Travel notes from Baltimore to New York City on the Northeast Regional train.

We boarded at Baltimore International’s train station. The train, metallic silver reminded me of American Airline’s rustling Boeing jets mixed a nostalgic Americana Airstream caravan a bit like the one that can be seen in Stockholm’s Moderna Museet.

The windows of the coach I am now seated in are a rounded oblong shape. Out the window, the landscape zooms by. The train struggles from the airport to Baltimore’s central station as news of delayed and faulty trains ahead of us come through the intercom. The latter’s faded sounds are of a former age, last century no doubt. We come in and pull out of Baltimore station and the train finally picks up speed. It jolts on the tracks in a fashion which isn’t without scaring me. Trains run a bit smoother in Europe – yes even in the UK. Out in the horizon, the sun is setting lending the sky rich golden hues a promising sign of a generous summer.

A few miles North of Baltimore, the train drifts over a lake. The sun is but a few meters above the ground and narcissically admires itself in the calm waters. It is like a festival of colors the likes of Monet would have spent hours depicting.

In the years I spent in the USA, I never once took a train yet during my university years in Europe, I would occasionally visit the Amtrak website and contemplate the network map wondering what it would be like to board a train in Chicago’s Union station westbound. Today, I can gaze out and admire the very same landscape early settlers of the Thirteen Colonies were confronted with. Deep, lush forests and wildlife never before seen in Europe. Today’s landscape though alternates between timid woods and housing developments, the occasional fields and farmhouses, roads and telephone poles. Along the tracks, a few, seemingly abandoned, trailers, the reflection of  America’s other, sadder, side.

The train proudly blows its whistle as it whizzes past a small town. A gas station with an exotic sounding name and the backs of a row of shops greet and bid the steel mastodont farewell. Not a soul is to be seen. The train whistle truly reminds me of what I imagine would be XIXth century American or European rail, the one that can be seen in early films, the one Zola described so vividly in “La Bête Humaine”, or the one dramatically caught on film in the famous picture of a locomotive dangling outside Orsay’s train station.

Another whistle blow. The train floats over a river. In the distance, one can see rusty bridges reaching out from one bank to the other, elegantly embracing the river, throwing their steel arches over the evening sky. This America reminds me of Hopper and American Realism.

Behind the trees, the silhouette of grain silos appears. They huddle close together as if they feared the sometimes harsh Northeastern winters. Tubes reach out to each silo feeding them with freshly harvested crops – corn perhaps.

Another scene: a water tower: 5 strong legs supporting a balloon of water painted in pale blue and boldly displaying the name of the town – an ensemble of 5 or so streets and no more than a hundred homes.

Suddenly, in the middle of nowhere, the train slows down. It needs to recycle, we are told. It is good to see that Amtrak is serious about the environment although we soon find out recycling is not meant in the environmental sense here. Bluntly, recycling means shutting down the train, cutting off all electric circuits – air conditioning, lights, sockets – everything – and bringing the mastodont to a standstill on the tracks. One may think that we could do without air conditioning but in fact, at the peak of the month of June, temperatures soar very quickly.

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The culprit has been found: a circuit breaker jumps every so often. This is due to – we are told – the high temperatures outside, the load of the train (they brought in extra passengers from a stranded train), and possibly other reasons. Imagine the same scenario in a plane where failure becomes critical – not anywhere as amusing as in a train. Being told there is too much load would lead the rational passenger to consider throwing passengers overboard. Imagine the looks being cast in the cabin. Whom to sacrifice?

Glimpses of America

Large ad billboards, American trucks, the highway

A pond, a boat, a bench, a man in a blue jacket.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Wilmington, Wilmington, Wilmington, Delaware…”

The road surface is wet. The regular evening storm has come and gone refreshing the atmosphere bringing a well-deserved breeze.

Pulling out of Wilmington. Dusk.

Headlights, street lights, traffic lights, windows, windows into people’s homes, people’s lives.

desolate multi storey parking lots, a matrix of vacant space

The Prudential Center’s neon signs

entangled web of bridges, pillars of concrete, cathedrals of modern cities.

The arrival

New York Penn Station – passengers bustling about – the heat rolls in waves  in the streets.