One-track mind in West Texas

I feel like a time traveler, stretched out in a sleeper car on a train slicing across the West Texas scrubland.

Any minute now, I expect a cloud of dust to rise in the distance. Slowly, it’ll melt into a thundering herd of buffalo chased by a posse of cowboys.

Disappointingly, it never does. But midway through this overnight train trip from Austin to El Paso, I’m enjoying the old-school mode of travel.

Most of it, anyway. Our train was delayed more than three hours out of Austin. (Par for the course, according to a couple of eyeball-rolling fellow passengers.) And some of the staff I’ve encountered could use a customer service lesson or two. Still, the annoyance fades when I wake up in the morning and find myself magically transported from a bustling urban life onto the clattering rails.

I’m used to catching a plane or hopping in a car when I travel. I’m glad I slowed down and took Amtrak, but you need the luxury of time to do it. Texas seems huge by rail when mile after mile of parched flatland and yucca-studded buttes stream past.

Our 6:30 p.m. iron horse finally arrives in Austin at 9:45 p.m., picking up about a dozen passengers, including a mother and daughter riding the train for the first time, a trio of college-age backpackers and a couple of guys with their underwear peeking out above their droopy pants.

Once on board, an attendant helps us get settled in our sleeper berth upstairs. Our suitcases won’t fit in the pint-sized room, which features two fold-down beds, so we unpack a few things, then stow our bags on a rack downstairs. Then we head to the lounge car, where we buy a drink from a grumpy attendant who tells us it’s past his normal working hours. (Dinner is included in sleeper car fare, but we missed that.)

Back in our compartment, I slide into the top bunk, about the size of a camping cot. A safety strap keeps me from rolling onto the floor as the train jostles slowly along.

When I wake, I head to the bathroom down the hall (showers are available downstairs) to clean up. The train had been reconfigured during the night. Our sleeper car, once near the front, was now the last car on the train. I peek out the rear window at the track, rapidly shrinking behind us.

Next, I share a table in the dining car with a family of three from Oklahoma heading to Arizona. “We about froze stiff,” the mother tells me of their night on board. “We didn’t know to bring a blanket.”

I order scrambled eggs and a biscuit. It’s hardly gourmet, but it’ll do. After breakfast, I walk through three or four coach cars filled with passengers snoozing in reclining seats. They’re buried under blankets and bolstered with pillows. Some are armed with coolers filled with snacks. There’s certainly a lot more legroom here than on an airplane.

I settle into the observation car, where every seat is pointed toward a picture window with a grand view of the scrolling scenery. After a few minutes, a man in the mid of a 55-hour trip from Milwaukee to Tucson, Ariz., strikes up a conversation. He’s retired and likes the historical perspective of traveling by train.

“The designers had to be visionaries,” he says. “They had to look ahead 50 or 100 years to make sure the track wouldn’t wash out, and it had to be beautiful to entice riders all across the country to want to ride it. They had a vision, just like Kennedy saying we’re going to go to the moon in the 1960s.”

I picture the rail workers, with sticks of dynamite, pickaxes and shovels in hand.

We pass dusty towns and old cemeteries, carving our way through desolate stretches of land. After a while I switch seats and meet Nora Atwal, 70, of San Antonio, who is headed to Los Angeles and then on to Canada, where she plans to spend 15 days touring by rail.

“I love the train,” the retired teacher says. “I think it’s the people.”

She also tells me she prefers coach seating to sleeper cars not because they’re less expensive, but because she feels isolated from other passengers in the sleepers. She loves seeing the countryside and infrastructure of cities from a train, from the orange groves of Bakersfield, Calif., to the arch in St. Louis. She likes seeing the backsides of buildings, instead of the front.

“If I could, I’d pay for every American to ride the train through this country, I would,” she says. “You hear about ‘America the Beautiful,’ and you see it from a train. Amtrak gives you the view of the world you live in that you don’t ever see.”

Helen Toney, 48, who lives in Mexico and has been visiting relatives in New Orleans, is headed to El Paso. She prefers train travel for functional reasons. “I can transport more packages,” she says. “I love the quiet and calm, and no matter how many times you go the same route you see something different. It gives me time to catch up on reading time away from the chaos of the city.”

It’s true. I’m mesmerized. Train travel is about the journey, and what you see along the way, not just reaching your destination. I also like that mournful wail of the train whistle.

As we lurch along, I catch a glimpse of the visitor’s center in Marfa where people look for the city’s famously mysterious lights, and admire a bunch of scrappy looking goats trotting through the desert. In Alpine, the train grinds to a stop, and we’re told we can get off for a few minutes. A bevy of desperate smokers, cigarettes poised in their mouths, ready to be lit, gathers by the door.

Then it’s on again, with a few random stops to let other trains pass by. We don’t have time to eat lunch in the dining room, but an attendant takes our order from our compartment. She returns 15 minutes later with a crab cake sandwich for me. (Note to self: Stick to the basics.)

Just as we’re finishing lunch, we roll into the outskirts of El Paso, an hour after our scheduled arrival. We gather our bags and brace for re-entry.

The sun nearly blinds me as I step off the train and onto the platform. Suddenly, I’ve left behind the slower pace, the glimpses of alleyways and back doors and the cactus-dotted range.

I’m back in the present.

IF YOU GO

The Amtrak train is scheduled to depart Austin at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Monday or Wednesday and arrive in El Paso at 1:22 p.m. the following day. Coach rail fare from Austin to El Paso is $87. Sleeper car fare is $351, meals included. Additional passenger in sleeper car pays just rail fare, not the sleeper fee. For more information, go to https://www.amtrak.com.

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