Chapter 10: The Desert Wind

March 15th, 1995, 1:10 PM EST; Caldwell Limited; Rochester, NY

John Caldwell sat in a hot tub reflecting on how short life really was. He looked out at the still-grey world of late winter in Upstate New York, just outside the glass enclosed room he sat in. The ground was all white from snow cover, the cold stainless steel of his house’s roof did nothing to assuage the cold look of it all. Inside, of course, he was in a hot tub, the entire room made out of warm brown-stained teak, even the mullions in the glass. The contrast between outside and inside was very stark, and made for great personal comfort.

It seemed like only yesterday, in some ways, that he married Gretel, in an onboard ceremony not too far from where he now sat. But that wasn’t only yesterday; it was over 18 years ago! The time was flying in a way that he found somewhat hard to comprehand; in September, his son George would be an adult. He had already graduated from high school, for crying out loud! He was on his way to college; and on the other side of the country. He was even getting there without escort!

Admittedly those 18 years were barely more than a quarter of his life, but still. 18 years is a long time. He was 44 when he met Gretel, retired from Southern and occasionally doing consultation on how to preserve old train stations, which had since grown into a significant business. Not that he needed the money, but he found those kinds of projects fun. He was one of those semi-retired people who work primarily to avert boredom.

He had lived frugally his entire life and had acquired quite a bit of money, as of soon he would be getting social security, his matched 401(k) was paying good money, and he’d been wise with his investments. He had been fairly highly placed when he moved from Santa Fe to Amtrak, and more highly placed when he moved from Amtrak to Southern Railroad. He considered himself distinctly financially comfortable.

Still, he worried about Gretel. She was not as frugal as he was, although, admittedly she was not crazy with spending money. He made almost half a million dollars a year between the various things he made money from- dividends, interest, 401(k), and so on. But she would outlive him by many, many years. He knew that with almost complete certainty. He had plenty of money; but as the years went on, they continued to enjoy living life to its fullest.

Gretel was not a stay at home housewife who didn’t work; the career she had picked involved writing historic fiction novels. She was very good at it, but there are a lot of people who are very good at writing stories. She made a little money on it, but it was almost negligible once one factored in the money they spent on traveling for her research. Not that it mattered that much; their traveling lifestyle had been a lot of fun, and continued to be so, for both of them.

He was blown away when he found out that she was born in 1957, all those years ago. 19 years old? She had seemed so much more mature than 19 years could possibly have wrought. She was sweet, kind, and aware of the world around her in ways many people much older than her were not. In the 18 years they had been married, the going had generally been very good, but not perfect. They had their spats, that was for sure. You always do when you’re married, especially when you are married to a person of strong will and an independent mind But it had been pretty clean on the whole; he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Their life had been particularly good and well worked out given the 25 year age gap. Large age gaps tend to make relationships much harder to manage. You are in different phases of life, mentally, physically, and emotionally. He had arthritis and, while he could walk quite well, that was about the end of his physical prowess at this point. Gretel was an early riser who enjoyed going on morning jogs through the woods before breakfast, and a shorter one just after lunch. Actually, she should be returning from one just about now.

They particularly, however, had a disagreement on George. She had felt that George should always be with both parents, and he had felt that George should stay in roughly the same place and lay anchors. She won on that, because they dragged George around wherever they went on their jobs- his station consultation and her book writing. He had grown up unusually conservative for his age group; except for his libido. But John couldn’t hold that against him. John hadn’t settled down until his mid-forties, for crying out loud. It’s really always a matter of finding the perfect woman, and he hadn’t done that until his 40s.

The rail life had done all that to him. He had started as just an assistant Pullman Conductor, primarily on the Seaboard, but had moved his way up those ranks until Santa Fe saw his potential as a manager and hired him from Pullman. He had always moved around the Santa Fe system all the time, and had never got the chance to set anchors. One night stands with younger women that he impressed with dinners and nice hotels were his norm, a few times a month. For the most part, it was all that he spent money on.

Gretel had been someone special, and it had changed the way he thought. He hadn’t been in love before; it had been a physical thing. Then he saw her, and bells rang, heavenly choirs started to sing, and suddenly he was walking on air. He was still a man with considerable wanderlust; but that was part of what made it special; Gretel shared that wanderlust in abundance- Gretel meant he was no longer a loner with wanderlust. Both he and Gretel had more of it than their fair share and it made for an ideal pairing.

Still, the Caldwell Limited, as they liked to call home, provided a bit of stationary permanence. They had assembled it carefully over many years, restored and decorated exactly how they wanted it to be. They didn’t take it where ever they went, but since they put it together it was moved no less then once every five years. It was exactly the kind of moveable permanence their desire warranted.

John fully understood George’s lack of want to go to college. John had been told since he was very young that he was unusually intelligent, and yet he hated doing managerial work that amounted to doing nothing. He had accepted the job with Santa Fe because it mostly entailed making sure everything went perfectly onboard their crack trains. He was always riding them and helping crew out.

His office in Chicago saw him once a month if it was lucky. Santa Fe didn’t care. The Super Chief ran like it always did, and so did the Golden Gate, Grand Canyon Limited, San Francisco Chief, El Capitan, the Chief, and the Texas Chief. It was him that made sure they remained what they had always been after the Amtrak turnover, and he was the one who pushed to require name changes after the downgrades.

When Amtrak stopped letting them provide that level of service, he quit. After that, there was nothing that he wanted to do for Santa Fe; he had no interest in running freight trains, even the crack Super Cs. But someone had been watching what he did for Santa Fe, and that person was W. Graham Claytor. His Southern Railroad had done something he had begged his bosses to do- and they almost listened- and that was opt out of Amtrak. Southern kept running their flagship passenger train, the Southern Crescent in the same manner it always had.

Not that he had objected to Amtrak entirely. Ran properly, it could have done a lot of good. It would have killed some of the nastiness that existed on some railroads- nastiness that killed rail ridership. Rusty, leaky, filthy equipment. Outrageously long schedules to serve all stops, and thus not require more than one train a day. People hadn’t seen boredom until they rode a 1200 mile, all-local-stop train. Just before the Amtrak era, some of the railroads did everything but hire thugs to physically throw passengers off the trains.

Automats instead of other kinds of food service. No sleepers on very long, overnight trains. And many of these trains were mixed mongrels, hauling both freight and passengers. They ran late very frequently. Moreover, there were definitely some very redundant trains being run. There wasn’t much need for a dozen New York to Chicago trains, as existed before Amtrak, for example.

But among the companies, three had stood out. Southern, Santa Fe, and Seaboard. All three tried their damnedest to run every train they had as well as they could. None of the three had seen the kinds of losses the other companies had seen. All three thought long and hard about joining Amtrak, or Railpax as it had been known at the time. Seaboard was the first to go- they had plans to merge with the Chessie System and Chessie wasn’t interested in being involved with passenger trains.

Seaboard dropped it, and several years later they merged to form Chessie Seaboard Expanded, or CSX. Santa Fe thought even harder about it. Santa Fe wasn’t interested in merging with anyone- they covered all the markets they needed to cover, and Santa Fe was much more than just a railroad anyway. Santa Fe wouldn’t think about merging until Union Pacific acquired Missouri Pacific trackage in the early 80’s and thus could compete with them in the Chicago market. But in the end they decided that since everyone else was going, they should join, too.

Southern, though, opted out. W. Graham Claytor was not going to turn over what he considered the “face” of his company to some government agency, and he didn’t. Southern kept running their train in the grand tradition. He hired John in late 1972 to help him keep the train running the best it could be run. In late 1976, though, John decided to call it quits, mainly because the pride of Southern’s onboard service crew was such that he wasn’t needed. It was during his working as a consultant and traveling that he met Gretel.

In 1979, Claytor was forced into his retirement, partly because of his age, and also because Southern wanted to merge with Norfolk and Western. Norfolk and Western weren’t interested so long as Southern had the money loss of the Southern Crescent on their books and Graham wouldn’t budge on the subject. So out he went, in a boardroom coup that was fueled by shareholders looking to cash-in on Southern’s excellent physical plant.

It was John- and a young George who convinced Claytor to take the offered job of running Amtrak.

“Come on, Graham,” John had said to Claytor, who was sitting in the living room of Caldwell Limited at the time, “This is what you want to do. Nobody can run trains, or understands and loves passenger railroading like you do. Except maybe me. But they aren’t offering me the job, and besides you have more, er, tact than I do. What else are you going to do in retirement? Move to Florida and play shuffleboard?”

“You got that right,” Claytor smiled, “But I’ll be out in a year or less. I’m not willing to let them turn Amtrak into a large subway system!”

“But Mr. Claytor,” little George had said, “Who else will make the trains good?”

“You have a point,” Graham had admitted.

He had died last year, mere months after giving up his office due to declining health. It had been a hard time for him; they had remained friends ever since.