“This is the only stop we’ll be making between here and Washington D.C. So I suggest you take care of whatever necessities come to mind.”
— Principal Moss, “Senior Trip” (1995)
When last we left you, I was in Baltimore with Ken Mitchroney. Looking around for something to do on Monday after sleeping late and warming up from the previous night’s frozen game between the O’s and Sox, we discovered it was after noon by the time they decided to get up and get going. So, a short walk took them to Phillips Seafood Buffet for lunch. Filled with all that good seafood, what to do next?
No baseball that day or night, not until 3:05 p.m. Tuesday. Funny thing. Right around the corner from their hotel, and just next to Oriole Park is the MARC train station at Camden Yards. And for a mere seven bucks and about sixty-three minutes of time, Washington D.C.’s Union Station is a lot closer than you would expect. Now being this is commuter rail service, there are no mid-day trains on the schedule. So a bit more of a walk killed more time and calories after the big lunch. Departing Camden Yards at 3:30 p.m. on Train #853, it’s a good trip through the urban and the rural and back again into the urban.
Arriving in Washington (almost on the advertised – 4:33 p.m.), there is a good view of the railroad service facilities for Amtrak, MARC, and the Virginia Railway Express all just north of downtown. Creeping into Union Station, there’s was private railroad car “Dover Harbor“. Once she was one of many cars in the Pullman fleet. Now she’s one of the last of the classic heavyweight sleeping cars still rolling the rails. Owned and operated by the Washington D.C. chapter of the National Railway Historical Society, she’s got a full schedule of trips for 2004 along with availability for charters.
The “Dover Harbor” isn’t the only classic car here. The Norfolk Southern Railroad has a business car stationed here semi-permanently. The “Marco Polo”, a classic open-platform heavyweight business car, has seen it’s share of history, and is somewhat a contemporary (built in 1927 by Pullman) to the “Tamalpais” (built in 1923 by Pullman), used on the recent Reno trips out of Emeryville. It looks pretty good in classic Pullman green with gold lettering.
A walk around the Union Station concourse gives a great view of how this classic railroad station has been adapted to serve long distance and commuter rail passengers. Shops and restaurants of all kinds can keep folks busy for a while. An interesting trivial note is that the structure was designed by Daniel Hudson Burnham, who was the supervising architect of the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago (where Elias Disney, Walt and Roy’s father, worked as a carpenter on buildings for the Exposition). (Worth a read is “The Devil In The White City” with a look at that Exposition from a unique perspective. So much so that I ended up buying a copy of it at the Borders bookstore in Union Station. I later managed to lose it in at BWI while waiting for a late plane to arrive. But another copy is on it’s way, and I’ll have a review of it down the road somewhere…)
The classic railroad station always was a place where passengers came and went, but with much more than just that. There were news stands, restaurants, barber shops, cocktail lounges and a whole lot more. As passenger trains declined, so did the stations and many of those functions disappeared. Union Station in Washington was no different as it became the Visitors Center for our nation’s bicentennial. The effort to transform the space was something less than a success and at one point there was serious consideration given to total demolition of the structure.
Finally, a three-year renovation was completed at a cost of over $160 million, and the station re-emerged as the major transportation facility it was meant to be. Now it is a hive of activity for travelers, tourists and commuters all. It now is home to all kinds of shops and restaurants to tempt them all. At one point, there was even a train store among the shops. That’s gone now, but I did manage to find all of the usual train magazines and a few good books on sale at Borders, including a “Union Station – A History of Washington’s Grand Terminal”. It’s a fine look back as well as offering great images of the restoration. (One didn’t find it’s way into my luggage due to capacity issues, but I’m sure to add one to the library soon…)
All too soon it was time to catch the northbound train #852 back to Camden Yards with a 5:51 p.m. departure from Union Station, and a 6:54 p.m. arrival. We chatted with the operator watching the projector for the images being projected onto the B&O Warehouse. He was all bundled up against the cold and wind. It may not have been as brutal as the night before, but the wind and cold definitely were conspiring against anyone sitting out in the open that night. Wishing him well, we made a bee-line back for the Sheraton Inn Inner Harbor and the Orioles Grille. That lunch at Phillips was a while before and we were ready for sustenance and a small amount of medicinal libation to go along with it. We finished off the evening by watching Billy Crystal’s Yankee baseball homage, “61*“.
The next day was a combination of walk, work and baseball with a 3:05 p.m. game time. Ah, more sautéed crab cakes… But Wednesday, that was an early start to get in a full day in D.C. before more baseball in Baltimore that night. The last train of the morning fleet to the Capital is #851 with an 8:15 am departure. It started out well enough with lots of empty seats. Soon enough those seats filled up, but the speed of the train seemed to be kept down to a dull roar, and obviously not the pace of the day before. Likely we had a freight train ahead of us, as there were other trains headed northbound as we went south. Eventually, the dispatcher must have gotten a clue as we crossed over to another track and went around the slower train. We managed to arrive about twenty minutes later than the scheduled 9:22 a.m. and headed off in search of the Smithsonian and it’s museums.
Contrary to the temperature of the past three days, it was sunny and in the upper seventies for our day in Washington. Guess that just goes to prove the old saying, “If you don’t like the weather, just wait a bit and it will change.” (Especially as the next day turned cloudy and cool as rain moved in… Sheesh!)
Armed with a tourist destination map from one of the local tour companies, we managed to take the long way around the Capitol and head down the mall in search of the brick structure that is home to the Smithsonian. Had we taken a few more minutes to study it, we probably would have saved about an extra mile of walking. Instead, we took the scenic route (yes, it was during the annual proliferation of blossoms) and burned about an extra half-hour or so seeing the sights and detours for various construction and security issues. Ah, our tax dollars at play…
The view of the Capitol from the Mall or the non-construction side
Here’s the map we should have used, even with the not to scale notes and missing buildings. Getting the idea? None the less, we walked down to the Smithsonian and got this map. Armed with information, our first target for the day was the “Baseball As America” exhibition in the Natural History Museum just across the Mall.
Now as much of a baseball fan as I am, this was just great! A good mix of history and popular culture presented in a way that does not trivialize either one. Some fine artifacts and classic images bring the game to life for visitors in what I like to call a stealth-educational pass. A fine mix of old and new. For example, how about the bats of Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa all side by side? Works for me! Or why not get the opportunity to view a classic piece of American art such as Norman Rockwell’s “Bottom Of The Sixth”.
According to the web pages, the exhibit has two more stops scheduled after the Smithsonian visit. St Louis, at the Missouri Historical Society from December through April 2005, and then Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts, May through August 2005. Hopefully there will be more after these as this exhibit is worth a visit. The exhibit has a wonderful gift shop as well with a variety of tempting purchases just waiting to be made.
Next on our tour was a visit just to the west at the American History Museum for the “America On The Move” exhibition. Let’s see, trains, planes, automobiles and boats. Think this might have an interest for me? And would it hurt that AAA is one of the sponsors? Probably not…
Southern Railway 1401, stuffed and mounted for Smithsonian visitors.
A classic steam locomotive, and it’s too bad she can’t come out to play anymore. In the classic green of such trains as the Crescent Limited, she’s a highlight of the exhibit.
Television artifacts are also on display at this museum, if in a limited number. Archie and Edith Bunker’s living room chairs from “All In The Family” are the bigger pieces, with such items as Howdy Doody and Oscar the Grouch as well. They lead into Julia Child’s Kitchen from her Cambridge, Massachusetts home. For me, it was very interesting to see almost the same set of cookbooks arrayed as they were in my mother’s kitchen.
After that, it was definitely time for some lunch. We took in one of the finer points of dining on the Mall and enjoyed a fine hot dog and soda from one of the many street side carts. And it didn’t hurt to sit down for a few minutes as well.
Bucking up, it was time for the afternoon’s challenge – the National Air & Space Museum. Walking down the street, we noted a long line waiting outside. That was due to the x-ray and metal detectors at the entrance. (Something we went through at all of the Museum’s, and it was no worse than the similar bag checks at Disneyland.)
Now, this is a place I’ve drooled over for a while now. It’s like a candy store waiting to be explored. And I was not disappointed. It’s there as you walk into the lobby. On your right is John Glenn’s “Friendship 7” Mercury space capsule, and on the left is the Gemini IV space capsule of Edward White and James McDivitt. For someone who grew up during the Space Race, it’s like being right there as the first American orbits the Earth or takes a walk in space. For those moments, I was back to being one of those kids who imagined living in space as something we would all just take for granted. And from there, it only gets better!
Suspended above you is Chuck Yeager’s Bell X-1 “Glamorous Glennis” directly across from Charles Lindbergh’s Ryan NYP “Spirit of St. Louis”. It’s impressive to think that in only twenty years, we progressed from crossing the Atlantic to breaking the sound barrier. And the planes that did both are right there…
No pun intended, but the only way you can go from here is up!
It was very similar to the feelings I had on my first visit to the Disney Studio in Burbank. These were things that were specific moments from those years I was growing up that I can look back on now as placeholders of a sort. And in a moment, maybe that’s part of what the attraction is all about for museums such as this. Being able to make a physical connection to something that was a moment in your own past or that of your family. Perhaps it is a visit to a battlefield such as Gettysburg and knowing that this is the spot where a family member fought and died for something the believed strongly in. I felt that the only time I rode the train east of Sparks to Salt Lake. My great-grandfather made that trip thousands of times in his career, and to retrace those miles connected me to his life and experiences.
And that’s exactly what heritage tourism is all about. That connection is what continues to bring visitors out.
Another one of those moments was hiding downstairs in the lower level of the gift shop at the Air & Space Museum. I’ve always been a fan of Star Trek, so much so that I met my wife and other friends on the train riding to a convention in San Francisco back in 1977. Now I cheated a bit and knew this was here. Yet the moment I actually saw the original Enterprise model, it was again an emotional moment. Kind of the Bambi in the headlights kind of thing.
Safe behind the plexiglass, NCC-1701 has been restored to as it appeared during
filming of the original “Star Trek” television series.
Now for the difficult part of the afternoon, shopping that birthday gift for my father. He’s a somewhat voracious reader, especially books on World War II history. So buying a book here that he does not have or has not read was something of a challenge. I took a gamble by purchasing an updated copy of a “Half A Wing, Three Engines and A Prayer” by Brian D. O’Neill. Turned out to be a good choice as he hadn’t read it or seen it before.
The longest line all day was for the reproduction dog tags for sale at only five bucks a copy. I was tempted, but the visiting school groups had it surrounded.
We managed to see all of the galleries that were open that afternoon, even if quickly. Yet I would love to go back and take it in at a much more relaxed pace. And a visit to the Museum’s new Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center next to the Washington Dulles International Airport offers more of those moments to take in. There are a pair of web cams inside to offer a tease, just in case you might be interested too.
All too soon, it was time to head off across the Mall back to Union Station for Train #846 with it’s 4:13 p.m. departure for Camden Yards. Making a limited number of stops, it was all business getting folks home and lots of fans (both O’s and Bo-Sox) to the ball park in plenty of time to enjoy the game.
For this night, we enjoyed seats on the Club Level behind the Orioles dugout. It was another fine sautéed crab cake sandwich and an Uncle Teddy’s fresh hot pretzel with lots of butter and cinnamon.
Pre-game festivities at Oriole Park as seen from the Club Level
All too soon it was time to bid adieu to Baltimore. Yet, the folks at Southwest had other ideas and my flight was delayed almost two hours making for a wee hours of the morning arrival into San Jose. And it didn’t help that the battery on the iBook was well used before the flight, thanks to the wait. Couldn’t find a place to recharge that worked in the area, so that’s why you got the rushed column finished literally after one a.m. two weeks ago.
So that ends the tale of Baltimore and Washington D.C. for now. Thanks to the folks at the Orioles for their hospitality and to Kenny for inviting me to join him for the great time, and for all of the pictures that went along with these two columns.
Next week? The first of a couple of oldies but goodies. Digging into the boxes in my storage locker, I’m reprising and revising a couple of book reviews that I hope you’ll enjoy.
After that? Well, if the fates are kind, I’ll be taking you on tour of some of the various amusement parks from the Bay Area — past, present and future? Stay tuned!
I would like to say thanks to those of you who have shown support for the message boards by making a donation to keep them advertisement free. As that has yet to happen, I can’t do it. Kind of a shame considering at last look there were over 950 people registered on the boards… Come on folks. In the words of Robert Heinlein, “TANSTAAFL!” (Translation: “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch!”)