RIDIN’ THE RAILS : ‘All Aboard Amtrak’ May Be Heading for Roundhouse; Fans Say They Will Miss It

Passengers on the upper level of the Amtrak lounge car sit in comfortable swivel seats, their eyes glued to the sea, watching for whales as the train rolls along atop steep cliffs and crashing breakers near Point Conception.

The Los Angeles-to-Seattle two-level Superliner parallels 135 miles of scenic Pacific shoreline in California, much of which is accessible only by rail.

Bob Maples, 81, who boarded the train two hours earlier in Oxnard, serenades the lounge car travelers with harmonica and song, playing old standards and railroad ballads.

“Here’s one you all know,” the old fellow pipes up, first blowing a few bars on the harmonica, then:

“Pardon me , boy, is that the Chattanooga Choo Choo... ? “

From southern deserts to northern redwoods, from the Sierra to the Pacific, California is still crisscrossed by passenger trains. They run less frequently than they once did, and there are vast stretches of the state untouched by Amtrak, but last year more than 3.1 million passengers rode the trains in and out and around California.

They are people like Maples who ride for pure enjoyment and for nostalgia’s sake, students, military personnel and others drawn by fares cheaper than airline tickets, and commuters seeking an alternative to the freeway.

The trains they ride are threatened now by President Reagan’s proposed 1985-86 budget, which calls for elimination of Amtrak’s government subsidies.

Last year, nearly 20 million passengers rode Amtrak on 24,000 miles of rail lines to 510 cities and towns in 44 states; that is 900,000 more passengers than in the previous year.

Doesn’t Pay Its Way

But railroad passenger service does not pay its own way. It cost the federal government $684 million to subsidize Amtrak in Fiscal 1984. On March 13, the U.S. Senate Budget Committee agreed on a proposal to give the National Railroad Passenger Corp. a $480-million subsidy for the next year.

W. Graham Claytor Jr., president and chief executive of Amtrak, told Congress that the railroad corporation needs the full $684-million subsidy or it will have to cease operations. Congress has yet to vote on the matter.

In California, Amtrak operates 28 trains a day, serving 48 stations. Half the trains are on the 128-mile, Los Angeles-to-San Diego corridor, which last year carried 1.2 million passengers.

The other California trains are the California Zephyr between Oakland, Reno, Salt Lake, Denver, Omaha and Chicago; the Coast Starlight; two daily round-trip Los Angeles-to-Chicago trains; two daily Oakland-to-Bakersfield trains and Los Angeles-to-New Orleans trains three times a week.

A Times reporter and photographer rode several passenger trains within California to learn who the passengers are, why they chose the train over the plane, bus or car and to get reactions to the President’s proposal to do away with Amtrak subsidies.

Inside the ornate Union Station in downtown Los Angeles a pigeon flies back and forth over the heads of 189 passengers waiting to board the Coast Starlight, which departs at 9:55 a.m. for the 32-hour, five-minute trip to Seattle. By the time the train reaches Seattle, nearly 600 passengers will have ridden at least one segment of the trip.

No traffic jams at the Union Station. No long lines at ticket counters. The ambiance is relaxing, laid back. Many browse in the station’s souvenir shop, a rail fan’s paradise of railroad books, patches, pins, post cards, buttons and other collectibles.

Members of a wedding party are on hand to wish bon voyage to Montebello honeymooners Oscar Perez, 22, and his bride, Sandra, 25. The Perezes are departing on the first train ride of their lives, to Santa Barbara.

“All aboard!” shouts the conductor as he signals the engineer and the train slowly starts its day-and-a-half journey up the coast. Tickets are collected. Announcements are made: “Smoking in the last six rows of each coach. Please wear shoes at all times while walking through the train. Do not walk through cars with lit cigarettes. . . .”

Kathy Barnhart, 22, sits in her large comfortable seat, crocheting a baby blanket. “I’m saving money going by train. I’m going to San Jose to be with my mother when the baby is born,” the expectant mother explains.

It is two-and-a-half times less costly by train than plane, adds David Schwartz, 32, a University of California, San Diego, mathematician--$35 versus $85. He is riding the train from his La Jolla home to Santa Barbara to attend an academic conference.

Debbie Collins, 33, is returning home to San Luis Obispo with her two children, Travis, 6, and Carrie, 1, after visiting her mother on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. She says: “It costs me $100 less by train. I do this at least five times a year. It’s easier for me traveling with the children on the train than a plane or the bus.”

“You betcha, we’ve got to keep the trains rolling,” insists harmonica player Bob Maples, who had his own asphalt business before he retired. “I’m seeing America, boy. Seeing this great land of ours the best way to see it--on the ground, from a train. You can’t see America when you’re flying six miles above it.”

This is Maples’ 24th long-distance train trip for pleasure in the last five years. He has traveled 110,000 miles on Amtrak since 1980. He has a sleeping compartment. He is making a circuit--Oxnard, Portland, Spokane, Chicago, New Orleans, Houston, San Antonio, Los Angeles and back to Oxnard.

A flyer circulated by the National Assn. of Railroad Passengers and posted in the lounge car proclaims: “The White House plans to shut down Amtrak Oct. 1. All Amtrak trains, including the one you’re riding today, would be discontinued on that date, making the United States the only nation in the industrial world without rail travel. Twenty million passengers annually would be inconvenienced or stranded, including many whose medical conditions prohibit them from flying.”

Passengers get on and off as the Coast Starlight makes stops on its way north--Glendale, Oxnard, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Salinas, San Jose. As the train rolls through Santa Barbara County ranch country, Beverly Carothers, 41, from Lawrence, Kan., traveling with her daughter, Kathleen, 11, remarks:

“Isn’t this ironic? Ronald Reagan’s ranch is on the other side of those mountains we’re passing. My daughter and I decided we’re going to write the President asking that he change his mind about Amtrak.”

In the diner on the popular California Zephyr as the train creeps up steep, lush green mountains through the Mother Lode Gold Rush country, Jean Boyer, 75, a retired New York chemist, and lifelong train buff, muses:

“There’s something so special about eating in a dining car and watching the countryside go by. Trains are the best way to travel for older people like myself. I have traveled on trains throughout the world, from Peking to Paris, down the Nile on an Egyptian train. It would be an unthinkable crime not to have them. . . .”

As the train made its way through the deep High Sierra snowpack at an elevation of 7,000 feet, cross-country skiers wave from pristine mountain meadows, other skiers wave from gondola cars on lifts above the tracks.

Among passengers in the glass-dome car oohing and aahing at the beauty of the passing winter wonderland is American Airlines flight attendant Pam Sparks, 33. It’s her first time on a train. She volunteers:

“I’m loving it. I had no idea what it would be like. It is a marvelous way to travel if you’re not in a hurry, so relaxing. Everyone is so friendly. . . .”

Frank De Maria, 26, is the snack stand, bar, souvenir shop operator 18 hours a day from 6 a.m. to midnight from Oakland to Chicago and back on the Zephyr. He works six days, then is off eight.

“In busy periods, we get 500 to 600 passengers a day,” De Maria said. “The six-day trip in summer brings as much as $9,000 in revenue from drinks, snacks and souvenirs. We abide by local laws. The bar isn’t open when trains pass through dry counties in Texas. It’s closed on Sundays in North Dakota. In the state of Washington, I have to pour. In other states, passengers buy drinks in miniature bottles.”

“We get a lot of questions about the future of Amtrak. I tell people that if the President’s budget goes through, that’s it, there won’t be any more trains,” Gary Teyler, 37, ticket agent at the Stockton depot, tells The Times.

Two trains a day linking Oakland and Bakersfield--the San Joaquins--have the best ridership improvement of any trains in the nation, up 30.6% in 1984 over the previous year and getting better all the time, up another 7.5% so far this year.

It’s a six-hour, 312-mile ride from Oakland to Bakersfield, rolling along through America’s breadbasket at speeds as high as 79 m.p.h. The tracks slice through vineyards, citrus groves, endless rows of crops. The wail of the engine whistle is sounded before every crossing gate. There are no sleepers, dome cars or diners on these trains. The coaches are single-level, 84-seat cars.

Farmers, salesmen, servicemen, college students, people visiting relatives get on and off at Stockton, Riverbank, Merced, Madera, Fresno, Hanford, Wasco, Bakersfield. Some go on by connecting bus to Los Angeles.

A regular rider is restaurant equipment salesman Bob Lovell, 40, of Sacramento who calls on customers up and down the valley. “It costs my company less for me to ride the train than to drive a car. We get periods of days and sometimes weeks when fog grounds airplanes and stops or greatly impedes traffic on freeways, but the trains always get through,” Lovell said.

Airman Jim Tatum, 20, is stationed at McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento. He takes the train twice a month to his home in Pomona.

“The government should keep the trains going and take the money from the Defense budget if funds cannot be found anywhere else,” he said.

The Los Angeles-to-Chicago Desert Wind is a popular train with Southern Californians headed for Las Vegas, especially on Friday afternoons en route to the casinos and on Sundays returning home. It costs $53 one way from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, and only $54 for the round trip.

Like the San Joaquin, the Desert Wind, at least from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City, lacks a two-level dome car, but the club car en route to and from Las Vegas is filled with card players--warming up for the tables in the gambling city and still at it on the return trip.

The train slowly winds its way up the mountain through Cajon Pass after stops at Pasadena, Pomona and San Bernardino. Next is Barstow, then the long ride over the pile of sand known as the Mojave Desert. Trains leave at 2:10 p.m. daily from Los Angeles, arriving at Las Vegas at 8:50 p.m.; leave from Las Vegas at 7 a.m. and arrive in Los Angeles at 2:05 p.m.

Special groups often ride passenger trains, such as the 41 Las Vegas Senior Tripsters led by Annetta Washington, 71, who took the train to get to Los Angeles for the weekend. Fifty-seven third- and fourth-graders from Our Lady of the Desert Catholic School in Apple Valley rode the train to Los Angeles to tour the Children’s Museum and City Hall.

“Best bargain in town,” concedes Mary Schaper, 34, a room mother who joined 24 other parents on the day-long outing. The adults pay $16 round trip from the San Bernardino station, $8 for the students, a special group rate. “Best field trip ever,” says third-grader David Kluzak, echoing the sentiments of his classmates.

One of the most successful fare-to-cost ratios for any Amtrak train in the nation is the Los Angeles-San Diego intercity service. More than 80% of the operating cost is paid for by fares.

Some passengers spend their train rides poring over papers, or busy at computers. Others socialize, read, relax or play cards, cribbage or dominoes.

“I wouldn’t be living in Dana Point if it wasn’t for the train. The freeway is a nightmare,” explains Harold Rash, 57, a Hyatt Hotel executive.

Pat Bartolic, 27, a swimsuit salesman who rides the run to and from Santa Ana, views each passenger as one less car on the freeway.

“Here in Southern California, people have never been educated to the benefits of commuter service,” he said. “It’s too bad. Amtrak keeps improving with each passing year, attracting more and more riders. The system is really just beginning to make headway toward success. It would be idiotic to shut it down.”