National Geographic: Love Those Trains Page #5

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has been bought by the Armata family,

wholesalers who in turn

sell to markets and restaurants.

Beautiful box of lettuce.

As my father would say,

It talks to you.

As soon as you open up the box...

It has been seven days

since the lettuce was picked.

It took four railroads

and the involvement of 1,000 men

and women

to move it across the country.

Half a million people work for

the railroads in the United States.

In one sense, theirs is just a job,

but it is an essential job,

moving the grain, steel,

coal, automobiles,

perishables-even the lettuce for

a PTA luncheon in Baldwin, Long Island.

Traditionally, little boys

were given model trains for Christmas

and, captured by a dream, many grew up

wanting to become an engineer.

The reality today is not far different.

For a new class of 23 engineers,

the Long Island Railroad

had 2,000 applicants to choose from.

Now to get the train moving,

you'll need to reverse.

You're in forward.

This position.

This is your throttle.

Now we'll go in eight notch.

Alright, blow the whistle.

Dave Decker, senior instructor,

has been an engineer for 14 years.

Decker loves engineering and teaching,

but the memory of train accidents

in his past brings a special urgency

to his teaching.

Engineering used to be a man's job,

but Federal affirmative action

guidelines give Vita Zamboli,

a former secretary, and extraordinary

opportunity to join

an elite group of railroad employees.

I can teach an engineer how to make

a proper brake application

and accelerate, decelerate.

That's the easy part.

My most difficult responsibility is to

instill into an upcoming engineer

that they have

monumental responsibilities.

The is no margin for error.

Not when you are dealing

with 1,600 people behind you.

Hopefully, I can bring this across

to these upcoming engineers.

Are you relaxed?

A little damp.

Alright. That's good.

That means you've got guts.

If you're not nervous in here,

there is something wrong.

How do you feel?

Are you coming in strong?

As she brings the train into a station

Vita must learn the right timing

how strongly to apply the brakes

so as not to stop too soon

or overrun the station.

Okay.

Now what you want to do is bear

off the last second.

No, no, not this.

Right, bear if off.

Super.

You want that feel of this thing

charging into the station

and making your initial application

and then your final application.

You ever run a train before?

Huh? Never?

You did a heck of a job.

What do you think? What do you feel?

You feel that this...

It was exciting. It was great...

...is this going to be

your occupation or what?

Yes, it is.

Yes.

I'm sure it's going to take a while.

But I will get the feeling

of bringing a train in.

There are going to be times

in your career

when you are going to run across

a grade crossing accident.

You're traveling along at 65,

and a car comes around a gate

or through the gates.

There's not a thing you can do.

You hope you give pre-warning,

that a warning whistle or warning bell

before you get to

that crossing are ample.

You'll search your soul to know

whether you did it or not.

It's not just the glory of

running over the road and to say,

I always wanted to be an engineer.

Now I have that.

It's that you have to take

that responsibility.

If her engineering career

follows the norm,

Vital will face 500,000 road

crossings in the next 25 years.

If she is never involved

in an accident,

passengers who ride her trains will

have no reason to learn her name.

There are many great train rides

around the world,

but not one can match

the aura of elegance,

mystery, and romance surrounding

the name-Orient Express.

It ran for almost a century until its

demise in 1977.

Now two men have revived

the historic run to Istanbul.

Albert Glatt bought

the 1920s-vintage cars

and lovingly refurbished them.

Sometimes, you know,

you have to do everything on the train

T.C. Swartz chartered the cars for

those who could afford to recapture

the glory of rail travel in its heyday.

...and then how to surpass it.

People's idea of luxury

is a little bit different

than maybe what is actually was.

So we're trying to do now

is to give them more luxury

than they had in the past.

In fact, to make it the ultimate trip.

I can't believe it,

Oh, it's marvelous.

There will be 98 passengers

on this trip,

each paying a modest $5,000 one way.

I think the dogs are great.

...great, but they are...

Yeah, but I can't see them sitting

in the dining car.

Some passengers, like actor Hal Linden

and his wife,

stage an arrival

in the grand tradition,

harking back to the aura

of a princely trip.

Original inlaid wood decorations

and Lalique molded glass reliefs

still decorate the cars.

Names of the countries the

Orient Express passes through

Austria, Hungary, Romania,

Bulgaria-ring with romance.

Memories of mysteries like Murder on

the Orient Express surround

the passengers with an atmosphere

of champagne and dreams.

Well, my name is Otto.

And I'm supposed to play the

piano all the way to Istanbul.

It seems like everything that's

wonderful about

the world is going away,

and the trains are one of those things

Kim Vosper and Kyle Collins advanced

the date of their weeding

so they could make this their first

trip together as a married couple.

For bourgeois travelers,

meals in an aristocratic French style

the ultimate temptation for

those who count calories.

I remember as a child we used to put

people on the train in New Iberia.

And I was never sad because

they were leaving.

I was always sad because

I wasn't leaving too,

but I wasn't standing on the back

platform when I'm waving goodbye.

I think I was six or seven when

I took my first train ride.

From that time on, I think I fell

in love with trains.

And then I heard that you could spend

four-and-a-half days on a train

that sold me on this trip.

The train cruises Europe like

an ocean liner.

Gypsies play as they did on the

first run of the Orient Express.

In the evenings, there are gala

seven-course dinners.

And occasionally the train waits

as passengers are bused

to the entertainment.

A champagne tasting at the

Mumm's winery in France.

And just as on its maiden voyage,

there is a festive reception

in Budapest.

On the first trip, no passengers on

the Orient Express

dined at the hunting lodge

of the sultan.

It is an express journey to the sun,

but the high point for

many comes in Vienna

where the Vienna Boys' Choir is only

a part of the entertainment.

Protocol prevented the Austrian

royal family from

receiving plebian passengers

of the first Orient Express

Now the Pallavicini Palace

is theirs for the evening.

And finally, the end of the

line-Istanbul, Turkey-

where passengers get the

red-carpet treatment, Oriental style.

For the 98 passengers of the

Orient Express,

the trip will remain an extraordinary

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