2005年NPR美国国家公共电台九月-The Romance of Train Travel Never Fades

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descends¹ an hour earlier tonight. And tomorrow children in costumes will prowl about.Thanksgiving can't be far behind. You've probably already made your travel arrangements, the mere² mention of a train trip sends commentator³ Ruth Levy⁴ Guyer into a reverie.

I am always daydreaming⁵ about train travel. Frozen lakes and mid-night sun on the Oslo-to-Arctic route, gold mines in the vast outback along Australia's Indian Pacific line. But while it's intriguing⁶ to contemplate⁷ the exotic, I also get Jazzed riding rolling stock along the Northeast corridor. Every week from January to May. I ride the rails. Monday mornings, I head north to the college where I teach. Late on Thursdays, I ride south to my home. And even though I know I'll board again in three days, I always feel a twinge of envy watching people get on as I step down.

When I was a kid, we took the overnight train every summer to Nashville to visit Grandma Suzi. We'd sleep in what seems to be a huge Pullman and eat in the dinning⁸ car with the starched⁹ white table cloths, club sandwiches and forbidden sodas¹⁰. I would sashay through the cars, swaying along with the train, feeling graceful¹¹ as an ice dancer as I glided¹² over the inter-car metal plates. So when my daughters were little, I arranged for us to take the transcontinental train to visit their West Coast grandparents. My husband was skeptical¹³, especially about the deluxe¹⁴ sleeper¹⁵ I reserved.” This could add new meaning to the word deluxe" he grumbled¹⁶. Ok, so what if the room was a tad snug¹⁷? My girls were slim and slept comfortable and angelically in a single upper bunk¹⁸ along with all of their dolls. And so what if the shower and toilet were fused? Our daughters were gleeful every time by mistake or probably on purpose. They pushed the wrong button and emerged from the bath room drenched²⁰. The two coasts were connected by rail in 1969 when trainmen ceremoniously hammered a golden spike²¹ into the track at Promontory²² Point, Utah. In those days buffalo²³ were a perpetual menace .They'd scratch their backs on telegraph poles and knock the poles onto the tracks. Most of the buffalo are gone now. But the week before we rode the Empire Builder, it actually hit a buffalo. Our trainman's story of untangling guts²⁴, cartilage and bone from the wheels was juicy.

We lugged²⁵ a huge bag of books on board and read nothing. For days we sat transfixed, staring at the vast, gorgeous remarkable²⁶ countryside. “Thank you” said my husband, “for dragging me kicking and screaming onto this train.”

Trains go where cars can and cannot, into canyons²⁷, along rivers, through mountains, sidling up to backyards and into town centers. So much about trains is visionary. Imagine that early 20th century trainman who saw no obstacle to laying 153 miles of track out onto the ocean. He simply assembled wonderful sounding stuff, crushed limestone²⁸ marrow²⁹ and gravel³⁰ riprap into raised road beds to connect the outmost Keys to the Florida mainland.

So much past is present in railroads. Their graceful, gorge-spanning wooden bridges and trestles come straight out of LENONARDO DA VINCI's sketch³¹ books. The other evening I stepped onto the track near my home and stared off until my eyes met the vanishing point, where the glistening³² iron rail seemed to merge¹⁹. I knew the tracks would never do that. But I thought if the trains themselves were ever to vanish, the romance of travel would surely be lost.

Commentator Ruth Guyer rides the rails regularly to Haverford College where she teaches courses in bioethics, infectious disease and social justice.