My hotsy-totsy train ride

Dragon Mood? -- dragonly frustration

My return trip from Chicago to mid-Michigan on the train was not quite as idyllic as the trip down. In two words, it was LONG and HOT.

Because Amtrak is a governmentally-owned organization, it doesn't own railroad tracks. The federal government leases track from companies like Canadian National (CN), CSX, Norfolk Southern and the like. As a result, Amtrak passenger trains are at the mercy of freight trains and their schedules ... perhaps, unpredictable schedules? We had no more left Union Station and made the eastward turn across I-90 when we came to a stop. STOP ... for 20 minutes or so. I was sitting on the right-hand side of the train, which was facing south toward the sun. Our railcar became increasingly warm. I tried to ignore it and plowed on, finishing my book.

The train began moving and sped along until we got to Gary, Indiana, and the Mittel steel yards (which I believe used to be U.S. Steel). The train ground to a halt. We sat there, with no movement and no ventilation while the temperature rose even more. The interior of that railcar felt like it hit 80 degrees. People were fanning themselves, their faces flushed and perspiring, moving to other cars looking for some relief. Unfortunately, there was no real relief available.

I talked to one of the conductors. Several other people in close vicinity did also. He cranked up the ventilation fan, but I don't think the hot air had anywhere to go. We sat there for well over another 30 minutes, evidently waiting for a freight train in front of us to move.

And now an aside. As we sat there, unwitting victims to this crazy train gridlock, there was plenty to see. Here's an excerpt from a professional magazine writer who does a far better job describing the hellish zone where we sat and sweat, these Gary steel yards:

Somewhere out there among the industrial sprawl was the Mittel Steel factory ... With the crepuscular twilight creating wild shadows and exaggerating the color scheme of black, gray, and rust, this grimy, dystopic landscape was beyond the imaginations of even the most visionary filmmakers and harebrained futurists: an Erector set gone haywire; everywhere towering, architecturally inexplicable structures. There were flame-throwing smokestacks, giant, iron-spoked wheels, huge cables, rusted corrugated tin towers and sheds, and miles of black and ochre trellises, girders, and catwalks; blunt, phallic silos and sinister-looking networks of ducts and pipes and elevated train tracks along which crept a steady procession of piecemeal contraptions that looked like crude armored vehicles from the Mad Max movies. Despite the constant scuttling of these strange machines, there were no actual humans to be seen anywhere on the landscape.

Yep, that's where we sat and looked and roasted.

We were well into Michigan, the railcars still heated up to temperatures that felt oppressive. The conductor eventually used a special key to unlock all the sliding doors, locking them in an "open" position and cool, outside air finally, finally pushed out the stale, hot air inside the passenger cars.

We were supposed to arrive around 8:30 p.m. We didn't arrive until well after 9:30 p.m. And then I got in my little car, zipped through the cool, dark night and drove myself to Detroit, home to our pied-a-terre and my awaiting honey.

It was a long, hotsy-totsy ride.