Making Tracks

Amtrak's train #80, the Carolinian, is rocking steadily north out of the Carolinas, into Virginia. And like every form of transportation, the Carolinian has begun to impose its own rhythm on the trip and the travelers.

Even in ordinary coach class, train seats are roomier than airplane seats, and there's no seat belt to cinch yourself in with. A train trip begins with a kind of relaxation, an exhalation.

On this trip, I enjoy one more unique privilege. Open on my lap is a new, green-cloth-bound hardcover atlas that traces tens of thousands of miles of railroad track, and I'm expecting to be able to watch our progress both out the window and on the crisp, colored lines in the atlas.

The atlas is the work of Richard Carpenter: 220 hand-drawn maps--a piece of craftsmanship at once so distinctive, and also so useful, it instantly reveals the sterility of computer-generated maps.

About 5 miles into Virginia, the purple line in the atlas that traces the old Atlantic Coast Line track says we should be passing the town of Skippers. A tiny village wheels past the window, and just visible is a green highway sign with white letters. "Skippers," it says. Well, I'll be.

In short order, we are supposed to pass milepost 65, then cross a bridge over the Meherrin River, followed immediately by the town of Emporia. It's Amtrak, so we're moving slowly enough to catch sight of the mileposts. And there it is: Milepost 65 whisks by. In a blink, we're on a bridge over a river. Almost as soon as we clear the bridge, the train passes a large silver equipment box stenciled "Emporia."

I've been traveling with maps on my lap for decades. I like the traveling and the maps, and the reassurance that comes from matching up the two. But what's happening here on the Carolinian is different. The match is a thrill, every time. Look down, spot the crossing with the east-west track of the Virginian Railway, whoosh, we're passing right through the intersection. Trace along the track to the next water crossing--the Nottoway River--look out the window, and there it comes, right at milepost 48, just as the atlas says it should.

Adults don't much marvel that things are where a map says they should be. With satellites and computers, how hard is that? What gives this particular journey added zest is that Carpenter's maps are so meticulous and engaging--beautiful, really. And I'm taking the train to visit the man who drew them. So it's not the map that has the mileposts where they belong, and the creeks and the curves, it's Richard Carpenter. His maps have style. They are hand-lettered and hand-drawn, even the tiniest place-names done in Carpenter's own careful printing. The maps have a point of view, a voice. It is as if Richard Carpenter is quietly narrating the trip.

Waiting for me in the chilly morning at the Stamford, Connecticut, Amtrak station is Dick Carpenter. He's the guy standing on the platform who looks just like . . . a train engineer. Carpenter is a retired planning director for a regional planning agency in Connecticut, a youthful 70-year-old. He's a big man, wearing jeans, a sweatshirt, and a cap with the classic logo of the defunct New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad. It's easy to imagine Carpenter jockeying a steam locomotive down the tracks, cap pulled low, eyes squinting, elbow out the window.

What Dick Carpenter has engineered is A Railroad Atlas of the United States in 1946, an encyclopedic work that is as audacious as it is artful. Carpenter aims to draw every mile of railroad track that existed in the United States in 1946. Volume one, published last summer, covers six mid-Atlantic states and more than 23,570 miles of active track. All of which raises a small question and a big one: Why 1946? And why at all?

"No one has ever done this before," says Carpenter, "the portrayal of the tremendous, complex, and very high-performance rail system that existed right after World War II." The nation's railroads had helped win that war, and had yet to feel the bite of competition from airplanes or trucks. The interstate highways didn't exist; back then, the railroads were the interstate highways. In 1946, the railroads were arguably at the height of their economic power. The nation had more than a quarter-million miles of rail in use--nearly six times the size of the current interstate system. And there was plenty of romance: The demands of war meant that modern diesel locomotives still shared the rails with old steam-powered ones. The atlas, says Carpenter, "is a record, a way of putting down in one place the totality of the system, the geography, the topography. It's a story that needs to be told."

An atlas would seem an unusual vehicle for storytelling, except in the hands of Carpenter. Part of his goal is to capture the richness, complexity, and competitiveness of a system that had dozens of major players. The atlas is just a set of maps, but it aims to be about history, geography, culture, and business, too.