Back in 1968 I was a 14 year old Boy Scout, and I had the opportunity to travel with the Scouts to Philmont, the Scout Ranch in New Mexico, to sample the joys of backpacking. This was not something our troop did. We would have the dads drive us to a campsite, where we would set up camp and freeze out tails off for the rest of the weekend until the dads came back on Sunday to pick us up. Backpacking sounded more interesting, and I had never been out west before, so I was looking forward to it. The icing on the cake for someone who was developing a nerdy trainspotter hobby was that we were traveling out on the train.
Not the whole way, however. From what I gathered, Philadelphia scouts used to ride the train the whole way, but by 1968, the service available for charter groups from the Pennsylvania Railroad between Philadelphia and Chicago was not considered suitable, at least not by the people at the Philadelphia Scout office who were arranging the trip. Thus, the plan was to ride charter buses to Chicago, a train to Denver, and more charter buses over the Raton pass into Philmont. Why we didn't just didn't take the Santa Fe directly from Chicago to Raton is something I never found out.
So one fine July evening, we all assembled somewhere in Philadelphia and after saying goodbye to our parents, a crowd of 13-15 year old boys in Scout uniforms boarded a couple of modern (for the times) Trailways buses. These had fairly comfortable reclining seats, and, not being fully grown, I had not problems with seat pitch, but found it hard to go to sleep. We made a stop at a service plaza right before Harrisburg to get some dinner, and then it got dark as we rode the Turnpike over the mountains. It's now a familiar drive to me between going out to Ohio for work and taking my daughter to college in central Pa, but back then, it just seemed like the ride went on and on. And I couldn't get to sleep, because every time the bus slowed down, the driver changed gears, which jolted me awake. In addition to the relatively stiff grades going over the mountains, The Pennsylvania Turnpike still had about three 2-lane tunnels. While there were plans to add an extra tube (which they have today), this hadn't been finished in 1968. So we had a few instances of stop and go traffic reminiscent of the New Jersey Turnpike on a bad day in the middle of rural Pennsylvania in the middle of the night. Finally, we reached Ohio (where the driver had to slow down, change gars and wake me up as he went through the Gateway toll plaza (no Express EZPass in 1968), and I finally settled down to a fitful sleep.
It started getting light as we rolled into Indiana, and we stopped at a service plaza near Elkhart (the first time I ever knew such a place existed) to stretch our legs and use the bathroom. The bus had a typical disgusting bus bathroom in the rear -- most of us avoided using it and were grateful for the roadside facilities. Back on the bus, we soon crossed into Chicago on the Skyway and were pulling up to Union Station.
I don't remember too many details. This was the year before the old concourse was demolished, but, like the old New York Pennsylvania Station, even though I passed through it before they destroyed it, I don't remember much. We left our backpacks in a baggage room, and then they took us across the street to something called the "Harvey House Restaurant." It wasn't until years later that I read about the history of the company, but at the time, it looked like the place was well past its prime. The institutional-grade breakfast they set out for us was also nothing to write home about -- I believe it included scrambled eggs made from powdered eggs left over from the Second World War -- that sort of thing was common in camps and school dining back then. On the other hand, it may have been a perfectly good breakfast, but it just wasn't Mom's cooking.
To kill time until the train left, they loaded us on a Gray Line bus and gave us a tour of Chicago. The lake! The skyscrapers! (which did, indeed, beat out what they had in Philly.) The subway lines running in freeway medians! (The latest transit idea in 1968, now something that drives urban planners crazy 'cause it disconnects the transportation from the walkable neighborhood.)
Soon it was time to get to the train. In our case it was the Denver Zephyr of the Burlington Route. Except for trips on the New Haven Camp train, it was the first train I had ever ridden which wasn't the Pennsylvania Railroad. It was pulled by EMD diesel E units rather than the more familiar (to me) electric GG-1s. We traveled coach. Our coaches appeared to be a bit older than the ones used by the regular passengers, and they lacked leg rests. But they were clean and in good repair, and the seats reclined way farther back than the PRR and New Haven corridor coaches I was used to on the NEC. They had a separate dining car for us, and the chow was, again, nothing to write home about. I suspect the CB&Q offered different price points for the meals and the Scout office picked one of the lower ones.
The ride was great. The cars were a lot quieter than the rattly old PRR coaches I was used to, and the track was in good condition. The seats were large and comfortable. The scenic highlight was crossing the Mississippi river right before dinner. It seemed like the most massive river in the world, though when I rode the current Zephyr a couple of years ago and crossed the same bridge, it didn't seem to be a big as I remembered it. I actually slept pretty well. Was it the superiority of the train over the bus, or was I just so tired from the night before that I conked out? When it got light we were in eastern Colorado and a whole different world. Not the mountains yet, but it was dry brown (it was summer) short grass semi-arid prairie. Like I said, first time I had ever been west and saw how the landscape changes. As we got closer to Denver, we could see the snow-covered Rockies in the distance. And then we arrived.
The Denver station sure looked like it was passed its prime --- It looked kind of empty and much bigger than it needed to be for the trains that served it. But, no matter, we were loaded on to buses and quickly (a lot more quickly than nowadays, given the growth of traffic over the years) we were on I(-25 heading south. The Front Range seemed pretty impressive to us Eastern boys; the mountains were steeper than the Appalachians and had only scrubby trees, not the lush green forests we were used to. I think the driver made some crack about us Eastern kids finally seeing some real mountains, though from I-25, you really can't see the snow-covered peaks of the Continental Divide. We climbed Raton Pass on the highway and then ran into Raton, and the Cimarron, where Philmont is located. I think we arrived in time for lunch, which was served in a typical camp dining hall. Some of the guys in my group thought they were going to do this trek carrying World War 2 Army surplus rucksacks. After humping them around in Chicago and Denver, they realized the error of their ways and headed for the well-equipped camp store to purchase nice modern aluminum frame backpacks with comfy padded straps. I already had such a rig, so I got to lounge around the camp looking at the semi desert scenery and a spectacular mountain peak called the Tooth of Time.
Our 10 day trip was great, we packed about 50 miles through various mountain scenery (a lot more lush when you got to high elevations), we threw snowballs in July on the summit of an 11,000 foot peak, and had a trail ride on horseback through the desert. Anyway, we returned to the base camp, and it was back on buses for the trip home.
We spent an extra night on the way back, stopping at Fort Carson, near Colorado Springs. I'm not sure why, though we were all about 3 or 4 years from being prime draft bait. Maybe they thought we might like to see what was facing us. I don't remember how they bunked us, but I do remember they had a nice little military museum, where we learned that the most modern army in the world (ours) was using crossbows in Vietnam in 1968. They even had one on exhibit. The food at the mess hall they took us too was pretty good, to. They also showed us Cheyenne Mountain nearby, The NORAD HQ and where they would run WW3, but they didn't give us a tour.
The next day, we returned to Denver, and back on the Zephyr, the Denver Zephyr, that is. The ride was similar to the ride out, but after dinner, dissatisfied with the fare offered in the scout grouup dining car, I made my way back to the dome care, where there was a "tavern-lounge" or whatever, called the Chuckwagon. There I got a personal pizza (I don't think they called it that back then) for the grand sum of $5. According the the Department of Labor inflation calculator, that's about $36 in today's money. It was a pretty good pizza, though. Not microwaved, that's for sure. After I ate the pizza, I went up in the dome car and watched the train roll through the dar. It was great fun to look ahead and see the signals change from green to red as the locomotive passed. After a while, I returned to my car and went to sleep.
One other great thing about those old trains was that they didn't just have little airline style toilets at the end of the car, they had a whole lounge (One for gents, one for ladies at either end of the car.) They had a couple of little toilet compartments (when you flushed, you could see the tracks and ties rushing by), and sinks and mirrors for washing, combing your hair, etc., It also served as a changing room. The lounges were the width of a bedroom and resulted in there being a side corridor at each end to connect the main cabin with the doors at the end of each car. This really cut down on the noise caused by people opening car doors to pass between cars. At the end of the Penn Central era, they would sometimes run similar long distance cars on NEC trains. That was always a treat, in addition to the extra legroom, you'd get a nice quiet ride.
Once we got to Chicago, no tour this time, they just put us on buses, and off we went east. We rolled through Indiana and Ohio in the dark, and as it was getting light, we came to a stop somewhere on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Turns out that one of the buses (not ours, fortunately) broke down. They decided to keep us all together, so we had to wait around for a while until Trailways could send out a rescue bus. Soon after that, we were back in Philadelphia with many takes to tell our folks.
The next time I took a long distance train it was about 5 years later, and it was run by Amtrak.
Not the whole way, however. From what I gathered, Philadelphia scouts used to ride the train the whole way, but by 1968, the service available for charter groups from the Pennsylvania Railroad between Philadelphia and Chicago was not considered suitable, at least not by the people at the Philadelphia Scout office who were arranging the trip. Thus, the plan was to ride charter buses to Chicago, a train to Denver, and more charter buses over the Raton pass into Philmont. Why we didn't just didn't take the Santa Fe directly from Chicago to Raton is something I never found out.
So one fine July evening, we all assembled somewhere in Philadelphia and after saying goodbye to our parents, a crowd of 13-15 year old boys in Scout uniforms boarded a couple of modern (for the times) Trailways buses. These had fairly comfortable reclining seats, and, not being fully grown, I had not problems with seat pitch, but found it hard to go to sleep. We made a stop at a service plaza right before Harrisburg to get some dinner, and then it got dark as we rode the Turnpike over the mountains. It's now a familiar drive to me between going out to Ohio for work and taking my daughter to college in central Pa, but back then, it just seemed like the ride went on and on. And I couldn't get to sleep, because every time the bus slowed down, the driver changed gears, which jolted me awake. In addition to the relatively stiff grades going over the mountains, The Pennsylvania Turnpike still had about three 2-lane tunnels. While there were plans to add an extra tube (which they have today), this hadn't been finished in 1968. So we had a few instances of stop and go traffic reminiscent of the New Jersey Turnpike on a bad day in the middle of rural Pennsylvania in the middle of the night. Finally, we reached Ohio (where the driver had to slow down, change gars and wake me up as he went through the Gateway toll plaza (no Express EZPass in 1968), and I finally settled down to a fitful sleep.
It started getting light as we rolled into Indiana, and we stopped at a service plaza near Elkhart (the first time I ever knew such a place existed) to stretch our legs and use the bathroom. The bus had a typical disgusting bus bathroom in the rear -- most of us avoided using it and were grateful for the roadside facilities. Back on the bus, we soon crossed into Chicago on the Skyway and were pulling up to Union Station.
I don't remember too many details. This was the year before the old concourse was demolished, but, like the old New York Pennsylvania Station, even though I passed through it before they destroyed it, I don't remember much. We left our backpacks in a baggage room, and then they took us across the street to something called the "Harvey House Restaurant." It wasn't until years later that I read about the history of the company, but at the time, it looked like the place was well past its prime. The institutional-grade breakfast they set out for us was also nothing to write home about -- I believe it included scrambled eggs made from powdered eggs left over from the Second World War -- that sort of thing was common in camps and school dining back then. On the other hand, it may have been a perfectly good breakfast, but it just wasn't Mom's cooking.
To kill time until the train left, they loaded us on a Gray Line bus and gave us a tour of Chicago. The lake! The skyscrapers! (which did, indeed, beat out what they had in Philly.) The subway lines running in freeway medians! (The latest transit idea in 1968, now something that drives urban planners crazy 'cause it disconnects the transportation from the walkable neighborhood.)
Soon it was time to get to the train. In our case it was the Denver Zephyr of the Burlington Route. Except for trips on the New Haven Camp train, it was the first train I had ever ridden which wasn't the Pennsylvania Railroad. It was pulled by EMD diesel E units rather than the more familiar (to me) electric GG-1s. We traveled coach. Our coaches appeared to be a bit older than the ones used by the regular passengers, and they lacked leg rests. But they were clean and in good repair, and the seats reclined way farther back than the PRR and New Haven corridor coaches I was used to on the NEC. They had a separate dining car for us, and the chow was, again, nothing to write home about. I suspect the CB&Q offered different price points for the meals and the Scout office picked one of the lower ones.
The ride was great. The cars were a lot quieter than the rattly old PRR coaches I was used to, and the track was in good condition. The seats were large and comfortable. The scenic highlight was crossing the Mississippi river right before dinner. It seemed like the most massive river in the world, though when I rode the current Zephyr a couple of years ago and crossed the same bridge, it didn't seem to be a big as I remembered it. I actually slept pretty well. Was it the superiority of the train over the bus, or was I just so tired from the night before that I conked out? When it got light we were in eastern Colorado and a whole different world. Not the mountains yet, but it was dry brown (it was summer) short grass semi-arid prairie. Like I said, first time I had ever been west and saw how the landscape changes. As we got closer to Denver, we could see the snow-covered Rockies in the distance. And then we arrived.
The Denver station sure looked like it was passed its prime --- It looked kind of empty and much bigger than it needed to be for the trains that served it. But, no matter, we were loaded on to buses and quickly (a lot more quickly than nowadays, given the growth of traffic over the years) we were on I(-25 heading south. The Front Range seemed pretty impressive to us Eastern boys; the mountains were steeper than the Appalachians and had only scrubby trees, not the lush green forests we were used to. I think the driver made some crack about us Eastern kids finally seeing some real mountains, though from I-25, you really can't see the snow-covered peaks of the Continental Divide. We climbed Raton Pass on the highway and then ran into Raton, and the Cimarron, where Philmont is located. I think we arrived in time for lunch, which was served in a typical camp dining hall. Some of the guys in my group thought they were going to do this trek carrying World War 2 Army surplus rucksacks. After humping them around in Chicago and Denver, they realized the error of their ways and headed for the well-equipped camp store to purchase nice modern aluminum frame backpacks with comfy padded straps. I already had such a rig, so I got to lounge around the camp looking at the semi desert scenery and a spectacular mountain peak called the Tooth of Time.
Our 10 day trip was great, we packed about 50 miles through various mountain scenery (a lot more lush when you got to high elevations), we threw snowballs in July on the summit of an 11,000 foot peak, and had a trail ride on horseback through the desert. Anyway, we returned to the base camp, and it was back on buses for the trip home.
We spent an extra night on the way back, stopping at Fort Carson, near Colorado Springs. I'm not sure why, though we were all about 3 or 4 years from being prime draft bait. Maybe they thought we might like to see what was facing us. I don't remember how they bunked us, but I do remember they had a nice little military museum, where we learned that the most modern army in the world (ours) was using crossbows in Vietnam in 1968. They even had one on exhibit. The food at the mess hall they took us too was pretty good, to. They also showed us Cheyenne Mountain nearby, The NORAD HQ and where they would run WW3, but they didn't give us a tour.
The next day, we returned to Denver, and back on the Zephyr, the Denver Zephyr, that is. The ride was similar to the ride out, but after dinner, dissatisfied with the fare offered in the scout grouup dining car, I made my way back to the dome care, where there was a "tavern-lounge" or whatever, called the Chuckwagon. There I got a personal pizza (I don't think they called it that back then) for the grand sum of $5. According the the Department of Labor inflation calculator, that's about $36 in today's money. It was a pretty good pizza, though. Not microwaved, that's for sure. After I ate the pizza, I went up in the dome car and watched the train roll through the dar. It was great fun to look ahead and see the signals change from green to red as the locomotive passed. After a while, I returned to my car and went to sleep.
One other great thing about those old trains was that they didn't just have little airline style toilets at the end of the car, they had a whole lounge (One for gents, one for ladies at either end of the car.) They had a couple of little toilet compartments (when you flushed, you could see the tracks and ties rushing by), and sinks and mirrors for washing, combing your hair, etc., It also served as a changing room. The lounges were the width of a bedroom and resulted in there being a side corridor at each end to connect the main cabin with the doors at the end of each car. This really cut down on the noise caused by people opening car doors to pass between cars. At the end of the Penn Central era, they would sometimes run similar long distance cars on NEC trains. That was always a treat, in addition to the extra legroom, you'd get a nice quiet ride.
Once we got to Chicago, no tour this time, they just put us on buses, and off we went east. We rolled through Indiana and Ohio in the dark, and as it was getting light, we came to a stop somewhere on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Turns out that one of the buses (not ours, fortunately) broke down. They decided to keep us all together, so we had to wait around for a while until Trailways could send out a rescue bus. Soon after that, we were back in Philadelphia with many takes to tell our folks.
The next time I took a long distance train it was about 5 years later, and it was run by Amtrak.
Last edited by a moderator:
