San Diego to L.A.: Tracks and Fields

I slung my sleek, silver Concorde bag over my shoulder as the conductor helped me up the steps of the train at the Santa Fe depot in downtown San Diego. The bag’s Air France luggage tag dangled from the overhead rack, the only hint of speed on this far-from-jet-set trip.

The train ride north was relaxing and carefree. There were no lines or hassles at the station, no assigned seats or security checks. I rode in a clean and cool no-smoking coach, two cars back from a cafe bar where hot coffee was served in plastic cups with slotted lids for sipping without spilling.

It was midday and midweek. Not an obvious commuter was in sight. The pace was so loose that we made a special stop in San Clemente to pick up a group of beachgoers who were heading back to Fullerton. The conductor told me that Amtrak makes special stops for groups of 15 or more.

The greatest wonder of a train ride today may be the faces of schoolchildren, those hand-holding, badge-bedecked youngsters for whom the trip is a first.

They did not care that it took 3 hours and 15 minutes to get to Los Angeles and, that day, neither did I. I’d heard planes roaring off from San Diego’s Lindbergh Field and was glad for the smaller sounds of the rails. I stared at crowded freeways near Anaheim and was glad not to be driving into the afternoon sun.

Battle of the Buds

We paused three times to let southbound trains pass. The prettiest wait was near a flower field in Carlsbad, where the earth was a flag of seven stripes.

“I’ve never seen such colors in gladiolus,” said a white-haired woman by the window.

“That’s because they’re not glads, they’re stock,” said her companion, tapping her book for emphasis.

“Some are ranunculuses,” snipped a young man in the aisle who dropped his opinion and kept walking.

I only know they were pink, white, yellow, salmon, crimson, lavender and purple.

During a stop near a grove of sycamores south of Del Mar, I admired a massive orange sculpture that rises like the Fourth of July from the lawn of the Naiman Tech Center above Sorrento Valley and Interstate 5. This artwork, with its rockets and plumes, is 40 feet tall and aimed, in friendly fashion, at outer space. Its name is Stargazer.

The sea is the sight, of course, on the southerly part of this run, but so are the stations that reflect old Southern California. San Diego has nice arches and tiles, but it needs a hug of bougainvillea. San Juan Capistrano wins for flora, food and the easy stroll to the town’s historic mission and gardens, with or without swallows. The train does not stop at Carlsbad; its green-trim and white-frame station is now the Chamber of Commerce.

The train wends below the bluffs of South San Clemente that used to hold President Nixon’s Western White House. It ends up at Los Angeles’ Union Station with its marble floors and stolid, high-backed armchairs arranged two-by-two in the wood-beamed waiting room. A tile sign still says “Vestibule.” From the front patio you can see the lights of Dodger Stadium.

Falling Behind Schedule

I waved for a cab. We might have been on time, I mused, if we had kept going forward. But somewhere north of Fullerton, the engineer had announced that we’d be backing up to Buena Park. He did not say why.

“Do you hear that, conductor?” he asked over the intercom after we had come to a stop. There was no response. We started backing down the track, slowly at first and then faster than we’d been going forward.

I never saw the conductor again, and I trust he is OK. I had this brief image of a nice man stepping out for a smoke, a man who admired my Concorde bag, a man who never returned.