I first discovered the Quiet Car because it’s the first car after business class when you’re boarding a train back to front. In other words, it’s the quickest you can possibly sit down on a train. There’s a moral superiority to the quiet car. It’s the next car after the expensive one with the assigned seats. It’s the place you go where you are seeking a “library-like environment” as the marketing team at Amtrak boasts. It’s a place that for some, can feel like home.
On any Amtrak train, you can find me in the Quiet Car. Not because I enjoy being quiet, but because I enjoy watching chaos unfold when inevitably, somebody is not quiet.
It happens every single time. Usually on southward bound trips. Someone gets on in New York and, in haste, sits in the Quiet Car. They don’t read the signs, or more likely, they don’t care. Their carelessness and disdain for rules is what makes them a New Yorker after all. My heroes. Anyway, it usually starts slow. They pick up a call from a loved one.
“Yeah hi I just got on the train. No it was good. Yeah she’s doing well. No I have meetings all day tomorrow. Yeah I’ll try. No I’ll get back to you. Listen I’m not really supposed to talk in here, it’s like the Quiet Car or something.”
You can feel the tension in the air. Someone, probably 3-4 rows up, will shift in their seat. They’ll turn slightly to confirm the perp. To maybe make eye contact. They don’t resort to confrontation first, that comes later. They hope the staredown and general shiftiness will do the trick. It doesn’t.
The talker picks up another call.
“Ginny! No it was so great to see you too. Listen I want to get tickets to that gallery opening when I’m back. Right yeah in Astoria somewhere. No it’ll be great.”
There’s more shifting in seats and then, my favorite part, the tense whispers.
The whispers come from Quiet Car regulars. The rule followers. The library-like environment enthusiasts. The harborers of peacekeeping on the wild wild rail. There’s a sense of community on the Quiet Car like no other. A sacred pact is kept. A mutual understanding of law and order. You come to the Quiet Car to gaze, in silence, at multiple meat processing plants in southern Pennsylvania as they whip by, in the cloudy distance.
But for someone to come in and disrupt that sacred covenant- well something must be done.
“I really think we need to tell her she cannot be on the phone in here.”
“Maybe she doesn’t know, how did she not see the sign? This is unbelievable she's been talking for minutes now, at least.”
“I’m going to tell her she has to stop, this has to stop.”
A mighty representative has been chosen, silently of course, from the pack.
She approaches the talker.
“Hi, you can’t be on your phone in here, this is the Quiet Car.”
“Just one second I’ll be off in one second.”
She cups her hand over the phone as if this will muffle the sound. As if this will bring peace to the Quiet Car. Her feeble attempt is not met well.
“You really have to stop talking, there are other cars you can talk in. Try the Cafe Car. It’s social in there.”
She’ll eventually hang up the phone. She’ll eventually fall asleep, mouth agape, as all mortals do on the Northeast Regional. Quiet will be restored to the car for which it was named.
I sit in the Quiet Car because quiet is nice. Quiet is new for me. I’ve never been called quiet in my life. It doesn’t run in my family. Quiet is also fascinating to me because quiet is relative. Quiet is a scale. It’s not called the silent car, because silence is absolute. The absence of all noise. Quiet then only implies that it’s less noisy than something that is loud. What, then, does it mean to be quiet? Maybe the talker was being much quieter than her normal voice would be. Does this count at all? Perhaps not, because it’s not called the Quieter Car. This is precisely how my philosophy professors imagined me using my degree in everyday life.
I sit in the Quiet Car because I love dramatic tension, when I’m not involved. I love watching former hall monitors relive their glory days. I love watching someone gather the courage to enforce a rule written into the Amtrak Constitution on a paper napkin and enforced by a fraying blue cardboard sign hanging from the ceiling. People fascinate me, especially in close quarters on a rickety train passing adjacent to an unknown body of mid-Atlantic water. A cocktail of Atlantic Ocean, factory runoff, algae blooms and love.
I hope to one day find something worth standing up for, like some people stand up for the quiet. One day, may I have the courage to use my voice, to tell someone else to shut the fuck up.
It is probably no surprise to you that (I) I am a quiet car aficionado and (ii) I am often the one who tells the insensitive clod (in a caring and understanding way) to STFU, I think Norbert Leo Butz said it best at around 1:17 in this clip: “Don’t Break the Rules”. https://youtu.be/fqqeCZoZdiA?si=jQZzbpE76xzoxt52