The City of New Orleans

What is it about trains that captures our imagination?

I think it’s the sense of mystery and adventure. I was hooked the minute I learned that “The City of New Orleans” train—which Arlo Guthrie sings about—really runs through Memphis. You know the lyrics about “changing cars in Memphis, Tennessee”?

“Half way home, we'll be there by morning
Through the Mississippi darkness
Rolling down to the sea.”

The overnight train takes almost 20 hours to complete its 934-mile journey from Chicago to New Orleans. I just wanted to hop on and experience part of it.

I finally got my chance in June. At first, I set my sites on New Orleans. But I couldn’t find anybody who wanted to ride with me nine hours each way. Then I thought about going halfway, to Jackson, Mississippi, on Juneteenth to visit the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. But for several reasons, that didn’t feel quite right.

So I scaled back my destination to Marks, Mississippi. It’s the first stop south of Memphis. It was the perfect plan, which my husband readily helped me execute. He did not want to ride the train with me, which was fine, because my plan wouldn’t have worked if he did.

See, there’s only one morning train leaving Memphis going south every day. It departs downtown at 6:40 a.m. And there’s only one evening train arriving in Memphis on its way north every day. It arrives downtown at 10:20 p.m. I wasn’t craving that much adventure, being at the Amtrak station in downtown Memphis at 10:20 at night.

We woke up at 5 a.m. on a Sunday and were down at the Amtrak station by 6:20 a.m. The southbound train is scheduled to leave Memphis at 6:40 a.m. I didn’t know what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t the crowd of people waiting to board, including a group of nuns heading for New Orleans.

I showed the conductor my ticket, and he pointed me to the right car, the one with the little yellow footstool by the door. Thankfully, there were only four of us in my car, so I had the pick of seats. I chose an empty aisle-and-window combo seat, and had the best of both worlds.

After we started rolling out of Memphis, the conductor came through and announced that the Club Car was open. It sells hot and cold meals, snacks and drinks. I had grabbed a banana at home, so wasn’t hungry. Plus, I was only 1½ hours from my destination.

I had expected the train to go faster than it did getting out of the city. And the scenery to begin with was forested. Then we picked up speed and the vistas opened up. I could see flat farmland stretching for miles around. There were also a couple of water towers that told me what towns we were passing through.

I felt so happy and free! What a great, simple life. Much easier than driving or flying.

Soon the conductor came through to let me know we were approaching Marks. I hopped off at the platform, along with a couple of other travelers. To my surprise, Marks has a volunteer ambassador, Miss Cleo, who welcomes the train as it passes through every day. She greeted me in her Sunday best, and graciously posed for pictures by the “Marks” Amtrak sign.

A retired schoolteacher, Miss Cleo is 80 years old, has nine children and dozens of grands and great-grands. She told me the small, friendly town lobbied for 20 years for Amtrak to stop there. Since the station opened in 2018, people have come from Oxford, Mississippi, and other neighboring towns to hop aboard The City of New Orleans.

Train travel crisscrosses the history of Marks. In the 1860s a Jewish immigrant from Germany, Leopold Marks, migrated to Mississippi and sold dry goods as a foot peddler in the sparsely settled area on the Mississippi River. With his financial success he was able to buy prime property. The town was incorporated and named Marks in 1907 after he donated land for a train station as well as a courthouse there.

In 1968 Marks was the starting point of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People Campaign, a nationwide march to Washington, D.C., to raise awareness about poverty and inequality. As of the 2020 census, Marks boasted a population of almost 1,500 residents. Famous native sons have included singer Charley Pride and FedEx founder Fred Smith.

My husband, Hal, had kindly driven to Marks to fetch me at the train station. After meeting Ms. Cleo, I jumped in the car with him and headed north for Memphis. Here’s a secret about Hal: Even though he didn’t want to ride The City of New Orleans, he’s a big train buff. In his man cave, he has a table devoted to his model train set, complete with tiny “logs” that he made for one of the tiny cars to haul.

I think trains capture his imagination because they remind him of his childhood. Growing up in Los Angeles, he loved the Choo Choo diner, where a model train chugged along the inner perimeter of the counter and stopped at your seat to deliver your order.

There’s just something magical about trains, no matter what age you are.