Traveling Outside of Time
We’ve been stopped for more than an hour now. The problem is not simply the disabled freight up ahead but the fact that most of this route is single track, meaning that two trains can’t pass each other, or in this case, one train can’t get past another. Whichever train the Union Pacific dispatcher in Omaha says has to yield must back up to the nearest siding (which can be miles away) and wait for the other train to pass. Union Pacific owns these tracks, not Amtrak, so UP’s real moneymakers, the freight trains, usually get the go-ahead. Amtrak’s passenger trains sit and wait. This is one of the main reasons the Coast Starlight is, more often than not, the Coast Starlate.
Porkchop thinks this is no way to run a railroad. Like everyone who works this train, he wants to see the Coast Starlight – and all the other long-distance passenger trains – succeed. And it’s not that he needs to protect his job. In fact, he’ll be retiring in just a few years. It’s that he loves trains. He believes in trains. He thinks the world would be a kinder, gentler place if we all took trains.