Arrive Magazine - January/February, 2010

1900

Engineer John Luther “Casey” Jones is the sole fatality when his passenger train collides with a stalled freighter in Vaughan, Miss., the night of April 30. His storied career, his reputation for speed, and his heroic efforts to minimize loss of life in the crash that killed him are immortalized in “The Ballad of Casey Jones,” composed by his friend and fellow railroad worker Wallace Saunders.

Amtrak doesn’t just get
carry us from one place to
another—it makes things
possible that otherwise
wouldn’t be. For 36 years,
I was able to make most
of those birthday parties,
to get home to read
bedtime stories, to cheer
for my children at their
soccer games.

flickering in the passing neighborhoods, dotting the landscape speeding by my window. Moms and dads were at their kitchen table, talking after they put their kids to bed. Like Americans everywhere, they were asking questions as profound as they are ordinary: Should Mom move in with us now that Dad is gone? How are we going to pay the heating bills? Did you hear the company may be cutting our health care?

Now that we owe more on the house than it’s worth, how are we going to send the kids to college? How are we going be able to retire?

I would look out the window and hear their questions, feel their pain. And every time I made that trip, it would inspire me to get up the next day, head back down to Washington, and give them the answers they’re looking for. Those moments looking out the window

1939-1945

Advertisement for the Pennsylvania Railroad and its “Responsibility in the War” effort.

The years of the Second World War see major changes in American rail travel, as the switch from steam to diesel power gets under way, and the nation’s rail lines become a major conduit for war materiel and troops, supplanting the legions of hobos who had ridden the rails in search of work during the Great Depression.