there’s something about a train: now with more “quiet!”
A sign lets everyone know that this is a quiet car on Amtrak (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone,” French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote in 1654, well before there were cellphones and quiet cars.
This past Friday, my wife and I took an Amtrak train from Penn Station to Mount Joy, Pennsylvania, to go to a friend’s wedding. I was cherishing the three hours on the train to read and write with no interruptions, so we chose the quiet car. At one of the next stops, two young women got on and sat two rows behind us to the right. The woman on the aisle immediately started talking on her cell phone. After about two minutes, when it seemed like she was not going to keep the call short — an announcement had said that cellphone conversations are prohibited in the quiet car, and that any other talking should be done in brief whispers — I looked over my seat and motioned her toward the sign, mouthing that you can’t use the phone here. She gave me an annoyed glare, then nodded dismissively. She kept on talking.
While I wasn’t going to go as far as these guys did on a commuter train in 2013, I also wasn’t about to just let the matter drop.
According to the official Amtrak quiet car rules, “Guests are asked to limit conversation and speak in subdued tones. Phone calls are not allowed and all portable electronic devices must be muted or used with headphones (passengers using headphones must keep the volume low enough so that the audio cannot be heard by other passengers). Low overhead lighting creates a restful atmosphere for all passengers, but reading lights are available.”
As a writer and editor, I don’t just want quiet; I need it. I have trouble concentrating when a person near me, whether on a train or in the office, is babbling away; their words are like an invasive species, overtaking my thoughts so I cannot follow a plot and suddenly have to read the same sentence over and over and over again. I can’t even listen to music with lyrics when I’m working as I strive to make sure every spelling, every subjunctive phrase, every punctuation mark is correct.
I also crave the sheer simplicity of gazing out the window of a moving train and seeing the buildings, trees, rivers, clouds, whatever passing by, without being inundated by electronic devices and yappy humans.
About five years ago, Ellen and I were on a crowded Long Island Rail Road train and found two seats together that happened to be in the quiet car, which I don’t usually seek out; generally, I try to find spots that look like they won’t be too loud in any car.
A couple of drunk guys a few rows away were making a lot of noise, and they didn’t seem like the kind of dudes who would listen to me, so when the conductor came by, I gently pointed out the situation to him.
“What are you talking about? This isn’t the quiet car,” the conductor said rather curtly.
“This is the quiet car,” I insisted, pointing to the sign that was hanging from the ceiling that clearly said “Quiet Car.”
He reached up and pulled the sign down.
“Now it isn’t the quiet car,” he said as if I’d almost ruined his day.
When I commuted on the LIRR back in the late 1980s, the world was a much quieter place. Everyone had their regular seat on the train, and we all spent the time reading books or the newspaper or catching up on sleep. Even the group of guys who played cards every morning were relatively quiet. In one year, I read about forty books, making the commute worthwhile.
But all that changed with the coming of cellphones, followed by social media, so that everyone can be in contact with anybody, anywhere, any time, including on trains. I was horrified when the MTA brought limited connectivity to the subways, and soon it will only get worse. When the MTA announced in July 2022 a plan with Transit Wireless to install cellphone service and free Wi-Fi throughout the subway system, MTA chair and CEO Janno Lieber said, “Bringing cell connectivity to the tunnels between stations and Wi-Fi to aboveground stations is a major step forward in enhancing transit riders’ experience.”
Well, not mine or Steve Cuozzo’s, who wrote in the New York Post, “Hang up on this MTA boondoggle right now. . . . The few minutes between stations are precious to those of us who find a grinding, squealing subway car a counterintuitively cozy cocoon of Big Apple life. Subways can be sexy. See the lovebirds all over each other! And mysterious. Why is that banker-type guy sound asleep at 3 p.m.? Where are young women in gauzy halter tops on their way to at midnight? But banal cellphone yakking turns the mystique to mush — and passengers into prisoners of yada yada yada.”
To get more analytical about it, Joachim R. Höflich wrote in the 2005 book Thumb Culture: The Meaning of Mobile Phones for Society, “The relationship between private and public is not static. There are numerous influences on the continuing redefinition of what constitutes private and public. . . . The mobile phone openly contributes to a privatization of the public arena, for instance where private or even intimate subjects are involved. . . . The mobile phone upsets the established practices of proximity and distance. Parts of one’s personality, which otherwise would have stayed hidden, are made accessible to others. In this sense such behavior ‘lacks civility’ because someone is troubling others, against their will, with the ‘burden of one’s self .’”
Back on the train to Mount Joy, the young woman was still chatting on the phone, at the same volume. I turned around again and reminded her, a little more sternly, that she needed to turn the phone off, right then, or go to another car. This time she gave me a much angrier look; however, the young woman sitting in front of her smiled at me, glad I had told the other woman to stuff it. And she did, ending her conversation.
It made me recall a situation that had occurred at the dawn of cellphones. I was on the LIRR, and there was a dude talking extremely loudly on his phone; this was way before most people had phones, so nearly everyone in the car was pissed off. People were yelling at him to turn it off, but he was ignoring the growing commotion.
For some reason, he asked the person at the other end to call him back and gave him his number. A moment later his phone rang, but it wasn’t the person he had been speaking with; it was the guy sitting in front of me, who also had a phone; he had heard the dude give out his number and called him, telling him over the phone, “Seriously, man, shut the fuck up.” The dude nearly jumped out of his seat, turning around to see who had called him, but we were all prepared to declare, “I am Spartacus!” and stand with one another.
Four-seaters are hard to come by for friends and families in Amtrak coach class (photo by twi-ny/ees)
On the return trip from Mount Joy, we avoided the quiet car, as we were traveling with one of my childhood friends and his wife and we wanted to talk. When we couldn’t find an available four- or five-seater — they were occupied by one or two people, their feet stretched out, their bags on the seats (don’t get me started on that) — my friend turned around a pair of seats in the middle to make a new four-seater so we could sit together.
We were all happy and cozy until the conductor came by and ordered us to spin them around the way they were. So we had to sit on opposite sides of the aisle, speaking loudly, probably agitating someone nearby aiming for some quiet time.
Getting back to how Americans are terrified of being alone with their thoughts, in a July 2014 study in the journal Science, a team reported, “Nowadays, we enjoy any number of inexpensive and readily accessible stimuli, be they books, videos, or social media. We need never be alone, with no one to talk to and nothing to do. [Study coauthor Timothy D.] Wilson et al. explored the state of being alone with one's thoughts and found that it appears to be an unpleasant experience. In fact, many of the people studied, particularly the men, chose to give themselves a mild electric shock rather than be deprived of external sensory stimuli.”
While Metro-North, the LIRR, NJT, and Amtrak might not have the same sexiness as the subway, they do offer even more time for peaceful reflection and sleep, particularly in the quiet car, where you can play on your smartphone to your heart’s content; just keep the freaking sound off.
Or would you prefer an electric shock?