Part Five

“Progress”

A noun. “Forward or onward movement toward a destination.”

More on that in a moment.

Day Five is unexpected warm and 88 degrees at my next stop in Ashland, Virginia, 4 hours and 253 miles due south of Altoona, Pennsylvania where my morning began. From our friends at Wikipedia.Org:

“Ashland is a town located 15 miles north of Richmond along Interstate-95 and historic Route 1 (and its bicycle version) in Hanover County, Virginia, United States. Ashland is named after the Lexington, Kentucky estate of Hanover County native and statesman Henry Clay. It is the only incorporated town in Hanover County chartered by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Although comprising only one square mile when originally incorporated in 1858, today Ashland has grown through several annexations to a size of 7.12 square miles, one of the Virginia's larger towns in terms of land area. The entire town was declared a historic district by Virginia and federally recognized in 1983.”

My accommodations are at the Henry Clay Inn, right on North Center Street and along the railroad tracks.  From their website:

“We invite you to step into the warmth, charm and hospitality of The Henry Clay Inn®. Our Georgian-style Inn is a centerpiece in historic Ashland, VA, “The Center of the Universe!” Enjoy the warm welcome of our lobby with a gorgeous fireplace and sitting area and our Drawing Room with its own fireplace, perfect for your next event or meeting. The Drawing Room opens onto our spacious porch for sitting back and enjoying the sights and sounds of Ashland and is particularly popular with our train fans. Our cozy breakfast area provides the perfect spot to enjoy our newly re-opened kitchen for full breakfast or just sip a cup of tea or coffee and read the morning paper. The majority of our guest rooms are on our second floor, which also features a parlor with fireplace and is the ideal gathering spot for good conversation or to curl up with a good book and opens onto a lovely second-floor porch. Our selection of 13 rooms offer a variety of choices for your overnight stay and all feature private baths:

And let us not forget the TRAINS. We are just across the street from the Ashland/Hanover Visitors Center, which is the historic train depot built in 1923 and is the hop on/off point for Amtrak. You can step off the porch of The Henry Clay Inn and onto the train to head east to DC, NY, Boston and all the destinations in-between. Or, head south for all the splendor of the southeast on your way to Florida! We’re a favorite for train buffs from all over, and you can often find them rocking on our front porch watching the CSX and Amtrak trains fly by.” (Been there. Done that!!)

I first came to Ashland back in October 1999. I had gone down to Wilmington, North Carolina to meet up with some fellow “Creekers” who were fans of the old WB television show “Dawson’s Creek”, which was filmed in and around Wilmington with interior scenes shot at the Screen Gems Studios located in Wilmington. The little airport in that city can and at the time was quite busy with visitors and some of the show’s stars passing thru. Had a Brush-wit-Greatness with co-star Joshua Jackson aka ‘Pacey Witter”, but I digress.

As I have been doing this blog, I have been trying to remember how I first discovered these places that I have been visiting. Twenty years ago, I was just discovering computers and didn’t have all of the money to buy the fancy machines of that time. With the help of my younger brother and a friend at News 8, I got my first Windows machine and I got a second phone line for the dial-up connection to the Internet. Google was yet to rise on the horizon and a search engine named Web Crawler was the one that helped me put these trips together. Phone calls were made to secure reservations. A long distance dialing card from now defunct MCI gave me the opportunity to make long distance phones while on the road and getting them charged to home. Maps were the way to go thanks to AAA as was a mapping program called Street Atlas from a company called Delorme Maps based in Yarmouth, Maine with headquarters just south of the outdoorsy L.L Bean on U.S. Route 1.

When I came to Altoona twenty years ago in 1996, it was my fourth trip back since 1989. Now having a home computer to work with (my first laptop was 3 years away), I remember getting this daisy wheel printer from my younger brother the computer guy and buying a box of computer paper that had the rip-away rings on each side to feed the printer. I made a whole bunch of maps that followed Conrail’s main line from Harrisburg to Altoona to Cresson. That was a LOT of paper. Filled a one inch thick binder. As I type this part of my story, a CSX container/piggy back train rumbles thru at 35 MPH. The second floor of my “office” is vibrating just a bit, which is just fine by me. 

Again, I digress.

Fast forward now to present day. I have a very nice Sager laptop, thanks to the suggestion from my son Chris, to write my blog. An iPhone 6+ keeps me in touch with the world and family back home. I can surf the Web with the iPhone!! This is part of Progress that I like. Technology moving forward. This is good progress. Computers have revolutionized so many aspects of life.

Then there is the part of Progress that does not make sense to me.

Back home in Connecticut, especially on the shoreline from Old Saybrook thru and past New London, Amtrak is trying to float this idea of not rebuilding the old New Haven Shoreline Route but wanting to build a new high speed line right thru the historic district of Old Lyme, thru part of where I live in East Lyme, and thru other places that I can’t even begin to wonder HOW they would do it. Mind you Amtrak has held a very loud town hall meeting in Old Lyme about this new main line.

And when I got here to Ashland, I decide to take a walk along North Center street thru which the old Richmond, Potomac and Fredericksburg Railroad, now CSX, main line goes right thru the middle of the town. From my vantage point here at the Henry Clay Inn, I can watch the trains go by up here on the second floor porch, outside my rail facing, second story room, number 204:

Or trackside at the Ashland Tourist Information Center. 

You are literally right next to the action. 

All trains, freight and passenger, come thru at 35 MPH during the day; 45 MPH during the night. This is one very cool place to see trains! You can even watch the trains here on the Internet at www.virtualrailfan.com for only $9.95 per month. The cameras are on top of Hometown Realty and sponsored by Tom's Toys & Trains:

And yes, I am a member.

And then I saw the signs that are on the front yards of some of the beautiful homes along North Center Street. They are from an organization called Save-Ashland.Org with the slogan NO THIRD RAIL. Apparently there is a drive to get a third set of railroad tracks built thru the heart of Ashland. As you can see from the pictures below, this is what currently exists in Ashland:

The project would effectively take out one side of North Center Street and really make things quite tight for the CSX and Amtrak. And, they want to build a new train station. All of this in anticipation of future shipping growth for CSX and the need for high speed rail between Richmond and Washington, D.C. for Amtrak.

What is here right now looks fine to me. And speaking of Amtrak, they have a train called the Cardinal that runs from New York City to Washington, DC and does a leisurely pace thru Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana to Chicago. It runs three days a week and near capacity. Amtrak would like to make it a daily train.

And in Ashland, Amtrak’s daily Auto Train runs thru from just outside Washington, D.C  in Lorton, Virginia to Sanford, Florida just outside of Orlando and Disney World. Put your car on the train, grab a roomette, and be at your destination in about 19-20 hours.

And one more thing about Ashland: the town does love its trains as indicated on a banner at the train station for Ashland Train Days next month:

Progress needs to take a step back and review. I am all for getting from one place to another in a speedily and orderly fashion. Speed you get from the airlines but what a pain in the alpha-sierra-sierra it is to get to the airport and go thru all of the bravo-sierra there. Trains are downtown to downtown. Speed is a factor if you prefer to ride the Acela Express on the Northeast corridor or take the Regional service for a slightly slower pace. People love to ride the rails. On a trip I made recently from New London to New Haven and back, I took the Shoreline East commuter train. Three cars not filled to capacity but there were people taking the train to get to New Haven and avoiding the drive on Interstate 95. On Amtrak train 86 which I took back to New London and eventually Providence and Boston, the train was near capacity. People on their smart phones or doing business on their laptops with in-coach wireless. Progress getting done at 80 to 125 MPH. Not too shabby. Nobody seemed to be in a rush.

Progress can be good. Progress can be bad. The almighty dollar gets in there and gums up the works. Who knows what will happen here in Ashland or back home in Connecticut? I have always loved enjoying life at a snail’s pace. A comfortable crawl, if you will. Oh yes, I do want a well maintained Interstate so I can get to my destinations in a timely matter. But that comfortable crawl. It’s a good thing.

Today we finish up by just walking around town and getting some pictures in. Dinner will be at the Iron Horse Café just down the street from the Henry Clay Inn. And please make that a sidewalk table....trackside, please.

I’m Philip J Zocco. On The Road. In Ashland, Virginia.