Originally published in
The LA Times Magazine
October 10, 2004

You haven't really ridden the railsuntil you've ridden with the train-iacsknown as "foamers"“Man, did you see that wigwag back there? You don’t see many of those anymore.”“And before that, three SW8s on a local….”“And those EMD switches…”“Did UP build that shell or…”“Gaviota’s at 339.5, right?”I catch snippets of this conversation between four casually dressed early middle-aged men. The talk is lively, spirited, friendly – and completely incomprehensible. That’s because it’s in the coded language of those who live and breathe railroads. They call themselves “railfans,” but just about everyone else calls them “foamers” – as in foam at the mouth – a moniker that some of them embrace with humor while others consider an insult. Whatever they’re called, these railroad enthusiasts have elevated a staid and somewhat nerdy hobby to a grand and all-consuming obsession.These four men are in foamer heaven right now, and I’m with them. We are aboard a special excursion train wending its way up the California coast on a lovely late spring afternoon, traveling in a style long gone, a style most of us have never experienced. I am not now nor have I ever been a foamer, but I do love trains, and I have always regretted that I was born too late to enjoy any part of the long heyday (1880s-1950s) of long-distance rail travel. It was on a Los Angeles-to-Seattle train trip last year that I encountered my first foamer, an earnest young man who bored me silly with railroad trivia and engineering statistics but also told me about an upcoming rail excursion – this one. It sounded wonderful.For the next two days, the eighty-five of us who have signed on for this L.A. to Oakland round trip will have the run of three lovingly restored vintage passenger cars: a 1948 Vistadome, a 1927 lounge observation car and a 1941 Pony Express car. The cars, by special arrangement, are attached to the Coast Starlight, Amtrak’s daily Los Angeles to Seattle run.Our trip is billed as a “rail cruise,” which, like an ocean cruise, is designed to be a travel experience dedicated to the journey rather than the destination. In the west, land of extraordinary vistas and wide-open spaces, rail cruises and private excursion trains are an increasingly popular close-to-home adventure for those looking to both enjoy the landscape they normally fly over and experience the romance of train travel. The trip I am on, the Pacific Coast Limited, will be offered, with some variations, twice this fall, Oct.23-24 and Nov. 5-7.These rail cruises are the brainchild of Todd Clark, founder and webmaster of trainorders.com, one of the top foamer sites on the internet, and most of those onboard are, like Todd, card-carrying (or, in this case, railroad insignia-wearing) foamers. Many are Californians, but others have come from as far away as Ohio, New Jersey, Tennessee – and even New Zealand – for the experience. The trip is therefore not just an excursion along what is arguably one of the most scenic stretches of railroad tracks in the country, not just a trip back in time to when railroad travel was elegant and refined, but a light romp through the psyches of those obsessed by trains.The trip begins, fittingly, at one of the most impressive passenger train stations in the country, Los Angeles’ Union Station, a quirky blend of Spanish, Moroccan and Art Deco architecture noteworthy for its palatial cork-walled (to muffle sound) waiting room and lovely outdoor gardens. First opened to travelers in 1939, it was the last of the grand-scale train stations to be built in America. Today it is the nation’s sixth busiest, but that’s because of commuter , not long-distance, trains. Long-distance trains still exist, but their lustrous golden age ended when first automobiles and then airplanes usurped their position. This trip helps recapture those bygone days.We depart on time, 10:15 a.m., and as the train slowly makes its way through the urban landscape, skirting the concrete-lined Los Angeles River, I take a tour of our three antique cars. At the rear of the train is the Los Angeles, a luxury car built by the famous Pullman Company in 1927. It is elegant and posh, designed as a Gilded Age hotel on rails. It has two first-class bedrooms with private baths, a secretary’s room (a necessity for the movie moguls and business magnates who regularly booked passage in this car), a crew room to house the car’s own porter and chef, a tiny, self-contained galley, a formal dining room with built-in breakfront and crystal chandelier, an elegant salon with overstuffed armchairs, and a large observation platform.Three-quarters of a century ago, political candidates might have given speeches from this platform. Today it is packed with foamers, including a former physics professor from Massachusetts who flew cross-country just make this trip; a hip, young Berkeley grad who took a job he didn’t like when he discovered that his place of work was only 50 feet from the Southern Pacific Railroad track (he watches trains all day) and a man with a congenital liver disease who spent months planning this trip and coordinating his health benefits. He will need to be dialysized immediately when we get to our destination.The next car is the Silver Lariat, a stainless steel, bubble-topped glass Vistadome built in 1948 for the original California Zephyr, the Oakland-to-Chicago passenger train. It took the current owner of this car, Bert Hermy, five years to rebuild and refurbish it, from its understated gray wool carpet and burgundy upholstery to the special-order antimassacars draped over the backs of the comfortable coach seats. This is how families used to travel. The car is quiet. The seats are wide, the windows expansive. It is easy to imagine Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, Bud and Princess and Kitten -- you know, the “Father Knows Best” family -- riding along with big, satisfied 1950s grins on their faces.Up a small flight of stairs is the dome with seating for twenty-four passengers and an unobstructed 180-degree vista. Up here I find a man who tells me he moved to Tehachapi, some ninety miles north of L.A., for one reason only: Forty freight trains go through that town every day. So far he has taken 25,000 slides of their comings and goings. Also up in the dome are two long-time traveling buddies. They proudly admit to be suffering from “railpox,” the disease for which they hope there is no cure. “We all have one-track minds,” one of them quips. “Girlfriends come, and girlfriends go,” the other philosophizes, “but the railroad remains.”The third car is the Pony Express, one of the most unique passenger cars in service anywhere in North America. Originally built in 1941 as a transport car for the Canadian Mounted Police, it has been completely refurbished into an open-air party car. The four big cargo doors that once allowed entry to horses now remain open (with protective railings) to give riders a wind-whipping-through-the-hair experience. The interior of the car has been redone in ash paneling that replicates a 1872 coach car. Along one side is a carved oak bar rescued from some turn-of-the century establishment. The floor is parquet. If these three cars never moved an inch, this would still be an adventure worth having.But we are moving, and I know exactly how fast – 49.3 miles an hour – because the Pony Express is equipped with a thoroughly modern GPS system, and next to me, one of the foamiest foamers onboard, a self-described technogeek named Derek Law, is keeping tabs on everything. He alternately plots the exact location (and speed) of our train on his laptop, leans out the cargo doors to take 8 megapixel digital photos, rushes back to the computer to download them and then, with a flurry of mouse clicks, posts the photos he just took on the trainorders.com website for the edification of those foamers unfortunate enough not to be traveling with us today.I stand by the open cargo doors and watch as the Glendale station, a pearl pink Spanish Colonial Revival gem of a building, goes by, then the burnt hills of Simi Valley, then Oxnard and finally, at noon, the Pacific. The sun is glinting off the ocean; the air is cool and fresh. The surfers are out. It’s time for lunch.Donnalee Clark, a former student of the culinary arts, a professional cake decorator and trip organizer Todd Clark’s wife, is in charge of the food. This trip she has the assistance of Shaun Murphy, one of three fulltime private railcar chefs in the country. Those who have sampled train food any time during the past twenty years know that onboard cuisine ranges from inedible to on par with economy class airline food. This is different. Working shoulder to shoulder in the six-by-eight foot galley tucked beneath the Silver Lariat’s dome, the women have put together a casual buffet lunch that could be ordinary but isn’t. The deli sandwiches are made with Boarshead meats on artisan bread. The tomato slices have both color and, miraculously, taste. The potato salad is homemade, tangy and substantial. The fruit just came onboard at our last stop, fresh Santa Clara River Valley oranges. After a full morning of watching the world go by, everyone is starving. Lunch is set out on the big oak bar in the Pony Express. I grab a plate and take it one of the tables set up at the rear of the car.The train is now barreling along the coast into Santa Barbara, and the open-air car smells of eucalyptus and escallonia and sea air. The jacaranda trees are in bloom, a brilliant purple. The bougainvilleas are scarlet red, the poppies bright orange, the sky a cloudless blue. The sensory experience is vivid and immediate, like riding on a motorcycle or in a convertible with the top down. Only on the train, everything is taken care of: no checking the gas gauge, no wondering where the next pit stop will be, no worrying about speeding tickets, no weird drivers, no bad road food. This is a safe haven, a self-contained world, a long moment outside of time. The track noise is loud and hypnotic. You could stand by the open doors all day in a meditative trance. Even some of the foamers have stopped taking pictures and started just enjoying the moment.That is, until the train suddenly comes to a halt. There’s nothing unusual in this. The Coast Starlight, the train that’s hauling our three cars, makes frequent, unplanned and sometimes lengthy stops, mostly to let freights go by. The train has such a sketchy on-time record that it’s affectionately known, among foamers and other knowledgeable travelers, as the Coast StarLATE.But no one is watching the clock on our excursion. In fact, the later the better. It just means more time to enjoy the onboard experience. But there’s no freight this time, and the two dozen foamers in the Pony Express want to know exactly why we’ve stopped. They pull out their Radioshack scanners – standard foamer equipment along with mini-DV cams, high-res digital cameras and California Regional Timetables, the foamer bible that details every stretch of track, mile post by mile post – and listen intently as the engineers and conductors talk to each other.Apparently, one of the infrared sensors embedded in the track has detected a defect in one of the axles. This is exciting stuff. Which axle? Which car? What kind of defect? The foamers discuss this with the labored intensity of a group of physicians conferring over a particularly tricky case. Opinions are proffered; arguments presented. Two foamers climb over the railing in front of the cargo door and walk the line looking for the problem. The others keep to their scanners. Long, deliciously tense moments go by.Then we hear on the scanner that the problem has been identified: It turns out to be an air hose that somehow got disconnected. Several of the foamers congratulate each other for having figured this out before the Amtrak conductors did.We are in motion again, about seventy miles north of Santa Barbara on a spectacular 42-mile stretch of track that hugs the Pacific. This is coastline you cannot see from a car because we are traveling through Vandenberg Air Force Base, and there is no public road here. I go to the Lariat and climb to a seat in the dome where I can have an unobstructed view. Everyone up here has a camera pointed out the window. The ocean, flat and calm, stretches to the horizon in bands of purple, aquamarine, cobalt and indigo. The shore is undeveloped, deserted. Seabirds float on updrafts. I sit transfixed for more than an hour. I cannot remember the last time I have allowed myself to sit quietly like this. I think of the root of the word vacation, from the Latin vacare, to be empty, to be free.North of Pismo Beach we turn away from the coastline, make a quick stop at San Luis Obispo and then start climbing. The track ascends over a hump of the Coast Range, gaining more than 1000 feet in eleven miles. We are traveling between the pleats of deeply corrugated hills. We are traveling between pillowy pale green knolls dotted with live oak and eucalyptus.“This is my idea of paradise,” the foamer next to me says. I think he means the landscape. But he doesn’t. He means the railroad’s famed Cuesta Grade, the two sweeping horseshoe curves we are now snaking around. Our train doubles back on itself so we can see the two engines that have been pulling us – the serial numbers of which are duly noted by every foamer onboard. Train trivia aside, it is an impressive sight.Through the shank of the afternoon we follow the Salinas River north through the valley of the same name, past endless acres of orderly vineyards and vast stretches of geometric farmland planted in lettuce, cabbage, green onions, strawberries and artichokes. It’s enough to make one hungry – that and the fragrance of sautéed garlic and onions that has wafted its way up into the dome.Directly below in the galley, legs firmly planted as the train hits 70 mph, Donnalee and Shaun are working furiously and harmoniously on dinner. They mandoline zucchini and summer squash, chop rosemary, toss fingerling potatoes with roasted garlic, brush home-made foccacia with good olive oil. In an even smaller galley in the Los Angeles, a significant prime rib has been roasting for much of the afternoon. Donnalee, who is Italian, is also making a meatless entrée, her home-made ziti with the family recipe marinara sauce. There’s a simple salad of organic mesclun greens and tiny pearl tomatoes.Back in railroad’s golden age, uniformed waiters served elegant repasts like Escallops of Veal Piquante and Lobster Americain (think flaming cognac) on fine china. The tables were covered in damask cloths. The diners were dressed in evening clothes. This experience is quite different, but it is still an occasion. Shaun and Donnalee, direct from the galley, exhausted but still, miraculously, of good cheer, stand behind the big oak bar in the Pony Express and dish out the meal. Eighty-five meals. We all file by, swaying gently side to side, our train legs under us, and get our plates filled – and I mean filled. Then we find seats at the small tables set up in the rear of the car or back in the Lariat or the Los Angeles.The meal is simple, fresh, homemade and wonderful. It’s the kind of food you get at someone’s house when that someone really knows how to cook. The desert is even better, a choice of a surprisingly light chocolate raspberry genache or fresh strawberries over a rich, sour cream pound cake. For purely journalistic purposes, I have helpings of both.The foamers have turned off their scanners, closed up their laptops, stored their cameras and are seriously chowing down. The table talk is, of course, all railroad, and to an interested neophyte like me – there are perhaps a dozen of us nonfoamers on board – it is alternately obscure and fascinating.I learn railroad slang: a wigwag is an old swing signal; a hogger is an engineer, and a piglet is an engineer in training. We are traveling on private varnish (private passenger cars) past a hump yard (where railroad cars are added onto trains). None of us are crumb-jumpers (those who hang around the station looking for a free lunch), but I’m betting a few of us are members of the Clickity-Clack Club (the Mile High Club on rails).I learn that foamers, given their singular obsession, are, in fact, quite a diverse group. Some are interested only in locomotives. Some specialize in signals, others in tunnels or trestles. Some love freights; others are partial to passenger trains. Some pledge their allegiance to the Southern Pacific, others to Burlington Northern. Most are history buffs, but there are those who are interested solely in the mechanics. A significant sub-group are model railroad enthusiasts – men who still play with their Lionel train sets. Whatever their interests, foamers are fanatics about recording their experiences. Those onboard this train, I learn, have taken a total of 5000 digital photos during the past ten hours.The evening wears on, but the mood is as buoyant as it was when we boarded in L.A. It’s the combination of onboard camaraderie, spectacular scenery and good food. But it is also the pleasing ambience of the excursion, a nice mix of the professional and the personal. The trip is well-run, but it’s not slick. You feel taken care of, but not handled. That’s because underneath the expert organization and the four-color brochures, this is essentially a family affair. Todd Clark, the trip’s creator, is a hands-on guy who oversees, troubleshoots and schmoozes nonstop. He also helps serve meals and bus tables. In the galley is Donnalee. Mario, Donnalee’s father, is also onboard and pitches in where needed. The seven-member crew who work to keep coffee pots full, snacks available, garbage collected, and questions answered, all friends of Todd, are not so much employees as they are foamers enjoying a free trip in exchange for light duties.When the train pulls into Oakland’s Jack London Square a few minutes after 10 p.m. (we are a little more than an hour late, which, in Coast Starlight terms, is very much on time), I am in no hurry to debark. I don’t want to break the spell woven by these long lovely hours in limbo, a day spent traveling 478.5 rail miles (by foamer account) the way people used to travel when the railroad was king.The crew takes care of the luggage as Todd hustles us on to waiting busses for a quick trip to Woodfin Suites in Emeryville. There we will stay the night in comfortable, spacious accommodations, breakfast included, until, with great eagerness, as if we were embarking on an entirely new adventure, we board the train the next morning for the journey back to L.A.