival at 12:08am.
By graduate school at Colorado State I had a car, so my train trips were limited to one return home on the City of St.Louis from nearby Greeley,CO and a vacation trip to see my brother in TN via the FW&D/C&S No. 7 to Amarillo, ATSF to Clovis then Dallas, connecting to MP for Little Rock and another midnight mail and express train on the RI.to Memphis.
Speaking of Ashland, we just returned from a trip to see family in the northeast and had an early dinner in Ashland. The trains I saw during that hour were very healthy: Silver Star with 3 sleepers, heritage diner plus amlounge, 4 coaches; a regional with 9 cars; and auto train with 16 passenger cars and 22/23 auto cars.
Posted by rresor (Member # 128) on :
I'm not a football fan, possibly because of my choice of colleges. The University of Chicago. although a charter member of the Big 10, no longer has a "serious" football team. I did my graduate work for a Master of Science in Transportation at Northwestern, across town in Evanston. They are of course a current Big 10 member, but I never went to a game.
As for trains, growing up in Westchester County, NY I made innumerable trips to "the City" on the Harlem Division commuter trains, one memorable trip to upstate NY via the St. Lawrence Division as a very young child, many trips to Delray Beach, FL on both ACL and SAL (and later SCL and Amtrak), a few round trips to Atlanta on the Crescent (pre-Amtrak), and enough trips up and down the NEC to points in New Jersey, PHL, and WAS to probably get me to Mars with the mileage.
I also went back and forth from NY (and later WAS) to Chicago a number of times (but also flew and drove during the five years I was there). I managed to ride Metra's entire suburban network, plus South Shore, plus the whole CTA, during that time.
I only count "new" miles (i.e., the first time I ride a line) and those stand at about 66,000 on the North American network -- Amtrak's entire route system, VIA's entire route system, and a lot else besides. Total miles is probably on the order of 250,000, as I continue to commute weekly between my current home in PHL and WAS, where I work for the Feds. Amtrak Guest Rewards Select is just around the corner!
Posted by ladylawyer (Member # 2653) on :
RN: a school that has since closed in New Haven, CT BA: St. Mary's College, Moraga, CA MS: Chapman University JD: McGeorge School of Law, Sacramento
My first train trip was to my 35th nursing school reunion 5 years ago. I traveled from Sacramento to Springfield MA, and back again. Will be doing it again this fall for my 40th reunion.
Posted by PullmanCo (Member # 1138) on :
My undergrad is from UC Santa Barbara.
Yes, I took the Starlight home at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and spring quarter holidays.
I didn't have a car on campus until the last month of my senior year, and that was to start backhauling stuff to home.
I took coach and roomette (REAL roomettes, thank you, not enclosed sections) space. I also spent a fair bit of time in the dining cars and, on more than one trip, in ex-SP home built 3/4 domes.
Posted by Bob from MA (Member # 4686) on :
My earliest train memories involving walking with my father to a bridge over the Boston & Albany tracks in Worcester, Mass. and waiting for a train to come by. As the train passed under us, we would stand to the side to avoid the smoke belching out of the locomotive.
Vacationing in Maine in the late 1930's, I would watch the famous Flying Yankee pass by. We have pictures and even part of a 16 mm movie that show it at the Temple Ave. grade crossing in Ocean Park (part of Old Orchard Beach) around 1940.
I went to college at Clark University in Worcester, only about 2 miles from my home. When doing graduate work at the University of Maine, I rode the train from Boston to Bangor a few times. I remember one time standing in Orono waiting for a bus to Bangor one morning when it was 25 below zero. Riding south on the train, I looked out over a snow-covered landscape with smoke curling up from lonely farmhouses.
After that, I had little connection with trains until we discovered the joys of Amtrak around 1986. I have never been much interested in sports, so I can't add anything with regard to that. (I did watch the World Series this year, however!)
Posted by Judy McFarland (Member # 4435) on :
I got my undergraduate degree (1964) at The College of Wooster in Wooster, OH but I grew up in Hudson Falls, NY - 50 miles north of Albany, For the first 2 years, I would take the train overnight home from Cleveland to Albany (and back) - what a nightmare! No dining car, sometimes no heat, sitting for hours in the middle of the field with no idea why we weren't moving, never saw a conductor, few others passengers, - nothing! Finally I started taking the bus (I know, HORRIBLE. but it got me there in the same amount of time & at least I knew what was happening if we stopped somewhere & the price was about the same time.
I do remember the old Terminal Tower station in Cleveland being a marvelous old barn. Big department store on the upper levels & many little shops down in the bowels of the place. My boyfriend (later husband) and I would wander around in there for hours before had to leave to get back to his Ohio home & I would sit & wait a couple hours more for my train.
Amazingly this did not sour me completely on trains - that happened later trying to get to/ from Canton OH for a family wedding, but that's another story!
Posted by Henry Kisor (Member # 4776) on :
I went to Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., and traveled between it and O'Hare Airport near my home in Evanston, Ill., via United DC-6, DC-7 and Caravelle. But frequently I took the NYNH&H from Hartford to New York City, which introduced me to the Oyster Bar as well as the clock in Grand Central under which we young swains met our dates from Smith and Holyoke and Conn College and Radcliffe. What a life.
Later I went to Northwestern University, but I just rode my bike to Fisk Hall.
Posted by Gilbert B Norman (Member # 1541) on :
Yes Mr. Kisor, my Sister (Smith '64) surely met a "beau" at the Golden Clock, but somehow, I don't think it was same with my Niece (Smith 2K).
Considering how my Sister will sooner "drive in' to Manhattan ("it's so much more convenient"; the parking is simply the price for such") than take MNR, with their half hour New Haven RR frequencies, should establish how "train apathetic" my immediate family is. I doubt if any others than my Niece (she has used Amtrak to Boston; "popped for' by and when my Sister found out she was riding Fung Wah) have ever put a dime in Amtrak coffers. Overseas, that is a different story. Last October, when my Niece (now a "refugee" in Brooklyn; formerly Tribeca) and I were to "hook up' for Dinner and the Philharmonic, she actually asked her Uncle, who was staying at a hotel in Greenwich (I no longer houseguest - even with family), "are you driving in...or taking the train?"
All of these anecdotes are to say simply just how "out of sight out of mind" trains are to the rest of my immediate family.
Posted by train lady (Member # 3920) on :
I have been riding the rails since I was 5. My parents were divorced and lived in different parts of the country.I rode alone. At 5 it was Chicago -Wichita, by 10 it was DC-LA. My degrees are from the College of William and Mary in Virginia. We were not allowed to have cars or even ride in them so it was public transportation. The station waas a good distance from the College so we all rode the bus. Then in DC those who were going elsewhere got the trains. I went up to NYC every vacation by train to stay with my faorite cousin. My uncle was a music publisher and they lived right in the city. As an adult I rode the train whenever I could and after getting married took my children to the west coast several times. Finally convinced my husband and after he retired we "Amtraked" out to Denver or the coast rented a car there and drove to various parts of the country and Canada. I hate flying and all the hassle so it's still the train for me.
Posted by RRRICH (Member # 1418) on :
Many many years BEFORE I ever set foot on a college campus, when we were living in a suburb of Cleveland, as a little kid (1950's), my sister, mother & I took the Nickel Plate RR to South Bend on a few occasions to visit my mother's parents.
Someplace in my "box of memories" at home, I have a newspaper clipping from the South Bend Tribune from sometime in the early 50's with a picture of Mom, my sister, and myself on the train traveling to South Bend -- back in those days, stuff like that made the "Society Pages" of the Soth Bend Tribune often!!!! (of course, my grandfather worked for the Tribune at that time......)
Posted by Gilbert B Norman (Member # 1541) on :
Likely you mean New York Central vice Nickel Plate, Mr. Rich. The closest NKP's line was to South Bend was Argos.
Posted by ladylawyer (Member # 2653) on :
Mr. Kisor...I lived for a brief period of time just below Trinity College on Zion St. Dated a few of you Trinity guys...and yes, those were the days. Also, my sister went to Conn College.
Posted by DesertSpirit (Member # 3848) on :
I went to Indiana University. Got my bachelors degree in History in 1999. Not much in the way of passenger trains around Bloomington that I remember. When was the last time Bloomington had passenger service anyway? On the Floridian, possibly?
Posted by rresor (Member # 128) on :
DesertSpirit:
You're a young guy, huh? Yes, the last passenger service to Bloomington ended in 1979 with the discontinuance of the Floridian. In fact, the former Monon north of Bloomington has been abandoned. I did a valuation of four miles of the line from north Bloomington out to Elletsville for CSX back in 2000. They were donating it to either the state or to localities. There was still a pair of semaphore signals on the segment!
Your only hope now is the occasional special train run by the Indiana Railroad.
Posted by notelvis (Member # 3071) on :
quote:Originally posted by DesertSpirit: I went to Indiana University. Got my bachelors degree in History in 1999. Not much in the way of passenger trains around Bloomington that I remember. When was the last time Bloomington had passenger service anyway? On the Floridian, possibly?
I rode the Floridian from Chicago to Jacksonville in August 1979 shortly before it left the timecard for good. I vaguely remember our nocturnal stop in Bloomington BUT I vividly remember dozing in the dome car shortly before dawn and seeing a traffic light just a few feet from my head as we made our way down the middle of the street in Bedford, IN.
They just don't make'em like that anymore.
Posted by SilverStar092 (Member # 2652) on :
For my birthday in April 1972, my senior year of high school, I was given a train trip between my hometown (Miami), and Baltimore. I took the Florida Special northbound, a Metroliner back to Washington DC then the Florida Special home to Miami on what turned out to be its last run. On the northbound ride I spotted a lovely looking college, inquired about it and ultimately attended Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, VA for one semester. My father put me on the Silver Star in Miami and I went off to college solo in a bedroom no less. I had to take a 15 mile taxi ride from Broad Street Station in Richmond to Ashland. One of my few pleasures that Fall was watching numerous passenger trains race through town including Amtrak's Silver Star, Silver Meteor, Carolina Coast, and the private Auto-Train. In fact, I was awakened from a sound sleep by a train my first night on campus as it sounded like a tornado from my dorm which was just a 150 or so feet from the RF&P main line. The northbound A-T usually passed while I was at phys ed, and if it showed up while I was running away from the railway on the jogging track, I would run backwards to allow me to watch its passage. In late afternoon I often positioned myself to watch the southbound Silver Star roll by. It was frustrating that Amtrak did not stop in Ashland and I wrote a letter to the new company detailing the advantages of such a stop. Alas it came to be many years later. I managed to link a few train trips with my time in Ashland. Once I rode a Greyhound bus to Richmond, made my way to Main Street Station and rode the James Whitcomb Riley to Williamsburg, attended a William & Mary football game with a girl I knew, and returned to Ashland the next day by train and bus. On another weekend I made the same journey to Richmond, and made a one-day round trip to Newport News. The Riley had a dome car and it terminated at a station in NPN right beside a boat dock in those days. I also made another roundtrip to Washington, DC and visited the Smithsonian where I caught my first glimpse of a moon rock (the Apollo program was still active then.) For Thanksgiving I made a round trip home to Miami and I also took the train home when I decided that one semester so far from home was enough. On those trips I got a single room in an ex-B&O budget room coach from its "Bird" series": Bobolink, Cardinal, Oriole, Robin, etc. Those rooms were really duplex roomettes and were far larger than the slumbercoach rooms that later found their way onto Florida trains. I will add more college railroading memories in a separate post.
Posted by RRRICH (Member # 1418) on :
Gilbert -- as always, I believe you are correct that the train I rode from Cleveland to South Bend in the 1950's was the New York Central. I believe in those days we also rode the Nickel Plate on occasion.
Posted by SilverStar092 (Member # 2652) on :
In January 1973 I transferred closer to home, Florida State University in Tallahassee. Unfortunately the Gulf Wind was axed 2 years earlier but I did manage a few train trips as the Floridian stopped 25 miles away in Thomasville, GA. On a couple occasions I rode it home to or from Miami in a roomette as it was an overnight trip at that time. I also made a one day round trip with a friend from Thomasville to Montgomery, AL and on another weekend rode overnight from Thomasville to Sebring, FL in former Denver Zephyr flat end dome observation car "Silver Veranda" then took the Silver Meteor to Ocala and a bus back to Tallahassee. The train also figured into a couple of sports events: two friends and I took the Floridian from Thomasville to Jacksonville and back to attend an afternoon basketball game between Florida State and Jacksonville University (the Floridian schedule was "flipped" at that time, 2 days + 1 night Chicago to FL rather than 2 nights + 1 day). And on another trip, a friend and I drove to Tampa to visit Busch Gardens then I took the Floridian from Clearwater to Winter Park so I could see FSU vs. Texas Tech in the 1977 Tangerine Bowl. Finally we got Amtrak here then just before my son started FSU, Amtrak pulled the plug with its "suspension" of the Sunset Limited.
Posted by notelvis (Member # 3071) on :
Those are great Floridian memories SilverStar. I would add that during the time when the schedule was 'flipped', the original Auto-Train (not Amtrak's reincarnation) was running a Sanford, FL to Louisville, KY route and had an agreement to combine their train with Amtrak's Floridian.
This combined operation didn't quite last two years and the Auto-Train portion of the route was discontinued even before the Floridian was. Perhaps the biggest casualty of this arrangement was that when it began (October 1976 I think) Amtrak moved their Louisville operations from Union Station downtown out to Auto-Train's facility well south of town hidden behind rows of aluminum warehouses.
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However, given the traffic on Interstates 40 and 85 these days, you can bet that I'd be taking the train to football games in Chapel Hill if rail service was available through there!
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