Geoffrey Crayon—under the pen name of Washington Irving—hated the train coming through Sunny Side on the east side of the Tapan Zee in the mid-nineteenth century. It was a noisy industrial intrusion on his poetic solitude. Yet in our world the train is the most relaxing mode of travel compared to flying or driving. It was a fascination of our mentor J. Gresham Machen, as he famously sat outside the Westminster Theological Seminary in Chestnut Hill, Pensylvania and watched the trains pass, identifying each one, per his extraordinary observational skills.

The train, a century after Machen, despite all the complaints about Amtrak, is still a delightful mode of transportation. When my wife Robin and I travel to New York, the Red Cap assistance in boarding is a huge stress relief. We get to our seats at South Station in Boston without competition. Then the views of Long Island sound with the moored sailboats and motorboats, and the marshy inlets with casual docks are so relaxing. The food in the café car—Acela is slightly better—is just fun but not fancy. No traffic to navigate, no constant attentiveness, no security clearances, these make train travel a dream. We can converse if my wife is with me, or I can just write, read, or sleep if alone in the quiet car—library silence. Many hours later I arrive at the Moynihan Train Hall with its marvelous architecturally restored, light-filled space. It always reminds me of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s illuminated discourses on issues that targeted the public good. Now I am in the Big Apple, a place of extraordinary international consequence. And I ponder how the gospel may impact this remarkable cosmopolitan space. I am grateful to the sacrificial ministry of men like Tim Keller.

I have always been fascinated by Machen’s delightfully human appreciations. He loved walking, mountains, and trains. Machen would surely have had similar thoughts as Henry Coray reminisced:

Another of his hobbies was to ride trains. When the schedule of the Broadway Limited eventually recovered from the slowdown of World War I under government control and was restored to sixteen hours from New York to Chicago, Das was really excited. He took a ride to Chicago and back just to see how that crack train ran at its new high speed.

One evening in the winter of 1932, I drove him to a railroad station in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where he was to board a night train for Philadelphia. I expressed my sympathy because of the rough trip ahead.

“Listen, don’t feel sorry for me,” he said. “I love to curl up in a berth and fall off to sleep.” “How in the world do you manage it?” I said. “I can never sleep on trains. They’re too noisy.” “Not to me they aren’t,” Das said. “The good old sound of wheels rumbling over tracks—that’s a lullaby in my ears.”[1]

Endnotes

[1] Henry W. Coray, J. Gresham Machen: A Silhouette (Kregel, 1981), 25–26.

Ordained Servant Online, October, 2025