The Romance of Trains

Larry Habegger — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 22:24:35 +0000

I was about three years old when I saw my first train depot. I remember staring in wonder at the vapor clouds spewing off those gigantic locomotives in the Minnesota winter while a couple, seemingly oblivious to the outside world and acutely aware that their parting may be for a long, long, time, hugged and kissed and hugged and kissed.

But for me the awe was for that giant shed of ironwork and glass, the silver rails, the growling iron beasts waiting for departure from the Milwaukee Road Depot on Washington Avenue in Minneapolis.

Looking back, I can see that the place was pretty mundane compared to the grand railway stations of the world. Even by American standards it wasn’t much, but I would only learn that later. At the time I thought traveling by train was the greatest adventure imaginable, and part of that wonder was due to the grand spaces where trains began and ended their journeys, where passengers boarded and disembarked.

Soon after, though, train travel went out of favor, the stations went derelict, many were torn down. The Milwaukee Road Depot closed in 1971, but at least it’s not gone. It’s been converted to a retail center with two hotels, restaurant, water park, and ice rink.

But train travel is making a comeback, and with it, some of those magical railway stations are being returned to their grandeur, none more so than London’s St. Pancras. In a recent essay in The New York Times, Simon Winchester takes a look at it and other stations around the world, capturing the essence of our romance with trains and creating the urge, in me anyway, to stroll through that space, making my way to a waiting train, for a journey, well, just about anywhere.

There’s More to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul Than Politics

Larry Habegger — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:08:57 +0000

The appeal of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul may get lost in the crush of politicians and delegates this week, but the region has everything one could want in a major urban area, and a lot more. I’m biased, of course, because I grew up there and visit every summer and feel I know the place well. But former Minneapolis Star Tribune Travel Editor Catherine Watson knows it better than I do. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times she presents a menu of best options for a quick visit. If you have more time, get on a bicycle and cycle along the Mississippi River, or around the Chain of Lakes and along Minnehaha Creek to Minnehaha Falls. Or, compare some of the cities’ fine parks, as I did in an essay from a visit a few years ago, “A Tale of Two Parks.”

And if you’re a rail buff, take the time to ride the Como-Harriet Streetcar Line at Minneapolis’s Lake Harriet. Operating restored streetcars dating to 1908, the line runs only one mile these days, but before the advent of buses and America’s misguided abandonment of streetcar systems, the network connected the downtown districts of both cities and well beyond, even linking up with ferry boats on the outlying lakes. And how’s this for a statistic: in 1947 the Twin Cities’ streetcar system carried 280 million passengers; today the metropolitan area’s entire transit system carries only 80 million passengers, and the population has tripled in those years.

If you hurry (that is, get there before October) you’ll be able to partake of a time-honored tradition: go jump in the lake. While the weather’s still warm there’s nothing better than a dip in Lake Harriet followed by ice cream at the bandshell.

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The Romance of Trains

There’s More to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul Than Politics