On Missing Trains

Of all the stories posted here-in, this is perhaps the one of which I am least proud.  Stories of drugged and drunken exploits come with moderate bragging rights, travel tales have their own appeal, but this is a tragedy of hubris and stupidity of which I am ashamed.  To begin, some back ground information:

The Amtrak passenger train City of New Orleans passes through Newbern, Tennessee on it's north-south run from Chicago to New Orleans.  My family live a bit more than an hour from Newbern and when traveling home for a visit this train is the most comfortable, most cost-efficient and generally the easiest mode of transport.  I have ridden this train several times and boarded and exited at this station each time.

So, poised to board the train early in the morning of December 26th me and my father (a semi-driver for more than 35 years) arrived at the station, watched a few freight trains pass, and ascertained that the the tracks to our left headed north and the tracks to the right headed south.  We were so sound in our knowledge that when an Amtrak passenger train came rolling up at precisely the time my New Orleans-bound train was scheduled to arrive, that we watched it stop, watched passengers deboard, and watched it roll away certain in our sense of cardinal directions and positive that that train had come from New Orleans and was headed to Chicago.

Newbern is an unmanned station, so there was no one to ask as to how late my train was going to be.  We did however ask one of recently exited passengers from where she originated.  When she said Chicago, I stared at her disbelievingly, then stared at the tracks and realized that we had been wrong.  I had missed the train, or rather, mistook the train, which is probably just as bad.

Deeply shamed, me and my father were.  We studied the tracks for a while and decided that even if we were wrong, we were wrong in the most logical way and that our wrong assumption was the easiest assumption to make.  We drove away, cursing the silly train for traveling north to south in such a haphazard way.  Pride cometh before the fall-- I boarded the train later in the week and arrived safely back in the Crescent City.