OVERNIGHT TRAINS
(Written April 20th)
I read an article on The Street which appeared on Apple News which gives me access to a huge number of newspapers and magazines and saves me money on subscriptions with no need to recycle magazines. It is beginning to cross my mind that artificial intelligence, not a person, is selecting which articles are brought to my attention. I‘ll have to compare what I am offered to what others who give Apple News are offered.
But in any case this article on The Street is tailored so specifically to me, showing artificial intelligence to be brilliant, that I find the story more wildly comic than most Americans would. AI has me perfectly singled out.
It is about a service that is about to be offered by Dreamstar Lines Inc which is going to offer a premium overnight service between Los Angeles and San Francisco. You will get a private room and can go to sleep in one city and wake up refreshed and ready to go to work at breakfast time in the other. This saves a six or seven hour drive, which leaves you exhausted, or all of the actual time of a short haul flight that includes getting to the airport early, going through security, dealing with inevitable delays and requiring the cost of a hotel room in the other city. The train is also environmentally better with less of a carbon footprint. It makes perfect sense, brilliant innovative idea.
It makes so much sense that it has been the way Indians travel overnight by rail for the last forty years. India has an enormous train system with many trains a day running between major cities. Almost always there is an overnight train that is fully booked. We took overnight trains four times in the month that we were in India and had a great time on each. There are more expensive first class compartments but we always travel second class airconditioned. Airconditioning means it is cool in the stifling summer and warm in the chilly winter.
In a second class air conditioned compartment on one side of the aisle through the car there are two seats that transform to two berths on above the other parallel to the direction of the train and on the other side of the aisle there are compartments where six people have reserved seats on padded benches. Everyone is given two sheets, a blanket, a towel and a pillow which are stacked on an upper berth until needed. Then at about 9 or 10 the six people, who usually don‘t know each other, will by mutual agreement lift up the back seat of the lower bench, attach chains from the outside of the upper berth so that this back of the bench becomes a berth, and leaves the bottom bench as a berth. There are narrow metal ladders on the aisle end of the berths so that people can crawl up into the top and middle berth. Everyone‘s luggage is stored under the bottom berth.
Then each person makes up their bed with an ingenious fold in the berth covering making it possible to fasten the bottom sheet to the bed, then they get under the top sheet and blanket with a pillow under their head (and maybe the small bag that they don‘t want lifted during the night) and go to sleep. There are reading lights at each level so that people can read if they want to and a curtain over the end of the compartment with low night lights on the aisle so that all night it is dark and people can sleep, lulled by the rocking of the train. Each car has an attendant who will wake you if your stop is in the middle of the night.
At six or seven in the morning as the train approaches the destination everyone throws the bedding onto the top berth, folds down the back of the lower berth and takes their seats. There is a toilet/bathing room at the end of the car so that people can freshen up.
Almost always on the Shatabdi express level train supper is served at your seat on a tray, either included in the price of the ticket or at a nominal price of a dollar or two. In the morning chai wallahs come by selling chai in plastic cups and if the train arrives later in the morning breakfast, non veg (eggs) or veg (potato cakes), is served. You arrive at your destination refreshed just as the Dreamstar promises that you will.
The Dreamstar does promise you a private room, but in this case I prefer the Indian compartment. In the Indian compartment you engage your neighbor, find out where they live and why they are traveling and often have a great conversation. On the Indian train at night there is silence, but during the day there are people coming through with tea and drinks and snacks. Indian trains stop often so you can get off and buy a newspaper or a snack or a drink on the platform. Indian train stations are fascinating with all kinds of people spread out on the platform or walking the platform: orange robed sadhus, colorful village families, maybe even a cow or two. So Indian trains are much more interesting with all of the advantages of the overnight Dreamstar train, except for one thing.
An overnight train in India which has all the same conveniences, which also saves you a hotel room costs about $20 or $30. The Dreamstar train, sold as a brilliant new idea, costs $300 to $1000 (the cost of a flight to Europe) for the overnight ride.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 