The Amtrak Zephyr

As we have 51 hours on the train I thought I’d write you all a short letter telling you about the Amtrak Zephyr that we’re riding from Chicago to San Francisco.

The first thing to know about the Zephyr is that it’s big. Big and Shiny. Each of the 30 odd carriages are double-decker, about 16 foot high, with cabins, showers, toilets and ‘viewing galleries’ on both floors. On the outside, all the carriages are a polished chrome, which gives the whole thing a 1950s feel before you even get on. We’re in a (very) little roomette: about 6 foot by 4, dominated by a big rectangular window in which the post-Chicago mid-west is flickering by. The room is only big enough for two seats which, at night, are folded down to make a bed.

The second thing to know about the Zephyr is that our room attendant is called Tom, or "TAAAM!!", a tall black guy with a thick, southern, SHOUTING accent that I thought was a creation of 80s American sitcoms. As with most Americans we’ve met, he’s a ball of enthusiastic, positive energy that meets you with wide-eyes and a big smile. We’re only half an hour in and he’s already told us all about himself, the other passengers and the train.

Many of the Americans we’ve met have all had this boundless, innocent enthusiasm for life, which makes them shout things like “AWESOME, THAT IS JUST TOO GOOD!!” when booking a train ticket. This should be tiresome, but it’s not. It’s a welcome relief and, for the most part, seems genuine, and a welcome response to British cynicism.

This frontier spirit that has bred a nation of entrepreneurs is infectious and you find yourself chipping in a quiet “yeah!” and nervously glancing around should there be any cynical English looking at you. Leaving a music festival in Chicago the crowd of 'yoofs' who were surging out of the gates, spontaneously began chanting “USA! USA!”: whilst it was a scary sight, it was hard not to join in. Maybe this is what Tony Blair felt when the war drums sounded.

The third thing to know about the Zephyr is that the food is free. This is, obviously, the most important thing.

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We’re about one hour into the journey and we’re trekking at about 60mph through the ‘bread basket’ of America, where single fields of corn stretch as far as the eye can see, and small planes, spraying the crops, swoop dangerously low to the ground.. From inside this dark blue cabin, the light is sometimes broken as impossibly large cargo trains loaded with coal, tanks and large silver things zip by in the opposite direction.

True to O’Mahoney form, Mary and I have filled our cabin with food that we picked up this morning from a M&S-like supermarket. For the sake of the non-O’Mahoneys reading this I won’t spell out every food-stuff we’ve squeezed in, but suffice to say, if we were stuck on here for seven, instead of two, days, we would be fine.

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We move from Illinois to Iowa by crossing a wide, muddy Mississippi and the air gets heavy and close. In the distance we can see the beginnings of what we are told are tornados. Pregnant bulges of cloud forming small spouts that begin to move towards the earth.

At dinner, we are seated with a father and son from Missouri who are doing the ride for the second time. The father has a heavy drawl and tells us all about his wife’s cooking, the healthcare debate and his home town whilst pointing out ground-hogs and other features of the passing terrain.

Dinner is taken in the dining car which has a waiter service. All the staff, waiters, cleaners and attendants are black. When we were in Chicago, we went to a down-town blues club, which is a speciality of the city. Despite it being more of a local place than a tourist haunt, the only non-white faces in the place were the band. I’m not sure what this means, or even if it’s so different to home, but it’s noticeable that most people in the lowest paid jobs are non-white.

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As the night drew in, the small cabin with the increasingly blackened view seemed claustrophobic. The dining and the viewing cars are left open at night, dimly lit, so anyone panicking about being stuck inside can go for a wander. To be fair, I would probably be the only person on the train who felt this was, but at any rate, it was a relief to know.

Before we slept, our ‘cabin boy’, as he called himself, told us that breakfast would begin at 6.30am and helped us transform our tiny seats into tiny bunk-beds. I laughed at the idea of people getting up so early when, in all likelihood, we would all have terrible nights.

Throughout the night we were buffeted in small bunks as we winded our way through Nebraska. Long periods of blackness followed by short illuminations of a truck-stop or an air-base in the middle of nowhere. Mary kindly took the top bunk which was a lot smaller. We woke, maybe fifteen or twenty times last night, either with aches from being confined to small beds or through the constant jolting and whistling of the train. By 6.30am, I had been awake for some time, thinking about breakfast.

The food on the train is good. Not great, but good. You get three sizeable meals a day and a choice of three options. Mary asked the waitress about something called ‘grits’ this morning which, on being told they were ‘bland small things’ decided against them. I had thick French toast with fruit and honey. Again, their communal seating meant we met some interesting people: a couple from Michigan. They seemed to be moderate Republicans who were worried about appearing extremist as the anti-Obama camp had become so much more vociferous and audacious in their claims since his election. As usual, they were polite, courteous and charming.

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We are now moving into Colorado and the Rocky mountains. The Zephyr has passed tepid green plains and is now dragging itself up sparse, rugged hillsides. Jostling in the viewing car is reaching Olympic proportions so Mary and I have retired to our roomette.

The Rockies are indescribable, so I’m not going to try. The train now rolling down the other side of the mountains, following the Colorado. To do so, the train cuts deep into ravened valley with craggy yellow rock face. You expect to see Indians (feathers not dots) stood atop the chimney stacked stones. But you don’t, because they’re all drunk in reservations or running casinos in Nevada.

At lunch we met another lovely couple from Colorado, Cherry and Brad (whoda thunkit?). He was a fairly standard, straight-talking American and she was one of those incredible caricatures that you would not believe unless you were in the US. A few of her phrases at random were ‘is your heart with the children?’ and ‘don’t you love trees?’ and ‘it makes me love the world to meet you’ - all with a whispered, wide-eyed openness that is charming if slightly terrifying.

Cherry had an obsession with Beatrix Potter and clearly believed England was still a place where ladies wore bonnets and moustachioed men rode Penny Farthings in top hats. When she leant over and asked me, with eyes as wide as saucers, if it was true that “in England even taxi drivers will tell you about the flowers in their gardens?”, even I, with my typically English cynicism, couldn’t pop that bubble so cruelly, and replied ‘I think it depends where you are’. I really hope she never visits Basildon.

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We’re entering Utah now, following the Colorado through red, deep canyons. Utah is Mormon country and one of the most conservative in the States. This is the land of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, or Thelma and Louise, depending who you are. Marlboro style telegraph poles sit between us and the river, stringing eight thin phone-lines hundreds of miles across the country.

There are old Indian caves which have been dug out of the cliff face and wild turkeys scratching in the dry scrubland beside the tracks. People are kayaking and camping along its sides, taking a slower trip than ours. I’ve never seen anything like this.

After 240 miles of tracking the Colorado, we leave the river and enter the desert plains heading north-west towards Salt Lake City via some small mining towns left over from the Gold-rush day. The canyons disappear and a yellow, dusty plain takes it place, pot-marked with wiry pale-green shrubs. We pass through a ghost town which lies sad and decrepit. It was an old uranium mining community that peaked at a population of 5,000 and now has around ten inhabitants. Everything becomes yellow and dry so I decide to watch a film.

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Good steak for dinner followed by ‘Peanut Butter and Chocolate Torte’. The Austrians would be proud. This time our dining companion was a small swarthy man from Florida who sells used furniture. In the USA, people seem to be able to become unfeasibly rich by doing jobs that would get you the minimum wage in the UK. He, like many other Americans, wanted to know about the NHS, as Obama’s healthplan is attempting, some believe, to offer something similar. We, like the dutiful socialists that we are, pointed out all the benefits, especially to the poor.

Unfortunately, it looks like the proposed American systems may well fall in the middle, retaining the waste incurred by duplicating healthcare administration and vast advertising budgets, whilst developing the burgeoning bureaucracy involved in any government enterprise. Anyway, I digress.

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We’re ploughing through mining and cowboy country. Old towns were Doc Holiday and Ewart Earp made their names. Bed-time beckons soon and tonight we will fortunately sleep through the deserts of Nevada, to waken to the lakes and mountains of Eastern California. I believe we will sleep well tonight. Partly because we did not do so last night, and partly because we will down enough sleeping pills to pole-axe a moose.

I have, unfortunately, noticed a tightening of my waistband. I’m sure this has something to do with altitude and nothing to do with the gargantuan five-man portions that the Americans insist on delivering to your table if you ask for a snack. I believe that if I moved to this country it would be no time at all before I could not move anywhere else unless a fork-lift was involved. Of course, sitting all day in a train, plane or hotel room doesn’t help, but in some ways, coming home super-sized is all part of experiencing the American Dream.

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After a fair night’s sleep we pass through Reno and enter California where the desert gives way to pine-wooded hills and an every-growing number of vineyards, lakes and circling birds of prey. It’s amazing to think of the first settlers who made it to California after crossing thousands of miles of plains, deserts and wide rivers, where all kinds of creatures, insect, animal and human were out to kill them.

Over breakfast we were seated with an English couple, both teachers, whose timidity and apologetic natures stood out in stark contrast to our previous encounters. From the train, there is little evidence of the poverty of the state, which has recently forced it to write IOUs to people expecting tax-rebates and pension payments.

On this journey, we have had several hours of commentary from ‘State Park Volunteers’ who give up their time to don green uniforms, give out leaflets and tell the passangers about the various features that we pass. Apparently, one in ten Americans are doing volunteer work at any one time. People we have met have done everything from running soup-kitchens to organising antique bike shows for schools.

In a country that is supposed to be driven by individualism, the extent of freely-given work for the community is striking. This may reflect the patriotism that holds America to be a great land, or perhaps the numbers of Christians in the country. A more cynical view might argue that the lack of state-funded social work makes a certain amount of voluntary activity necessary, just to hold society together. However, you get the feeling that there is something deeper at work here, something cultural and ingrained that prompts billionnaires like Bill Gates and George Soros to give away their fortunes to the poor and encourages school-children to bake and sell cookies for crippled soldiers. Whatever it is, it is hard to see it as a negative.

Met some interesting older men over lunch: talkative, interested and knowledgeable. A lot of people seem to think that with the arrival of Obama, the US is in the grips of a civil war. From inside a train, it has all looked pretty quiet. Arrival is a couple of hours away now. We’ve come out of the pine forests and are passing through what looks like wealthier areas of France. It’s been a great journey in both senses, partly due to the landscapes that the Zephyr has taken us through but also because of the people we’ve met. These things have made us feel like we’ve seen, heard and tasted the ‘real’ america. Much more so than if we had taken a three hour flight. The Zephyr is a fine piece of machinery.