New from Cleveland

[Clevelander]

Born in Cleveland close to the W&LE, my parents later bought a house from the Nickel Plate Railroad, so my childhood was spent watching Berkshires and Bluebirds running at speed next door all day and night. You'd have loved it, too.

The Lake Shore Limited is my train and I ride it two or three times a year to New York; in fact, I helped to to bring it to Cleveland and rode it the first night it ran in 1975. Consequently, I have spent so much time on the waiting platforms at Albany-Renssalear that I'm sure I qualify as a voter there.

I rode the last train to depart from Cleveland's 1865 lakefront Union Depot and I bought the last train ticket sold in the Cleveland Union Terminal. I've been in a derailment on the LSL and I've published a book about the Erie Railroad's impact on Kent, Ohio.

I've ridden nearly all the Amtrak trains and this summer I will travel from Cleveland to my favorite US city, San Francisco, where I hope the cable cars and PCC's are ready for me.

As Edna St.Vincent Millay once wrote, "There isn't a train going anywhere that I wouldn't take." In that spirit, I commend to everyone here the best poem I know about the joy of riding trains, Night Journey by Theodore Roethke. Link: Night Journey by Theodore Roethke

 

[Trollopian]

Thank you, Clevelander, for fighting for the LSL! And for linking to that wonderful poem. "Full on my neck I feel/The straining at a curve;/My muscles move with steel,/I wake in every nerve." It's coincidental, but just this morning I was e-chatting with a friend who urges me to book a trip on the Orient Express if and when this pandemic ever ends. Several companies now lay claim to that historic brand, of which the leader seems to be Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, A Belmond Train | Luxury Train from London to Venice. And yeah, I'll splurge. But on one of the shorter journeys, e.g. Vienna to Paris (one night on the train). 'Cause the longer trips, like the iconic Istanbul to Paris, involve spending one or two nights off-train in a zillion-star hotel. And for me the point of an overnight train is to, y'know, sleep on the train?