The Romance
of Rail Travel & the Twentieth Century Limited
ALL ABOARD THE TWENTIETH CENTURY LIMITED
Michelle, a reader from New Jersey, is a keen railway buff, and sent
me an extract from a private railfan newsletter about a trip in memory of
the Twentieth Century Limited, the express so memorably featured in Alfred
Hitchcock’s thriller North by Northwest (not a film to watch if you don’t
like heights).
I have added two PDQ Comptrollers of Railways to the staff list on the
main page.
Dearest Susan,
I couldn't afford to go on this trip but it sounds as though it was a marvellous
couple of days. I noted from your wonderful site that one of your staff
is into railways and/or steam engines - very cool. Anyway, herewith for your
enjoyment is the trip report as printed in a local railroad buff newsletter
- home state of New York, one of America's unsung areas.
Love,
Michelle
ITEM:
Trip to Buffalo on April 26/27 to join with fellow New York Central Railroad
buffs (a low-key breed) at the convention and one of the excursions to Niagara
Falls
PLUS
An Albany day trip on the famous observation car of the 1948 Twentieth
Century Limited.
On arrival the day before the excursion I stumbled across the Buffalo
Depew main station, which is in Cheektowaga just south of the airport. I
was looking for Ted’s Charbroiled Hotdogs - a local specialty which I did
manage to find. They really ARE charbroiled. I also met a local rail-fan
at Depew and he told me that the local rail-fans, including a bunch of ex-NYC
engineers that get together at the station Thursday and Saturday nights and
have a great relationship with Amtrak and CSX - they even help shovel snow
in winter.
The Hickory Creek car was impeccably restored to its original furniture,
colors and there’s even a dress code: no hats, and jacket and/or tie required.
This eliminates the more lunatic fringe of rail-fan who tends to give us
a bad name. Complimentary cocktails, grilled tid-bits and fresh muffins for
breakfast highlighted the trip, which began at 3.45 and back to Niagara Falls
at 22.55. The car’s crew had a two hour turnaround thanks to a train breakdown
the day before, and a three hour wait for a new engine.
They really did it in style, starched waiters’ jackets and all. Drinks
were available, including the Twentieth Century cocktail (kind of like eggnog)
and I ordered a Gibson a la Cary Grant in North by Northwest, but no Eva
Marie Saint across from me at the table. The train was on time to Albany but
a bit late on return: we really moved, hitting 110 mph in one spot before
Schenectady, through the beautiful Mohawk Valley. There was an old New York
City conductor who only worked freight for forty years out of Corning to Syracuse,
and he was quite the celebrity on board.
Channel 2 TV news in Utica boarded with a television crew and a young
female reporter who accompanied us to Albany and got lots of shots of the
train zipping along, the glorious observation car riding in silent grandeur
like the Pullman she was, except bouncing in spots where the track was bad.
For those not familiar with it, the Twentieth Century Limited was THE
premier train of the New York Central starting in 1902 and running neck
and neck with its arch-rival Pennsylvania’s Broadway Limited. Both streamlined
in 1938 with similar Pullman equipment: the things that set them apart were
the feature cars: lounges, bars, observation cars. In 1948, the Century (the
only train for which they rolled out the red carpet – is this were the term
originated?) trumped the Broadway with the two Creek observation cars, the
Hickory Creek and the Sandy Creek with the high windows and elevated rear
section, besides the Shore cars that contained shower, lounge, train secretary,
and barber.
There were two Shore cars, the Atlantic Shore and the Lake Shore. They
were mid-train bar-lounge cars with shower, barber shop and train secretary
dedicated to the Twentieth Century Limited, replacing the old crew-dorm,
bar-lounge cars, without shower, that ran as the first car in the 1938 Century.
The two Shore cars were sold off in 1958 in the general downgrading of
New York Central's passenger service following it's CEO's suicide and the
economic recession of that year, when the Twentieth Century and the Commodore
Vanderbilt were 'combined' but listed separately in the timetable; in short
adding coaches and sleeper coaches to the Century. The New York Central HAD
to start slimming down passenger service as people were leaving the long-distance
trains in droves heading to the skies and to the auto. To its credit, the
Central seldom deliberately downgraded service or let trains deteriorate
to drive passengers away, as most other railroads did. .
Both trains took roughly sixteen hours between New York and Chicago, offering
a full business day in either city. The Century’s extra cache from all the
celebrities that traveled on it helped draw business travelers - especially
the lure of the ‘Club Century’ after dinner, when the diner became a night
club.
The train was one of the few that took a water level route, without the
twisting and turning and sharp gradients of other routes, so the passengers
had no trouble sleeping. Downtown to downtown stations allowed a no hassle,
office-to-office journey with no frantic scramble to the airport, just a
relaxing journey in air conditioned comfort, with the Century’s super service.
If you wanted them to, they’d bake you a cake. The train’s on-time performance
was a hot topic to the CEO, who, according to Lucius Beebe in the 1920s,
received daily reports of the Century’s performance, even while hunting
in Africa where the information was brought on a forked stick by a runner.
After the early 1950s things went downhill fast, and the New York Central
had to begin abandoning passenger trains as fast as the ICC would let them,
although they never deliberately downgraded service like some railroads did
to increase the reported loss. The Central invested heavily in all-new long
distance streamlined equipment in 1947/48, re-equipping nearly all their
trains. It even acquired brand-new reclining seat coaches for their bread
and butter passenger market, more so than any other eastern road, but it
was all to no avail.
By 1967, Perlman, the CEO, had to preserve what was left and marketing
studies determined that most passengers travelled only 200 miles or so, so
he got the New York Public Service Commission to approve a whole-sale revamping
of service within New York state, and the Twentieth Century was a casualty
of the new and faster Empire Service, a corridor service with memory schedules,
and snack bars instead of diners, The New York Central preserved only two
long-distance trains with full service, and in December, 1967 the Twentieth
Century Limited was finished.
I'm still looking forward to undertaking a rail journey in my own private
car. As August Belmont's wife once said back in 1904 or so: "A private (railway)
car is not an acquired taste - one takes to it immediately." (He was the
New York millionaire that built the first New York subway as well as lending
his name to the racetrack and posh hostelry hard by Grand Central.
'James J. Hill'
The Twentieth Century Limited in the 1950s
This was the train so memorable featured in the Alfred Hitchcock film
North by Northwest. It is clear from the amount of train travel in Hitchcock
films generally that it was a form of transport of which he was especially
fond.
A web site with a lot about the Twentieth Century Limited is here:
PRIVATE VARNISH - THE ULTIMATE TRAVEL EXPERIENCE
Imagine sleeping in an ample double bed, with a wall of books to choose
from, and, at the push of a curtain, the world at night gliding by; perhaps
a moonlit farm, perhaps the industrial back of a city.
You wake with a satisfied yawn, dress in your private dressing room and
then breakfast at an opulently appointed table with silver and linen napery,
After breakfast you can have a leisurely hot bath, and then read the morning
paper in an ample armchair in the sitting room. Perhaps you can even light
the fire, if you have a fireplace.
Lunch is as delightful as breakfast, and you can while away the afternoon
passing through some of the most beautiful scenery in the world. If it is
a mild, fine day a few hours in a comfortable armchair on the rear observation
deck would be pleasant.
Dinner is a four-course pleasure with the choicest wines, and then you
can throw another log on the fire, pull down the blinds, and lose yourself
in a novel as the train rocks and winds its way through cities, towns, and
spectacular countryside.
What is, or was, the ultimate travel experience? Readers will disagree,
but for me one means stands alone: the private railway car, or as rail connoisseurs
call it, ‘private varnish’. It carries a mystique which has no equal. At
the turn of the twentieth century any American tycoon worth his salt had private
varnish, and at big social occasions such as the race meeting at Saratoga
Springs (the Ascot of the Americas) the glistening royal blue, rich maroon
and dark forest green private rail cars would be lined up side-by-side and
make an impressive sight.
No American millionaire will ever impress me with his poky little private
jet with three seats and a strip of carpet. And no, the trans-Atlantic liners
of the golden era of sea travel could not compare with private railway travel.
They look beautiful in brochures and on posters, but weren’t quite as sublime
during a heavy storm. The British television series Brideshead Revisited
will show you what I mean.
In films private railway cars are distressingly absent. The only one that
comes to mind is in the film Executive Action, in which a group of businessmen
plot the assassination of President Kennedy. In novels there are ‘private
varnish’ scenes in Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, but I can’t think
of any others, which is quite remarkable (at one time Ayn Rand had to travel
to give a speech somewhere and a railway tycoon offered her the use of his
private railway car, which was eagerly accepted. One gets the feeling that
it was a life-long dream fulfilled).
This site
shows the layout of Samuel Guggenheim’s private railway car. For a few generations
of millionaires private varnish truly was ‘the ultimate trip’.
There is a web site, and a magazine, for
those of us who like to dream…
LUXURY RAIL TRAVEL AROUND THE WORLD
The finest method of human transport ever created is the luxury train;
the worst method the aeroplane. Plane travel is becoming more and more unpleasant,
and soon, according to the press, new technology will enable mobile phones
to be used on planes. That will be the last straw, unless the airlines
introduce a phone-free class, which they won't.
So let us at least dream of train travel at its best. The Blue Train of South Africa has
no equal, but I am told that Rovos Rail
provides an excellent standard of comfort and service at a much more
reasonable price, and has the added bonus of a steam engine.
The Orient Express, so memorable in the classic James Bond film From
Russia with Love, is still one of the world's greatest trains. There
is also a train that runs down the Malay Peninsula, the Eastern
and Oriental Express, which is highly recommended.
India is the world's home of great railway travel, and the
country has many luxury trains to choose from.
The Canadian Pacific, once one of North America's greatest dome liners,
continues as a travel experience of unrivalled scenery. The countryside
through which you travel has no equal in the world of train travel.
One of the great transnational railway journeys in the United States
was the California Zephyr on the Burlington Route. Amtrak still
runs a train with the same name, but the prices of good rail travel
in the United States are fierce. There is also the curiously-named American
Orient Express - the publicity makes it sound as though there are no
private sleepers (essential for a truly memorable rail journey) but there
are, and as well as the dining car and club car, the train even has a library
car - a superb touch.
And the Trans
Siberian? It is the world's longest railway journey. Under Soviet rule
it was uncomfortable, with poor facilities and atrocious food, and travelers
had to share an apartment with a silent, crumpled-suited member of the
KGB. Now it is a rail journey fit for a Tsar.
In Australia the Ghan
and the Indian
Pacific are our best overnight trains. Once there was a wonderful luxury
train called the Queenslander, running from Cairns to Brisbane, but it is
now just a few cars tacked on to the Sunlander, and the compartments don't
even have private showers and toilets. It is no longer recommended.
In 1987 I took the Alice from Sydney to Alice Springs (now sadly discontinued)
and it even had a baby grand piano in the club car. It was a marvelous
travel experience.
PRINCE MICHAEL OF KENT OPENS THE NEW TRANS-SIBERIAN
From Reuters:
In April British Prince Michael of Kent unveiled the Golden Eagle, which
offers passengers ensuite bathrooms, underfloor heating and plasma screen
TVs in every cabin along the 9300 kilometre Moscow to Vladivostok route,
one of the longest train trips in the world.
"Russia and trains are two great passions of mine and I'm looking forward
to traveling on the Golden Eagle," said Prince Michael, a Russian speaker
and related through his grandmother to Tsar Nicholas II, in a speech.
The Trans-Siberian railway, built between 1891 and 1916, travels from
Moscow through vast pine forests, over the Ural mountains and across the
Siberian tundra to the Pacific Ocean.
A single ticket on the Golden Eagle will cost up to 9,595 pounds ($23,000)
for the 13- to 15-day journey.
A ticket on a normal Russian train costs around 10,000 roubles ($468)
for the seven-day nonstop trip. The Golden Eagle, operated by British firm
GW Travel, will take double the time from Moscow to Vladivostock by stopping
for excursions.
Beetroot soup and no shower
The Trans-Siberian rail traveller previously had to cope with random compartment
companions, a restaurant menu that stretched from beetroot soup to dried
fish and no shower.
Not problems the Golden Eagle traveller will have to worry about, GW Travel
boss, Tim Littler, said.
"This is a luxury hotel on wheels," he said. "We are selling a luxury window
on Russia."
GW Travel already operates high-end rail journeys in the former Soviet
Union and other parts of the world. Most of its clients are from the United
States and Europe and the average age is 66y, Littler said.
One onlooker commented, "There is a real romance about the Trans-Siberian,
but it is still a long time on a train."
Prince Michael’s resemblance to Tsar Nicholas II is remarkable. In
my opinion the tsar should be restored as a constitutional monarch, and
Prince Michael would be perfect.
