The Sunset train service travels from New Orleans, off the Gulf of Mexico, to the Pacific coast and Los Angeles. It takes the best part of two days to run its course and costs in the region of $200 to ride.
With the current floods in the mid-west disrupting services nationwide it would probably amount to about half a week to tackle the route in its entirety.
I suspect you'd have to be especially committed to the romance of the railroad to expend that much time and money on a domestic excursion.
Or maybe you'd just have to be committed.
Feeling only slightly demented, I met the Sunset around its halfway point, in San Antonio, the home of the Alamo, around 80 miles south of Austin.
I was headed west for a mere eight hour journey and another stint at reporting on the goings on in small town Texas.
The size of Texas is such that it could accommodate a healthy chunk of western Europe and still leave room to lasso a cat.
I ventured hundreds of miles without seeing a settlement among the spectacular hill country and occasional twister.
This was just moving from the south central region to the states western reaches. I had seen nothing of the panhandle or the three hundred odd miles of coastline.
There was some evidence of life though among the tumbleweeds. These seemingly endless plains are largely private ranch land, usually thousands of acres apiece. The earth here is so arid that it tends to support only one horse or cow per hundred of those acres. Hill fires have scorched a significant bulk of that over the last couple of months and as if that isn't enough to worry about, a prevalence of mountain lions are said to poach a number of the livestock that can survive.
Nestled within this high desert setting is Alpine, a town with a population of just under 6,000, at the hub of the Big Bend National Park. Here I would be working at the Alpine Avalanche, a weekly publication with a name I doubt could be bettered.
Fittingly my accommodation for the duration was like something out of the wild west, just without the Indians or the bordello's.
I couldn't say it was a tranquil stay though. The great freight trains put paid to that. Carrying 200 compartments a time, these behemoths can't even be dwarfed by the vast countryside. Unlike their passenger counterparts, they would run with brutal efficiency through the night, parping in unmistakable shrill tones as a matter of caution. All yards from my hotel window.
Free from the identikit nature of chain motels, my lodging offered chintzy furniture and modest comfort with no pretension. After a tough day at the ranch (or slumped in front of the Apple Mac) you could savour the home-made brews and a sirloin steak the size of your head. I think that's considered an appetiser in Texas.
Down the road I witnessed a bar brawl break out at a local cowboy haunt, only to see it quickly quelled by the onset of the town sheriff. Lawlessness has never really been afforded much breathing space in Alpine. After all, it was the last town in Texas to hang somebody.
Away from Austin's trendy bar scene, this was more the Texas I had imagined from afar. That was a view it seems shared by Hollywood producers. This small pocket of west Texas was the location for films such as 'Giant' and the more recent Oscar successes 'No country for old men' and 'There will be blood'. Together with that western mystique and the big country scenery, the cause of Alpine and neighbouring Marfa as a film haven was probably aided in part by their direct link to the studio's in Los Angeles. Not that there'd be a quick exit if a genuine gunfight developed.
One of the local celebrities was the photographer for the Avalanche, who despite all logic to the contrary, is blind.
I half expected to see close-ups of buckets in the place of victorious local sports teams but his work, as indeed his occasional writing, was as impressive as his desire to take on such a task with his unfortunate affliction.
His quirky nature would be at home in Marfa, a town 20 miles down the road that due to its previous anonymity, attracted New York minimalist artist Donald Judd to take root there and create his looming sculptures away from the limelight. Today, with an irony not lost on the natives, it attracts dozens of other big city artists to do the same, and, despite still being less than half the size of Alpine, mark its place prominently on the map.
Satisfied I had seen as many oddities as a small town could muster, I rode off into the sunset on the thrice weekly train, which, pleasingly for those riding it cross country, arrived bang on time.
With the current floods in the mid-west disrupting services nationwide it would probably amount to about half a week to tackle the route in its entirety.
I suspect you'd have to be especially committed to the romance of the railroad to expend that much time and money on a domestic excursion.
Or maybe you'd just have to be committed.
Feeling only slightly demented, I met the Sunset around its halfway point, in San Antonio, the home of the Alamo, around 80 miles south of Austin.
I was headed west for a mere eight hour journey and another stint at reporting on the goings on in small town Texas.
The size of Texas is such that it could accommodate a healthy chunk of western Europe and still leave room to lasso a cat.
I ventured hundreds of miles without seeing a settlement among the spectacular hill country and occasional twister.
This was just moving from the south central region to the states western reaches. I had seen nothing of the panhandle or the three hundred odd miles of coastline.
There was some evidence of life though among the tumbleweeds. These seemingly endless plains are largely private ranch land, usually thousands of acres apiece. The earth here is so arid that it tends to support only one horse or cow per hundred of those acres. Hill fires have scorched a significant bulk of that over the last couple of months and as if that isn't enough to worry about, a prevalence of mountain lions are said to poach a number of the livestock that can survive.
Nestled within this high desert setting is Alpine, a town with a population of just under 6,000, at the hub of the Big Bend National Park. Here I would be working at the Alpine Avalanche, a weekly publication with a name I doubt could be bettered.
Fittingly my accommodation for the duration was like something out of the wild west, just without the Indians or the bordello's.
I couldn't say it was a tranquil stay though. The great freight trains put paid to that. Carrying 200 compartments a time, these behemoths can't even be dwarfed by the vast countryside. Unlike their passenger counterparts, they would run with brutal efficiency through the night, parping in unmistakable shrill tones as a matter of caution. All yards from my hotel window.
Free from the identikit nature of chain motels, my lodging offered chintzy furniture and modest comfort with no pretension. After a tough day at the ranch (or slumped in front of the Apple Mac) you could savour the home-made brews and a sirloin steak the size of your head. I think that's considered an appetiser in Texas.
Down the road I witnessed a bar brawl break out at a local cowboy haunt, only to see it quickly quelled by the onset of the town sheriff. Lawlessness has never really been afforded much breathing space in Alpine. After all, it was the last town in Texas to hang somebody.
Away from Austin's trendy bar scene, this was more the Texas I had imagined from afar. That was a view it seems shared by Hollywood producers. This small pocket of west Texas was the location for films such as 'Giant' and the more recent Oscar successes 'No country for old men' and 'There will be blood'. Together with that western mystique and the big country scenery, the cause of Alpine and neighbouring Marfa as a film haven was probably aided in part by their direct link to the studio's in Los Angeles. Not that there'd be a quick exit if a genuine gunfight developed.
One of the local celebrities was the photographer for the Avalanche, who despite all logic to the contrary, is blind.
I half expected to see close-ups of buckets in the place of victorious local sports teams but his work, as indeed his occasional writing, was as impressive as his desire to take on such a task with his unfortunate affliction.
His quirky nature would be at home in Marfa, a town 20 miles down the road that due to its previous anonymity, attracted New York minimalist artist Donald Judd to take root there and create his looming sculptures away from the limelight. Today, with an irony not lost on the natives, it attracts dozens of other big city artists to do the same, and, despite still being less than half the size of Alpine, mark its place prominently on the map.
Satisfied I had seen as many oddities as a small town could muster, I rode off into the sunset on the thrice weekly train, which, pleasingly for those riding it cross country, arrived bang on time.
1 comment:
my cat's breath smells of cat food. I love that 'no country for old men', there's like, no old men in that film at all. It's just like they don't tolerate the aged.
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