On the Southern Crescent Rolling Toward Summer

With long, lordly wo-o-ofs, cheery B-flat chirps and an occasional deep commanding harrumph, the glistening silver serpent curls through a land its ancestors helped define. It may not inhabit the terrain much longer. Like the Furbish lousewort and the snail darter, the Southern Crescent is an endangered species. The aging Crescent is the nation's last lavish, privately run, long-haul passenger train. But its owner, the highly profitable and efficient Southern Railway System, claims to have lost $6.7 million last year on the Crescent's Washington-New Orleans run.

The railroad has petitioned the Interstate Commerce Commission for permission to retire the train, and meanwhile is trying to persuade the Amtrak system to assume its operation. That of course could mean substitution of all-coach subway cars and sandwich bars for first-class sleeping cars and gently swaying restaurants--per ardua ad Amtrak.

However that may be, no funeral vapors suffuse Platform 14 at New York City's Penn Station, from which the Crescent pulls out each day at 2:45 p.m. under Amtrak's auspices. (Southern takes over at Washington.) Rather, for the passenger embarking on the 1,378-mile, 28-hour trip to New Orleans, the Crescent City, there is the comforting scent of soap and polish, the promise of solicitude, of pride and punctuality. Not to mention a rockaby sleep, punctuated by the occasional hissing stop, and a glimpse of some dimly lit Southern station in the dark.

Car 0139 has a name, the "Pacific Cove." Bedroom A is a neatly designed nest for the bird of passage, with toilet, retractable washbasin and hot water; a clothes closet; a seven-foot chaise longue that converts at night into a comfortable bed; air conditioning and heating; a large window so clean it could pose for a Windex commercial; and a button to summon a. sure enough, smiling porter. There is red carpeting on the floor and even on the corridor walls of the 32-year-old, 91-ton Budd-built first-class car. There are privacy and freedom and a sense of camaraderie aboard. Things not there seem almost as important: no seat belts, Muzak, or portentous announcements; no sardine-can seating, yowling infants, elusive nanny-stewardesses, plastic trays of plastic food. And, St. Christopher be praised, no made-for-choo-choo movies.

Who needs movies on a long-distance passenger train? The odyssey provides enough walk-around human drama to fuel a TV series. (It might be called The Off-Broadway Limited.) A young woman, in tears after midnight, confesses that she is going home to Louisiana after a tragic love affair. A black businessman muses somberly on the humiliations that clouded his childhood. A retired railroad executive recounts the great train trips he has made around the world. An elderly waiter talks of the days when he and the rest of the dining-car crew on some routes had to sleep at night on the tables they had tended all day. (Now they usually sleep in extra berths.)

And through the pristine glass there is that great swath of the United States, a land that can barely be glimpsed from the interstate highway or sensed from 35,000 ft. To be sure, the view from Bedroom A or the dome car exposes every automobile graveyard, garbage dump, trailer park, parking lot, drive-in, burger joint, shopping mall, sewage plant, forsaken factory, slum and rural hovel in the unwritten guidebook of desecrated America. Its obverse, as the Crescent weaves its whistling way south toward summer, is a varied, often startlingly beautiful landscape of feathery woods and forests, roses and rhododendrons, pastures and cornfields, laced with urgent streams and dreaming lakes. The earth turns from New Jersey silt to Maryland sand, from Georgia red clay to Alabama's black bottom. Grand estates and hardscrabble farms rush by, punctuated by hamlets as dour as a Grant Wood visage. The voyager is voyeur, peering into the discrete life of the land and its inhabitants.

After the train's first leg from New York, Southern puts its premier cru seal on the train at Washington by attaching a kitchen-dining car and installing its own crew. The train now has 13 cars, including four coaches, five sleepers and a lounge car with a master suite that boasts the only permanent rolling shower bath on American rails. In Atlanta in the morning, the overnight diner is replaced with a clean car, another crew, and a whole new cast of Pullman porters.

Southbound, the Crescent serves dinner both evenings of the trip (the first night, until 10:30 p.m.). "Dinner in the diner/ Nothing could be finer." Well, almost. Each table is dressed with linen cloth and napkins, heavy silverware and a vase of three fresh yellow chrysanthemums. The fare runs to excellent Southern fried chicken with cream gravy, roast beef and steak; there are hot breads and lemon pie. One couple does object testily when the steward is unable to produce a corkscrew for the bottle of Moulin-a-Vent '76 they had brought to table. It turns out that the train does serve wine, but "it's all twist-top," the steward explains. Smoking is banned in the dining car. Both breakfast servings produce perfectly cooked eggs any-style with a choice of grits and cream gravy, sausage, bacon, hash, broiled ham and, as a post-Atlantan flourish, exemplary French toast. All food is cooked on big old stoves fired by Presto Logs.

Who rides the rails these days? In the sparsely populated coach sections, many passengers are black families with irrepressibly active children; for them the unfettered train trip is clearly more comfortable and practical than airliner or bus. A number of elderly passengers, mostly occupying bedrooms and roomettes, relish the scenery and the food --in no hurry. The surprising thing about the passenger roster is the proportion of young people aboard. Footloose and relatively affluent, they represent a new youth fad: a return to the rails, sanctioned for every environmental, ecological and romantic reason.

Curly-haired Chris Murphy, 23, is taking 2 1/2 months off from his job in Binghamton, N.Y., to see the U.S. by train. Steve Singer, a CBS producer, and his friend Judy Wilbur are headed for a vacation in New Orleans, convinced that "this is the way to go." On their first American visit, a young English couple, Donald and Tania Stewart, get off at Greenville to see the Great Smokies. For young voyagers who never rode the old Chiefs and Limiteds, the passage is the message. "Nostalgia," said one, "is for people who ride phony coal burners at Disneyland." (Note for nostalgia freaks: the Crescent no longer goes clickety-clack; the rails are now continuously welded in 1,400-ft. segments from Washington to New Orleans. En route, the train passes through 15,000 grade crossings.)

Many of the Crescent personnel also are younger than they used to be. The Washington-to-Atlanta sleeping-car porter is amiable John Fox, a 29-year-old Bahamian. The chef who takes over in Atlanta confides that he is "25 years, six months and five days old." Not that the old guard has changed entirely. Grizzled Luther King, the black sleeping-car porter who replaces Fox in Atlanta, is a kindly, dignified gentleman, typical of the old Pullman employee. He has worked the rails since 1942, when he made $150 a month; now he makes a guaranteed $11,000 a year. Still he has to be away from home five days each week.

He may soon be home more often, though. At nearly every stop along Crescent's southwesterly slope, the ICC will conduct hearings on what it calls "Case FD 28697" and the economic impact of the train's demise. Quite possibly the Crescent's elegant rolling stock may be sold to Mexico's railway system, where the old Twentieth Century Limited is alive and well cared for, running nightly between Mexico City and Guadalajara.

Arriving spang on time at 7:50 p.m. in New Orleans' Union Terminal, the Crescent disgorges its passengers, many in search of taxis and buses and busses. An unhurried few, passengers and employees, linger on the platform to shake hands and say goodbye. Steward Steve Cosmos refuses a tip. "See you in Mexico," says the retired railroad man. "God bless!" says Luther King. That night, in the opulence of the Pontchartrain Hotel, the immobile voyager cannot sleep. He misses the creaks and bleeps and wee-hour talk of yesterday. Or maybe yesteryear? -- Michael Demarest

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