Riding the rails: Ruminations on trains and time

Previous to trains, all time was local and solar. Noon in Seattle occurred when the Sun was at its apex over Pugetonian skies. Seattle's Noon was different from Boise's Noon, which occurred some number of minutes, perhaps nearing an hour, sooner. Even in locales that did not pay too much mind to the exact position of the sun--after all, not every Western town was blessed with a resident astronomer--Noon occurred whenever the authoritative clock tower in the middle of town said it was Noon. Regardless of the authority, though, it was preposterous to think that time would be exactly the same in Seattle, Spokane, and Boise.

The railroad changed all of this. It operated on a strict schedule; trains needed to run on time. Without accurate scheduling, the railroad system would fall apart. Long distance travel and freight delivery would become horribly unreliable and, more importantly, the safety of trains sharing single tracks could not be insured if operators and controllers could not accurately predict a given train's position at a given time and switch track appropriately. Given the monstrous expansion of the railroad, the scale and complexity of the problem magnified exponentially. Time was a troublesome variable as it was dictated by the caprice of geographic idiosyncrasies. Clearly, unruly time needed to the tamed, for only by controlling it would the progress of the industry be possible. Thus, to insure the sanctity of transcontinental commerce, the mighty hand of the railroad eventually moved the clock hands in far-flung hubs like Chicago and Kansas City to declare both their times to be exactly the same.

By standardizing time into zones, the 5:15 out of Spokane would reliably pass through Ellensburg at, say, 10:30. There was no more guessing whether the train was running on Spokane, Seattle, or, worse, Boise time. As a result, Ellensburgopolitan people and businesses--reliant on the train to connect them to the world--could schedule their own travel, freight, and business operations precisely and appropriately. In the yards and at junctions, operators made certain that trackage led to appropriate destinations at given times so that trains would not collide.

Due to the ridiculous geographic extent of its operations, the railroad's influence has profoundly and indelibly affected, and sometimes even invented, the routines that our business world follows daily. The railroad was the Internet of its day; it's reach was international. It ushered in a slew of new paradigms: from telegraphy to efficient means of business communication to new bureaucratic procedures to the grading of goods. Prior to trains, for example, a Midwest farmer loaded his bags of corn onto a river barge and could conceivably find his bag again when the barge reached New Orleans. But when he loaded corn aboard a railcar, it was first sorted according to its quality and dumped out of the bag. His only subsequent proof of deposit was a receipt. It was these abstracted levels of production and property that also helped shape the emerging stock and futures markets.

Though markedly reduced in political influence, the railroad still personally exerts some pull on us today. As we were growing up in Chicagoist's bailiwick, we never paid much attention to time. Showing up 5 to 15 minutes late was about equivalent. Furthermore, a 5 minute window never meant much for it was not enough time to accomplish anything.

This all changed when we started riding the train and, as a result, started coordinating bus and train schedules on our trips and commutes. Every minute, due to its important precision within the context of the railroad, meant something. Suddenly, 5 whole minutes of time meant that we could purchase a bagel and coffee at our transfer station. Conversely, a 2 minute delay in arrival at a station meant we had to wait 35 minutes for the next train. This could be an insufferable amount of time especially when the station was outdoors and it happened to be January.

We were reminded again of those halcyon days of daily rail travel as we boarded the Sounder last Friday afternoon. Our bus was supposed to get us near King Street Station at 4:53 but it was running late in the rush hour bustle. It was a whole 4 minutes late which was a big deal considering the train left at 5:10 and we had to walk to the station and purchase fare before boarding.

Had we missed the 5:10, we would have had to wait for the 5:45, putting us in Tacoma at 6:45 instead of 6:10. No big deal for us except that our ride was coming from Olympia. Our Hot Research Associate would have had to reshuffle her schedule to account for it: recalculating travel based on traffic at the time and deciding what to do those 35 minutes that prematurely interrupted her schedule. And what if we had had immediate plans afterward?

Fortunately we stepped aboard with 5 minutes to spare; by the time the conductor gave the 2 minute warning, we were comfortably installed in our window seat. Underscoring the precision of train time, the conductor again gave a 1 minute warning, followed by a 30 second warning. In this case, then, 5 minutes of train time was worth 35 minutes of stationary time, at the very least.

We stepped aboard the Sounder and were immediately impressed with its classiness and cleanliness. Trains remain a splendid means of transport. They are the most elegant & civilised form of mass transit, for both commuters and long-distance travelers. As we pulled out of King Street, we peeked into the Amtrak Cascades train on the adjacent track; it had charming dining cars and a positively lovely bistro car with a long, handsome bar. Additionally, one can comfortably walk around aboard a moving train. And unlike buses and airplanes, there is legroom. Seats are sometimes set up booth-style so that you can exchange a congenial word with another rider instead of launching your knees into his/her back. Next to sardine-tin airplanes and grimy, sweaty buses, trains are a luxury for which we'll gladly pay a premium.

While under way, trains ride in rights-of-way that give us glimpses into the hidden faces of the built environment that we would never see from an automobile. The built environment is constructed for the aesthetic benefit of vehicular and, if done correctly, pedestrian traffic. The train, on the other hand, only touches the facades of the built environment at its station stops. At all other times, it resides in the background as "infrastructure". While moving, we see the back ends of businesses, the secluded spaces of people's back yards, and the evidence of everyday life. After we leave downtown, we see the industrial yards and machine shops of SODO, the neighborhood that makes Seattle operate properly. Around Kent we see lights turning on over a field as soccer players warm up on the pitch for a Friday evening match. At Emerald Downs, the track looks so calm from this far end.

Yet all of these voyeuristic glimpses remain polite because they are mobile and visually transient. We see them only long enough to make a brief connection and then are politely whisked away without the chance to gawk and become nuisances. Trains don't allow gapers' blocks. The view changes too quickly to dwell on one particular aspect of the environment. After leaving Auburn's fine station, we intersect busy afternoon intersections and ride parallel to roads that we would never take had we been driving to our current destination. Around Sumner we pass farm fields. Sometimes there is a truck in the middle of one as the farmer tends to some last minute details before going home for the day. But we never get the full story since it passes out of view too fast. Trains are good for the imagination.

Just before getting into Tacoma, the track parallels a river. At this point we realized some conceptual parallels between the two. Like railroad rights-of-way, rivers offer us glimpses of life's backyards. Physically, rivers allow ships into the interior; similarly, trains function on a network of tracks to route them places. Due to this confinement, both modes have more intimate connection with the land upon which they traverse. Finally, both river and rail were at one point dominant modes of transport. Although less important for the majority of commuters these days, they are still vital for commerce.

But there is, of course, a renewed--and rightful-- call for investment in rail transit these days. For commuting, there is no better method of transit: comfort, ability to read or work while traveling, bypassed gridlock, pretty scenery, and reliable timing. This last characteristic provides an added benefit. For working stiffs, the strict schedule of the train is like fiber that makes the work day more regular and gets one out on time. "What's that? Sorry, sir, I've a train to catch. That TPS report shall have to wait until the morning!" With a bus or, worse, a car, we can wait 10 minutes to catch the next one and get suckered into some last minute project. But with a train, for Gods' sakes, nobody messes with the strict schedule set by The Railroad!

During that long, final minute aboard--trains always roll so slowly as they pull into their last station stop--the increasingly slow pan of the scenery lulled us into thoughts of being greeted at the platform with hugs and kisses. Despite our generally snarky tone, Seattlest remains a hopeless romantic and the desired meta-narrative of our daily life often reads like a screenplay from a Golden Age film. Sometimes it even plays out that way: we stepped off the train to be greeting with hugs and kisses from our fabulously-dressed Hot Research Associate.

Feeling a bit plebian, uncouth, and--ahem--pedestrian lately? Hop aboard a train; it'll make you properly civilised.