Riding the Rails
Article in Chicago Tribune about riding Amtrak from Boston to Chicago with three small kids– and we all survived! (The club car is your friend.)
RIDING THE RAILS
Marcy Darin. Special to the Tribune
Somewhere between Philadelphia and the last Rice Krispie bar, my 3-year-old awoke as our train lurched to a sudden stop. "Are we still in America, Mommy?" he asked.
A fair question. Since leaving Boston for Chicago that morning a few years ago, our day had been filled with runaway markers, Old Maid marathons and treks to the beloved club car for potato chips. Even at the tender ages of 5 and 3, my son and daughter had no trouble identifying our passenger seats strewn with graham cracker crumbs and crayons. For the rest of the trip, I would lift my ban on fruit snacks.
Traveling solo with small children is always tricky, but after several trial runs, I submit that train travel is the best way to go -- providing your time is generous and your thermal bag deep. As a college student, I had forsaken flying in favor of Amtrak's Broadway Limited that made its way from Chicago to my fiance in New Jersey. Three children later, with a diaper and car seat added to my gear, I have rediscovered my old love of train travel. It's cheaper (kids under 12 go half-price), less hectic (no racing for connecting flights at the opposite end of the terminal) and the passenger cars provide football fields worth of running space.
A bonus is that trains offer hands-on geography lessons. My children and I now know that between Boston and Chicago are the osprey nests off the Rhode Island coast and the grassy patchwork of Amish farmland. Passing through Pittsburgh at night, I was mesmerized by the steel mills of my childhood hunched over the Monongahela River like silent sparklers.
Trains also provide the opportunity to have chance encounters with strangers that can restore faith in humankind. When our train once ran out of apple juice in Albany, I shared my panic with a fellow passenger who returned from the next station stop with a carton of the only beverage my fussy 2-year-old would let pass through his lips.
On a recent trip, a gentleman tapped me on the shoulder just as I was about to board a train with my three children, each struggling with his or her backpack. "Pardon me, ma'am," the stranger asked kindly, "but didn't you start out with four [kids]?"
The only time I regretted my passion for trains came (momentarily) the time we had booked a sleeping car to Chicago. I took the top bunk while my two toddlers slept head-to-feet on the bottom. Jolted awake by a station stop, I checked my sleeping kids only to discover an empty bunk -- they had soundlessly rolled to the floor and were piled atop each other without missing a wink.
After almost 20 years, my point of departure is once again Chicago.
Last Christmas, my children and I (my husband usually flies because of business reasons) hopped the train to visit his family in Virginia. By the end of the 20-hour journey, the club car hostess was pouring me free coffee and handing out chips to the kids.
This past trip also squeezed in a history lesson. Seizing advantage of a three-hour layover in the nation's capital, we grabbed a taxi for the Lincoln Memorial. Disposable camera in hand, I prodded the kids to pose in front of Mr. Lincoln before the next tourist bus unloaded. On our march back to the station, we hummed "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" while I plotted our 13-hour jaunt home to Chicago.
As the wheels rocked my 3-year-old to sleep in my arms, I offered silent thanks for the chance to step back from the chaotic rhythm of life. We all gave in to the lullaby of the wheels, asleep before even the overhead lights went dark.
In a land where rails were once king, "City of New Orleans" wails the "disappearing railroad blues." I'm a believer
(this paragraph as published has been corrected in this text)