I've recently returned from my 10th trip back to Cincinnati, my grittily disappointing hometown I abandoned in 1934. It was my 10th time to take Amtrak, and my first time eschewing coach for my cozy little roomette.Rail travel has many advantages. Trains are roomier and more comfortable than buses. Someone else is driving and doing all the worrying about weather, where to stop and what to eat. And it is romantic enough that there have been hundreds of songs written about riding the rails.Tin Pan Alley celebrated the Wabash Cannonball and the Chattanooga Choo Choo. Hank Williams wailed about lonesome whistles blowing across desolate southern landscapes. Johnny Cash sang love songs to trains, too. And it hasn't ended yet. Fred Eaglesmith, the best Canadian songwriter and country rocker going right now, has a song that doesn't mess around called, "I Like Trains."Fred's quirkily melodic rail tribute was confirmed for me a few weeks ago as the Empire Builder, with me comfortably ensconced in the dining car at 7 a.m., eating scrambled eggs, and a croissant, coffee cup and orange juice glass within reach, passed east through Glacier National Park during a glorious sunrise. In between bites I looked out the panoramic dining car windows and saw shining, snow-capped mountains, shimmering cobalt blue Alpine lakes and even a few, curious elk.Train food is not airplane food, either. I built my own quarter-pounder for lunch for less than $10 and had Cornish game hen for supper at less than $15. The wine list was scanty but drinkable, and the folks sharing the ride with me included an attractive lady from Trinidad, with whom I talked deep into one night, while sipping from a pint of Jack Daniels she'd thoughtfully secreted in her luggage.On the return trip, again on the Empire Builder, the sun was out the entire way, highlighting the beauty of rural Wisconsin, and the Upper Mississippi River Valley of Minnesota. The evening of the last full day on the train brought us back to the mountains of western Montana which, along with parts of Kentucky and Wisconsin, was the prettiest place not near an ocean, or at least a Sound, in the continental United States.Train travel lets you feel, somewhat comfortably, that you are changing environments. You experience the changes from the seaside to the Cascades, to prairie, to Rockies, to the endless, flat, nearly treeless North Dakota scenery, and then the hills and valleys of Minnesota, the Big Mississippi out the window for almost 100 miles.There ain't no better way to go than by passenger train. All aboard![[In-content Ad]]
