Dick Davidson stood at the rear of the 50-year-old Fox River observation car watching the tracks recede into the background.
Gone is the platform, such as the one on which President Harry S Truman stood during his whistle-stop campaign across the country in 1948. A huge piece of glass now encloses the car’s end.
The Fox River is part of an 11-car passenger train roaring south from Chicago behind three powerful, contemporary E9 locomotives bound for Houston on an inspection/demonstration trip.
“There aren’t that many people out this time to watch,” the chairman and chief executive of the Union Pacific Railroad says, almost wistfully, waving to the camera-toting train buff who had come out to photograph one of the railroad’s operating passenger trains just outside of Sidney, Ill.
For Davidson, who has been working on the railroad for 41 years, the wave of nostalgia appears to be genuine.
So enamored with railroading is Davidson that he has outfitted this train with something not found on the passenger trains before 1971, when Amtrak, the quasi-public passenger rail corporation, took over what had become a huge money-losing proposition for the Union Pacific and America’s other railroads.
Davidson has installed a health club, outfitting a postal storage car built in 1962 by the St. Louis Car Co. with a treadmill, exercise bike and free weights. It gets frequent use because Davidson isn’t a typical behind-the-desk chairman. He frequently can be found on inspection tours of the railroad’s more than 35,000 miles of track.
There’s no “All ‘board” when the 11-car train pulls out of Yard Center, a giant Union Pacific freight yard on Chicago’s Far South Side. The 20 passengers have been on the train since a dinner of filet mignon the night before.
Only 47 of the railroad’s 642 passenger cars that plied the western United States in the 1950s and 1960s remain. Many of those cars left Chicago’s Union Station bound for Omaha, where the railroad is headquartered; Denver; and then to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland, Ore. At the height of the golden age of railroading, the Union Pacific operated 291 sleeping cars, 196 coaches, 112 diners and lounges, 16 each dome lounges and dome lounge cars and 11 dome diners.
A number of the cars that the railroad owns were sold when Amtrak came into being in 1971. Only in the last decade has the Union Pacific made an effort to reacquire and restore some of its past.
Unlike most train trips, the so-called “Davidson special” had the high ball signal ordering other trains out of its way for the entire 1,100-mile route. After all, it isn’t often the chairman and CEO is riding this section of the railroad, the easternmost stretch of track the railroad operates, says Steve Barkley, vice president of the UP’s southern region.
As the train whizzes past sidelined freight trains, Davidson and Barkley step to the rear of the observation car to salute their engineers and brakemen who are standing alongside the tracks as required by the railroad’s rules to inspect a passing train for problems.
By the time the bright yellow train bearing the UP logo had reached Beecher, about 40 miles south of Chicago, it was running at the highest posted speed–69 miles per hour.
Most passengers in the single occupant sleeping compartments were stirring by that time, attempting to learn the intricacies of life aboard a passenger train–circa 1960.
In addition to a berth, each compartment has a small three-drawer, steel bureau. And because nothing stays bolted down very well in a moving train, a single button locks all the drawers. Each pair of compartments are connected with a sliding door.
The stainless steel showers are small–a little less than 3 feet by 3 feet. And the drains are just holes in the floor that allow the water to flow onto the track. A rubber stopper covers the hole when the shower isn’t in use. And most participants quickly discovered it is far better to shower and shave when the train is standing still rather than when it is roaring cross-country.
Maneuvering through the narrow corridors of the three sleeping cars also is an art–it is virtually impossible for two people, even the skinniest on the trip, to squeeze by each other.
Like train travel in the Golden Age of railroading, meals are taken in the City of Denver dining car. They are prepared by the six chefs and served by the six waiters permanently assigned to the train.
And just as was customary 40 years ago, evenings are spent in the lounge/dome car, where passengers could read, play cards and share a drink.
Union Pacific isn’t alone in preserving a piece of its past. The Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad, the Canadian Pacific Railroad and the Canadian National all still have links to their pasts.
Vintage trains are rented often to organizations such as Chicago’s Twentieth Century Railroad Club or select individuals, but not by any of the major railroads.
Two years ago, for instance, Microsoft Corp. Chairman and CEO Bill Gates turned to the Milwaukee-headquartered Wisconsin Southern Railroad to rent a vintage train.
Many believe that trip prompted Gates this year to buy a 7.3 percent stake in the Rosemont-based Wisconsin Central Railway System through Cascade Investment LLC, the fund that handles his private investments.
For more than two weeks, Gates chugged through the west, taking in the scenery and learning many of the problems facing the nation’s rail industry.
“We have eight pieces of equipment that we lease out to corporate clients and individuals,” said Dale Curley, who holds a position that most freight railroads abolished 30 years ago–superintendent of passenger operations for the Wisconsin Southern.
Curley said a Wisconsin Southern train seating 125 people can be rented for as little as $3,500 for a trip between downtown Madison and Mazomanie, Wis. He said that most other railroads, including the Union Pacific, set their rental prices for the trains so high and create other barriers that it is almost impossible for individuals to lease a train from one of them. Wisconsin Southern operates 750 miles of track in southern Wisconsin but also can take its train virtually anywhere Amtrak goes.
Union Pacific officials, for instance, won’t even discuss the rental price for the train on which Davidson traveled this year. The officials said that the railroad requires any lessor to provide complete liability insurance covering the trip, the passengers and the railroad’s vintage train. Officials of Chicago’s 20th Century Railroad Club said that Union Pacific quotes a base price of $45,000 on the rental.
That pretty much shuts the door on anyone wanting to rent a train from the UP for a weekend trip, and it leaves the railroad free to use the trains as marketing tools.
For instance, 25 cars were at the Republican National Convention this summer in Philadelphia. Twenty cars were at the Democratic National Convention three weeks later in Los Angeles. In addition, U.S. Rep. Dick Armey (R-Texas), the House majority leader, used a private five-car grouping for personal parties, Union Pacific officials said.
But Armey and the revelers didn’t get to do what Davidson does at least once a month. This, concedes Davidson, is what railroading is all about: getting out on the railroad to see how it is operating.
A little more than 13 hours and three crew changes after leaving Chicago’s Yard Center, the “special” arrives in Pine Bluff, Ark. The three crew changes are necessitated by the fact that the train has passed through three divisions, rather than the number of hours it has been operating, Barkley says.
Hundreds of railroad workers and people from as far away as Little Rock are there to see the “special” pull into the railroad’s yard. Railroad police and regular police are everywhere.
At 2 a.m. the next day, the train pulls out of Pine Bluff bound for its final stop in Houston. But an old section of Southern Pacific track that has not been upgraded reminds riders hanging onto their berths that rail travel can have more than a few bumps. Ten hours later it’s at “ground zero,” where the railroad’s operations stalled two years ago.
(Unable to quickly assimilate the Southern Pacific’s operations, hundreds of trains were stranded throughout Texas in 1997 and 1998. It took an order from the Federal Surface Transportation Board, forcing the UP to open its tracks to competitors, to untangle the mess that stretched into the Midwest and delayed coal shipments to electric utilities for weeks.)
In a little more than a week, this train is due in Promontory Summit, Utah, where the golden spike was driven in 1869 connecting the Union Pacific, which laid track west from Omaha, with the Central Pacific, which laid track east from California.
“We’re going to have a board meeting,” says Davidson. “And I want some of my board to see that part of the railroad.”
They’ll also see some of the most spectacular scenery through which the railroad travels.
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Those interested in renting a Union Pacific train can call 402-271-5000 and ask for train excursions. Those interested in a Wisconsin Southern train can call Dale Curley at 414-438-8820.
