Do slower forms of travel draw more interesting people?
Or, does slow travel give us the space and time to listen to people’s stories?
From an Amish grandfather visiting his granddaughter at St Jude’s Hospital to an Italian couple traveling the U.S. by rail for a solid month, I have met — and written about — some interesting people aboard Amtrak.
These experiences over my 23 years riding trains beg the question:
- Are the people on long-distance trains really more interesting?
- Or, does everyone have an interesting story to tell, and train travel just facilitates conversations that otherwise would not happen?
I spent a lot of time thinking about this question as I worked on my master’s capstone project on slow train travel.
Looking for some insight from others, I posed the question in an online Amtrak forum. Among the answers I received:
- Yes, trains do draw a more interesting subset of people. Especially as most “normal” people (outside the Northeast Corridor) probably don’t normally consider trains to be even part of the range of options they would consider when travelling, Amtrak almost by definition draws people who “think outside the box”. —cirdan
- I think there are people with interesting stories everywhere without regard to social, economic, cultural, age, etc. status. The train offers more opportunity to listen and share if one is so inclined. My favorite encounters occurred in the observation and dining cars. Not everyone wants to engage so I would gently put out invitations to talk and honor reticence. —susanlindsey
- I’ve met some real characters traveling on the train. Not saying negatively, just really weird in a fun way, or have fascinating tales to tell of themselves. On the long-distance trains there’s more time and more opportunities, plus the lack of the expectation of getting somewhere in a hurry which, I think, de-stresses people. —alpha3
And, in a conversation last year with Thibault Constant, a native of France who has reviewed more than 250 trains around the world (great person to follow on Instagram or Twitter), I asked the same question. His thoughts:
“Everybody is interesting in his own way.
We all have stories, and the longest trains, where you spend a long time, makes it interesting because as I say, you have nothing else to do so why not talk about your life, your experiences?
So I don’t think people are more interesting, but the train provokes that conversation.”
While opinions are varied, one thing almost everyone agrees on is that Amtrak trains provide the time and space necessary for conversation.
When you are on a long — and often delayed — train ride, time seems to move at a different pace, offering the opportunity to sit and listen to what other people have to say.
Also, these interactions would not have been possible without a feature unique to Amtrak’s Superliners: the sightseer lounge.
With windows that wrap into the ceiling, a handful of booths, as well as seats that face the windows, it is a great place to chat with fellow passengers while America rolls by.
A nearly 70-year-old academic journal offers another reason why train conversations might be more interesting: anonymity.
Written in 1954, around the time domestic train travel began its deep decline, Maurice Farber’s “Some Hypotheses on the Psychology of Travel” suggests that being “geographically and psychologically between two worlds” brings a lifting on inhibitions:
“One may note the curious phenomenon in a train of the passenger in the adjoining seat who in the course of a journey discloses to a total stranger many of his innermost secrets which he would not even hint at to life-long friends. Here, of course, it is exactly the anonymity of the stranger, the fact that after the trip he will never be seen again, which elicits the intimate material. One must keep up certain appearances within one’s peer group, and a pent-up hunger to communicate one’s real situation, with resultant loneliness, develops in our society.”
Now, this may be less true in the Information Age, when anyone can look up anyone, but there still may be a thread of truth to the idea that not having to keep up appearances might lead people to open up more.
I am not alone in wondering why everyone on a train seems to be interesting.
British author Jenny Diski set out on Amtrak with the goal of staring out the window, alone and lost in thought. In her 2002 book about the experience, Stranger on a Train: Daydreaming and Smoking Around America with Interruptions, she writes about having had conversation after conversation with people whose stories she found unexpectedly interesting:
“There was not the slightest possibility, I realised as I stubbed out my last cigarette of the evening on the platform of Chemult station, of coming across anyone who led the kind of uneventful and routine life that the vast majority of humanity were supposed to lead. Wherever these hoards of the normal were, they didn’t travel by train. Or not on my trains.”
Having traveled more than 35,000 miles on Amtrak, I can tell you that long-distance trains provide the time and space to get to know people we would never otherwise meet.
- We are not going to hear those stories on a plane.
- We do not hear them on the subway commute.
- And we are certainly not going to find them in our Twitter, Instagram or Threads feeds.
But a slow train, meandering across the American landscape at an average speed of 45 miles per hour, fosters conversations and interactions that are otherwise lacking — and much needed — in our everyday lives.
What do you think?
If you enjoyed this story, check out my site, slowspeedrail.com, where I explore the social, environmental and psychological benefits of long-distance train travel — or the related pieces below.
