On board the Texas Eagle

The Texas Eagle is a short train, one engine and four cars.  Behind the engine comes the sleeper car, then the diner, then two coach cars.  It runs from San Antonio to Chicago, one train each way, daily.  The train usually runs full.

It runs full, because there is not enough rolling stock to serve demand.  They can’t put another car on, because they don’t have one.

Major stops are in Fort Worth, Dallas, and St. Louis, with about two dozen others.  The train runs slow because the tracks are not very good.  Cell service is strong along the whole route.

Now and then throughout the day, the train pulls onto a sidetrack to let a freight train slowly pass.

At one point, I look out and see that we are stopped across a street, and cars are stopped, waiting for us to pass.  At first, I’m sorry, but then I remember how much cars have done to ruin transportation (and the environment) in America (and the world).  Let them wait.

Cars wait at a railroad crossing.
Railroading

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robincravey

Robin Cravey is a Texas poet, publisher, citizen, and lawyer. As editor and publisher if Tilted Planet Press, he has published several books of poems, including Diverging, I am a Comet, and Benchmarks. His book Watermarks has been serialized on the Austin Sierran website. A sixth-generation Texan, Robin grew up in Houston, loving tall trees, big clouds, girls, Omar Khayyam, Carl Sandberg, and Walt Whitman. He came to Austin to attend UT, loving clear water, peyote, taxicabs, women, newspapers, hitchhiking, Marcus Aurelius, and William O. Douglas. He married and had kids, loving Dr. Suess, Star Trek, Baghavad Gita, Mohandas Gandhi, and Macintosh. Eventually he volunteered way too much, published books, ran a business, fought city hall, went to law school, worked at city hall, ran a small law office, ran for public office. In recent years he has divided his time between Austin and Providence, Rhode Island, loving Wayland Square, bicycling, and long train rides.

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