Midnight Trains

There was an idealistic little company called "Midnight Trains" trying to create a new culture of overnight sleeper trains serving European capitals, and the founders dreamed big, envisioning a transportation utopia with greatfood and culture and affordable comfort. Environment-friendly without austerity. It was the exciting, vivacious European train system one might imagine in one's dreams.

They tried to make it happen - actually tried to buy train cars and such - and they sent around a strange and beautiful email newsletter which dreamed so vividly that one might easily conclude that the operation presently existed. Where do I buy my ticket?

In May, they shut it all down, like an enormous balloon suddenly deflated. The vividly-etched counter-reality was revealed as not only vaporous but futile. It was painful to read their farewell email, so one can only imagine how the founders felt. Months later, I caught up with the news and sent them this:


Hello, and forgive my very belated reply. Perhaps I'm getting the last word?

I myself blundered into entrepreneurship, and chose the roughest of all roads, eschewing all investment, including seed money. I built upon my own adrenal glands and nearly died.

Because it was a web company, launched at the opportune moment of 1997 (and required no investment in train hardware, etc.), and because it was really good (because my adrenal glands were ripe), it was a success. We attracted 1 million regular visitors. And I even managed to sell the thing, though not for a ton (I still fly coach).

But while this sounds like a success story, the company that bought it, naturally, wrecked it (I told the surreal tale in this series). And the spin I so doggedly worked to impart proved as ephemeral as a spritz of perfume.

Even if I had personally seen it through further growth, the writing was on the wall: heroic effort might make a thing happen, but never per the original vision. At least not for long. Mission creep (aka entropy) is the way of things, especially amid meteoric success. And I'm describing success. Ozymandias was no unicorn.

The original operation is now long gone (the brand got re-re-bought and turned into a zombie site, don't even click) and while there is fond nostalgia among many, the distinctive spin that gave it its unique edge has utterly dissipated. All lingering traces are banal, like a discarded Lego set. The "What" is remembered, but the "Why" - the actual substance - evaporated ever so swiftly.

The vision you had in your head would never have manifested, at least not for long. You might've made a buck, there might've been trains running somewhere that didn't completely suck. Or it might have grown into an enormous monster with scant resemblance to anything you were aiming for. These were always your best case scenarios.

It's the journey. Everything you did, everything you wrote, everyone you persuaded, and all the readers you delighted (certainly way more than you disappointed!) were real. None of that was offstage, in-queue, or stillborn. What you did, you DID, and if some non-sucky train ran for a while, or if you'd made a buck or birthed a monster distant from original intent, it would not have felt materially different to you. Very different to outside observers, certainly! But I have the standing and experience to authoritatively tell you how it would've seemed to you.

You actually did stuff, and the fairytale result in your imagination was always a fairy tale. Nothing's a straight line; it's all bank shots. If you'd continued - if you'd even prospered - it would have still felt like the exact same striving, but for ever-higher stakes. Perpetual striving. You never arrive. No one ever arrives, at least from their own perspective.

This means you didn't fail. You strived, and now you'll strive otherwise, and when you're old and frail, you'll recall, with satisfaction, how faithfully you strived, all along, for visions both grandly ambitious and minuscule (it doesn't matter).

Jim Leff
Founder, Chowhound.com
For Those Who Live to Eat