Hey Joel here, once agan I have been on the road. this time I traveled from Jefferson City, MO to Newark, DE to visit with my oldest brother John Henry Arrington III, or Bugs as he is known. I took the train this time as I had plenty of time and was in no rush. The trains I traveled on were The Missouri River Runner  from Jefferson City to St Louis, the Lincoln Service from St Louis to Chicago and finally from Chicago to Wilmington on the Cardinal. The glory days of the trains may well be over but newer brighter days of train travel may be on the return. I had the best trip I’ve had in years on the train this time. The stations are now cleaner and a bit more restricted. If 9/11 did anything good for travel it eliminated people using the train stations and bus stations as bedrooms and the bathrooms as their private washrooms. Train and bus stations are now policed and controlled. Homeland Security’s involvement in maintaining transportation has given teeth back to the transportation companies and no longer do the liberal views of the 60s and 70s and the lawsuits of the stations being public domains threaten the safety and well being of the average passenger. The safety of all the passengers now outweighs the rights of street people to have access to a bathroom and infringe on the rest of our rights to buy a ticket on these modes of transportation and be safe. I know its still not perfect but it has gotten 1000 % better than just a few years ago and 10,000 % better than before 9/11. St. Louis just built a new station and Chicago was as always immaculate. Wilmington was under renovation so it is not fair to judge it quite yet but it looks like they are putting in some serious work on it. I know Baltimore’s Penn Station was partially renovated a few years ago, Kansas City Missouri Downtown Station, Lee’s Summit, Missouri  too and Union Station in DC are great as well. Modern train stations with modern facilities should see a rebirth of train travel not to mention the reasonable fares. As a disaled person I can tell you many stations have not been easy to get around in as they were built prior to ADA or any other considerations for people with disabilities but as I said before they are getting better. Now if just the old arrogant and sometimes over privileged middle class to upper class despots and I think we all know to whom I’m referring, The VIPs (Very Ignorant People) did not think it was their right to have rides through even train stations simply because they have too  many bags or are too lazy to even try and walk from the train to the gates, would all get a life it would make it so much easier on everyone else to travel especially those with real disabilities.

Anyway I had never ridden this particular train out of Chicago called the Cardinal except from Virgina North. I had no clue I was going to see parts of the country I never thought or imagined existed. I saw parts f the Appalachian and Blue Ridge and even Shenandoah Mountains that are isolated and unique. I had seen parts of Appalachia USA having trveled with the Office of Surface Mining to many remote locations but I saw Thurmond, West Virgina this time. This is a town with a population of 7. The Town hall is a yellow building beside the railroad track that looks like a shed. The bank as does most of the downtown store fronts face right on he train tracks with less than ten feet or so between them and the trains. Until 1921 there was no way to get to the town except by railroad and still today that is the most efficient way to get there. There is one road out of town that was built by the C&O Railroad but even still today as I understand it the road is closed about 6 months out the year because of weather and is not much more than a paved mountain trail anyway. LOL! The guy I talked to at the station said the only real way to the town was by train, pack mule or goat most of the time! The town for the most part is now part of the National Park System as not too far away in the New River Gorge is the longest building in the world.

As you can see I had an interesting trip. It took me a little over two days to make the journey and I had almost 14 hours of layovers unfortunately, but all in all it wasn’ too bad. I spent 27 almost 28 hours on the Cardinal and saw a lot as it wound its way through the hills and mountains of Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, West Virgina and Virginia before hitting the more traveled parts of the eastern corridor headed north. Out of Chicago we had a diesel locomotive that took us from Chi-town through the mountains to DC where we switched to an electric Acela Express style engine to head north. Same cars on the train but the new engine definitely moved the train much faster. Well I arrived safely and none the less for wear. The train was comfortable and not crowed although full. Biggest problem I had the whole trip was a couple of women with ill behaved children who thought the back of my seat and the foot rest behind my seat were play toys! LOL!

I arrived safely which is the most important thing.  I’m looking forward to my next trip now as I have a few lines on some interesting positions across the cuntry and who nows where my next travels will take me.