On Silver Linings

Part 2: Train wrecks

Remember Pollyanna? The girl who saw the good in every bad situation? I have been accused of being too much like her. I see adventure even in adverse situations more than I see the trouble. Take for instance, my luck with train travel. I’ve had three journeys that while memorable, were not ones I would ever want to repeat.

My first bad experience with a train was in Scotland. My at-that -time fiance and I were stranded in Loch Ness on New Year’s Day, 1976. (Why we were stranded is a story for another day). The train station was closed most of the day, and we had no place to stay except the sitting room of a B & B where we had spent part of the night. (We had to check out by 10 am and there were no other rooms available.)  When the train station finally opened in the late afternoon, we took the first train to Edinburgh. The train was not crowded and the compartments would have been comfortable, except there was no heat on the train. January in Scotland is cold. Very cold. Ice on the inside of the windows cold. Luckily, we traveled with a sleeping bag, under which we shivered all the way to Edinburgh.

Worse than a frigid ride are the wrecks. I’ve been in two, whIch I think far more than my lifetime allotment. (If bad things come in threes, than I’m safe, right?)

The most recent took place in 2014 in Tiffany Bottoms Wildlife Area, along the Chippewa River near Durand.  This stretch of track was built in 1882 to haul lumber to the Mississippi  River. For 14 miles, the rails run through a lush green corridor of marsh, wetlands, meadow, and bottomland forest. A winter derailment in 1977 caused the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad to abandoned the line. In June of 1979, NSP (now X-cel Energy) bought the track for possible future use, but didn’t actually use it. The tracks fell into disrepair, and some bridge sections collapsed. In 1995, a local group of rail enthusiasts founded the Chippewa Valley Motor Car Association to maintain and use the tracks for private interests. In an ingenuous use of resources, cars that had been used by maintenance workers were put to work hauling tourists, bird-watchers and nature lovers on 20 mile (out and back) trip through the Tiffany Bottoms, which is part of the Chippewa River Delta, the largest river delta in the Midwest.

The day Mike and I took the trip was a crisp, fall day with the sumac turning. Puffy clouds drifted across a deep blue sky. The train itself had a little gas-powered engine at each end, and open cars with back to back benches in between. We chugged along slowly on the way out, stopping frequently to take pictures and listen to the naturalist explain the history of the area. The excitement came on our return when the train hit a tree that had fallen on the tracks after our passing. Seated near the front of the second car, I saw the tree about the same time the engineer did. I also saw that we weren’t going to stop. Hand brakes, metal wheels on metal tracks, and stopping distance all combined to mean the crash was inevitable. At first I thought the train would break the fallen tree. Instead, when the engine hit, the tree bent. In a flash, I knew it would snap back with tremendous force. Instinctively I ducked. Half a second later a four inch log hit my head, skittered across Mike’s back and slammed into the people in the next car. At least two people tumbled off the train into the brush. Amid the screams of the passengers, the train screeched to a halt. Shaking, we disembarked to help the injured and assess the damage.

The conclusion? It could have been far, far worse. No one was seriously injured, though one man probably needed a few stitches in his cut lip. I had a mild headache, but no concussion, just a new story to tell.

Far worse than this mild catastrophe, was the wreck of the California Zephyr in 1982. My family (husband, and two toddlers) boarded the train in Iowa, heading toward California for my brother’s wedding. We had a sleeper berth on the upper floor and bedded down right after boarding with my husband and our 3 year old son on the top bunk, and me and our 1 year old daughter on the bottom.

Several hours later I was wakened by a tremendous crashing, a terrible lurching, and the thump of something hitting my back. As the train tilted over, I was desperately afraid I would crush my daughter.  Fortunately for all of us, that didn’t happen.

We soon determined that our car was half submerged and all exits blocked, but everyone on the floor below was safely brought upstairs. For three hours we sat in semi-darkness, waiting for dawn and rescue, which eventually came in the form of a boat. We learned there had been a flash flood that washed out the bridge, causing the the derailment. As dawn broke, we saw the water swirling below our window on the tilting train car and a helicopter with a net hovering downstream, presumably to rescue anyone swept away in the flood.  

So what’s good in all this? Well, I believe that any experience a writer survives is good in the long run because it provides new dimensions and new perspectives. I can write more realistically about a train crash in a flood because I’ve been in one. Less specifically, but just as important I can write about the confusion of waiting for rescue, the fear of not knowing what is going on, and the heart-warming gratitude toward strangers who remembered to bring diapers to the Red Cross shelter.

Pollyanna? Maybe, but I prefer to think of it as using the lemons to make lemonade.