The Broadway Ltd. and a Daughter's Perspective

Years ago, I once found a 30 day Rail-Pass on Amtrak at a reasonable cost and planned a journey on America’s rail network. Over that month, I crisscrossed the country several times and managed a full circumnavigational loop, hitting all the corners, mostly in coach and with full camping out mentality.

At this time, the most you could spend on a single train was three days with Chicago continuing to be the great rail center of this country. After three days of train camping, I would book into a hotel, get my laundry renewed, enjoy a day in that city and a night in a comfy bed. Then off again on the next morning’s departure.
 

I did, on occasion, book a room on a train. I happened to do this on an overnight from New York’s Pennsylvania Station to Chicago's Union Station on the very legendary Broadway, Ltd.  This flagship of the Pennsylvania Railroad and its fierce competitor, New York Central’s 20th Century, Ltd., were the only way for serious businessmen to travel in the early days of the last century. 

The schedule called for late afternoon departure, over night travel and early morning arrival, all designed so a business man could have productive time, in each city, during business hours.  The Broadway had all the amenities including secretarial service, full barbershop, suit pressing, shoe polishing, 5 star dining and the first examples of business networking in the club car.  The competing New York Central actually penned a title for their comparable service and it exists today.  They simply and literally rolled out the "Red Carpet."

It was brand loyalty at an extreme.  You were either a "Broadway Man" or you were a "Century Man."  Nothing in between.  And women?  Forget about it.  In those unenlightened days of gender inequality, it was purely a man's world, where the cigar smoke and the coal smoke would weave, waft and whisper in its wake.

Upon leaving Chicago with identical departure times, the two rail lines actually ran parallel all thru Illinois, Indiana and a good portion of Ohio where the New York Central would veer off and follow the longer, flatter water route along the great lakes, leaving the Broadway Ltd. to attack the mighty Allegheny Mountains and world famous, Horseshoe Curve.

For legal reasons, it was never called a "race," but tell that to the legions of engineers, firemen and conductors of both of these famous "fallen flags" of railroad lore, who poured their sweat and blood into stoking the fires, and with steely nerve, they kept those rocketing, speeding, pounding, breathing and belching monster iron horses from careening off the rails.  

This was the daily excitement for folks in small towns all along the parallel sections, who would stop everything and, at the appointed hour, gather at the rails and wager on which express would roar through first.  It was the primary topic of discussion in every tavern, bar, coffee shop, barber shop, repair shop and ice cream parlor across three states.

Men in the club cars would openly shout at and insult their opposites as these two giant conquerors of time and space sped, side by side,  under smoke spewing steam while rocking, hurling, heaving, plummeting into the night, as if locked in mortal combat.

I was in the club car of Amtrak's poor excuse and  pale version of this legendary train and soon I was involved in a great conversation with the stunningly beautiful woman next to me. We were both on our 3rd scotch and, as Steve Goodman wrote and Arlo Guthrie sang, we were “feelin’ the wheels rumblin’ ‘neath the floors.”

She turns to me and says, “Ferris, do you know why I take this train?”

“Ah… You’re a complete train nerd and geek, like me?” I ventured.

“No,” she laughed and slurred. “I’m off to Chicago to see my mother.  Now, don’t get me wrong.   I love my mother with all my heart but I found out that if I walked out of my New York office and life, cabbed it to LaGuardia, caught the next shuttle to Chicago, cabbed it to the house I grew up in, I could go door-to-door in under 4 hours. My mother and I would fight constantly and we both would be so miserable.”

“And?” I quizzed not really getting her point.

“My mother could never accept me as the powerful woman I am today, living a Manhattan lifestyle and in charge of my own company.  She just cannot get it out of her mind that I was the life she gave birth to, I was the infant that suckled on her breast and I was the 8 year old girl with a skinned knee whose ‘boo boo’ she would kiss to make better.   I simply just couldn’t take it anymore.

“Then,” she continued, “I discovered this train. This wonderful, magical train gives me the buffer I need.  I pull out of New York as the woman I am today and, after an overnight and, with too many scotches, I arrive in Chicago, the next morning, as the child I was.  My mother and I get along fabulously now and we’ve never been happier.”

On that note, she threw back her scotch, leaned over, kissed my cheek, whispered a “bon voyage, mon ami” into my ear and wobbled off, headed to her compartment.

As she disappeared from my sight, I suddenly realized that she probably was not aware of this magnificent train's history in the annals of American commerce and how it helped build this country into the power it became in the 20th century nor of the generations of dedicated workers who often gave, as Lincoln once observed on another subject, their last full measure of devotion, all for those two timeless and powerful words that were at the core and essence of railroad's purpose, mission and history: "On Time".

For her, this was a time machine, a simple portal to transport her between two worlds; her current high powered Manhattan one and the little girl world of her youth, where she still sought her mother's love.

Before heading off myself, I slowly finished my scotch, reflected on this woman and softly sang to no one in particular about how “this train has got them disappearing railroad blues,” knowing that  “I will be gone 500 miles when day is done.”