Trains

I was recently reminded of a 1912 article published in The Healdsburg Tribune which reported that Healdsburg would soon have eight passenger trains daily. The article describes the increased convenience for Healdsburg businessmen who would be able to make a round trip to the City in one day, and for the San Francisco businessman “whose family might be spending the summer at one of the many resorts” in our area. I assume the link across the bay to San Francisco was a ferry from Sausalito. Anyway, it sounds pretty good to me and I hope I’m alive and kicking if and when the SMART train is running along the same route as 1912 trains and replicates their service.
I was ordained and assigned to St Luke’s, Calistoga, in 1969. I visited a man in the Calistoga Convalescent Hospital.  I was twenty five, and he was  in a late 90’s.  He loved to tell stories and I loved to listen to him tell stories.  (I guess this is what might pass for pastoral care.)  He told me about riding in a buckboard with his father from Middletown over Mt St. Helena on a moonlit night to meet a morning train in Calistoga.  The railroad from Vallejo to Calistoga was completed in 1868 so I assume my friend saw his first steam locomotive and train in the 1870’s as a boy of eight or ten years of age. 
Lois Winston was a pillar of St Luke’s and, for that matter, of Calistoga.  She was the publisher of the Calistogan as her father had been before her.   She entered Cal in the 1920’s and her father insisted that she come home frequently.  The trip home was by ferry from Berkeley to San Francisco, then another ferry from San Francisco to Vallejo, and finally from Vallejo to Calistoga on the San Francisco and Napa Valley Railroad, an electric inter-urban train that ran on tracks parallel to the Southern Pacific tracks.  Lois was a real lady but she didn’t mind using some strong language to make a point.  That was a **** fine system, she’d say, and they were **** crazy to tear it up.
I grew up in the town of Napa long after the San Francisco and Napa Valley Railroad had been torn up.  I don’t think I was ever on a passenger train until I went to seminary in New York City.  One of my Sunday field work assignments was in Stamford, Connecticut, and each Sunday morning I would take a Long Island Railroad train out of Penn Station for the forty- five minute (or so) ride to Stamford in order to get to St Francis’ Church before the 8:00 a.m. Eucharist.  In more recent years Bonnie and I have taken the Amtrak Coast Starlight south from Oakland to Santa Barbara, a lovely daytime trip, the last portion of which runs right along the coast.  We also took the Starlight north to Seattle when one of our daughters was living there.  This is the starlight part of the trip.  We had a lovely dinner in the dining car and spent the night in a comfortable sleeper.
Far and away our most exciting and memorable train trips were taken in the summer of 1968.  We spent that summer in Oxford where I was to do a directed reading course at Pusey House arranged by our dear friend and benefactor Father Arthur MacDonald Allchin.  Fr Allchin was a man of great holiness and we named our son after him.  Before settling down in Oxford for the summer we had a thirty day Eurail pass and did what for two California kids in their twenties was our version of the grand tour.  We flew from New York City to London with a stop in Reykjavick on Icelandic Airlines, then from London to Luxenbourg on a commuter plane.  After a night as the guests of a Roman Catholic Abbot to whom Fr Allchin gave us a letter of introduction we set out for Rome on a night train in a wagon-lit sleeping car.  At every stop during the night we would wake up and peek out the window of our sleeper.  Several times during the night customs officers boarded the train to check ID’s and passports.  Not long after sunup,  we rolled into the magnificent Milan train station.  Even though it was a bit early for ice cream I couldn’t resist stepping off the train to buy some from a vendor walking along the platform singing, “Gelati, Ice Cream,”  in a beautiful tenor voice.  Then on to Rome, and as the month progressed to Florence, and Siena; to Geneva and Taize and Salzburg; and from Salzburg to Paris on the Orient Express.   On the last day of the 30 day Eurail pass,  we took a train from Paris to Calais where we boarded a ferry to cross the English Channel to Dover, then on to London, and finally to Oxford.
So, as I said, I hope I’m alive and kicking when SMART trains are running to and from Healdsburg and connecting with a bay ferry to the City.  Like one of those 1912 business men I’ll be able to go down and back in one day if not for business then for a ball game or a day in Golden Gate Park or maybe just for the ride and to remember riding the Orient Express into Paris.  As my dear friend Lois Winston from Calistoga said, they were crazy to tear it up.
Canon Marvin Bowers is a retired clergyman and columnist for The Healdsburg Tribune. He may be reached at

fr************@gm***.com