Did you enjoy it? Was it worth it? How were you able to pull it off?
I Amtrak’d from North Carolina to Michigan via DC. Took 24 hours. To compare, to drive was about 10 hours. I went into it knowing it was likely going to be a bad experience, but I had things to read and I was curious.
I’d do it again, but I’d arrange for a sleeper cabin and plan stops along the way. 24 hours on a train sitting upright was too much.
Meanwhile in Japan I took a train from Tokyo to Kyoto, 6 hours drive, less than 2 hours by train. So comfortable, so much space, and so convenient. I could easily nap in their upright seats, extremely comfortable, climate controlled, flying through beautiful rural regions full of mountains and trees.
Until the US stops treating humans worse than freight, you are going to need a high tolerance for bullshit to make a cross-country trip by train.
It’s funny that you should ask, as I just completed the 2nd portion of an almost-complete cross-country Amtrak journey last week.
In 2012, I bought one of those USA Rail passes, and for the first segment went to Glacier National Park, then to Seattle, Los Angeles, backtracked to Emeryville, then Phoenix (via LA), Houston, and finally home via Chicago. The train was already late getting to Columbus, one of the first few stops out of Chicago, and achieved epic levels of lateness on the way. We had record-high temperatures across North Dakota and Montana, so the rails expanded and buckled. The train could only go 65MPH instead of the normal 85MPH. As others have noted, freight trains had priority, so we sat on sidings to let them pass. In one Montana town, a grizzly bear in the area meant that the railroad workers couldn’t get out of their truck to switch us back onto the mainline for almost an hour. We got to the station in Glacier 6 hours late, at 2AM, so I ended up sleeping on a bench on the platform rather than finding accommodations.
The lateness trend continued, such as when the locomotive of the Coast Starlight lost power while climbing the Cuesta Pass, and we had to return to San Luis Obispo and wait for UP to rouse an engineer to come down and hook up a standby locomotive to get us over the mountain. On the Emeryville to Phoenix portion, the Coast Starlight was late getting into Los Angeles, so they had to hold the Southwest Chief for passengers making the connection.
Don’t get me wrong, though, it was a fabulous time. The only place I needed to be was “here,” and the only schedule for getting places was “when I get there.” The scenery was great, the crews were friendly and competent, the trains were in decent condition. The coach seats recline enough to sleep, there’s legroom for days, and a leg rest that can be raised. The onboard WiFi was a cellular service, and out west, there were plenty of portions of the journey with no network coverage. That was fine, I had a Kindle if I didn’t feel like taking in the scenery.
Last week, I took the Lake Shore Limited eastbound to Massachusetts, and it was like the polar opposite of the western trains! The scenery was mostly active industry, or decaying Rust Belt hulks. It was interesting to see, but far from beautiful. The train follows almost the entire south shore of Lake Erie, but at night, so I didn’t see that. However, Amtrak has control of the rails, or priority, on much of the route. On the way out, the train was on-time for every single stop out of Chicago, until we entered CSX territory just before Pittsfield, MA. We had to wait for a freight train, and that put us 8 minutes behind schedule. On the way back, we were maybe 15 minutes late into Albany, but that’s a long stop where the hook up the cars from NYC, so we rolled out on time, and had no more delays. That was good, because I had to make a bus connection to get home to Madison.
In summary, the western trains seemed designed (and suitable) for pleasure rides, while the eastern train felt like all business. In comparison, I’d say fuck the bus. Either type of train journey is ten times better.
How can you justify taking a train when flying is faster and cheaper usually?
Mainly, a plane is not a train, and I wanted to take a train. It’s more of an adventure than an ordeal.
Sounds like the person you responded to was just taking it as an adventure, not to get anywhere quickly or economically. So in that regard it makes sense and sounds fun.
Sorry you’re being downvoted though. In a general sense, I agree with you. Once I thought I’d look into getting a train ticket somewhere far-ish in the US and was absolutely astounded at the pricetag. It was the same or even more expensive as a flight and took several days instead of several hours.
It’s like…ok I understand the time thing. That didn’t surprise me. But the pricetag sure as hell did!! Cross country train rides in the US are just not a sensible option unless you’re just looking to do it for the fun of it.
By contrast however, there are some decent (if incredibly sparse) regional train lines, particularly in the northeast US. I used to take a train every so often when I briefly lived in New England and found the experience very nice and reasonably priced. Was a fantastic experience compared to a bus.
It just falls apart if you are going anywhere of a decent distance unfortunately.
I take Amtrak about every year, usually the California Zephyr.
The train will be late. Just expect that and then it’s a pleasant surprise if it actually arrives on time. Two hours late is normal. After four hours it kinda loses it’s place in traffic and things can get bad fast after that. My previous record was ten hours late but I beat that a year ago at 15 hours - I didn’t arrive on the expected day. Don’t plan much for the day you arrive and don’t arrange any tight connections.
Some of the equipment is old, from the 1980s or so. Some seats have a cutout where the ash tray used to be.
Coach seats are very comfortable with much more leg room than a plane or bus. They recline pretty far and have leg rests. Seating in coach will vary from station to station. Some places assign seats, some board by the size of the party, and some are a free-for-all. There is overhead storage for luggage, a space on the lower level for larger items, and a baggage car for checked items.
Roometts are small but private and surprisingly comfortable to sleep in. Actual rooms are much more expensive but have lots of space to move around. The sleepers have an on-board shower. Sleeper passengers have access to the Metropolitan Lounge available at some stations. The one in Chicago is very nice with free snacks.
Trains have a cafe car to buy snacks and a small seating area. The dining car is usually just for sleeper passengers. Food is microwaved but actually very good quality. There’s fresh coffee in the sleepers in the morning.
Some trains have an observation car with comfortable seats and large windows. It’s a great place to watch the scenery and meet people. On the western trains I’ve seen lots of antelope, elk, bald eagles, wild horses in Nevada, an occasional bear or moose. The Zephyr goes thru the Rockies, passing thru some canyons that are otherwise inaccessible except by kayak. One section of the Colorado is known as “Moon river” because the river guides encourage their clients to drop their shorts and moon the train. The Coast Starlight and Surfliner go right along the Pacific coast in places with beautiful views of the ocean.
Car attendants are generally courteous and helpful. Some conductors will get on the intercom and point out the sights or give a history of the area. There’s generally a brief stop every four to six hours where you can get off the train and walk around for a few minutes.
The nice thing about trains is that when you arrive, you’re right there - you don’t have to take a shuttle or rent a car to get to the city, you’re already there. In Chicago you’re a block from the Loop. In NYC you’re already in Manhattan. For San Francisco, you’re in Emeryville but there’s an Amtrak bus that meets the train to connect to the city. Trains feel like a more human way to travel. Airlines treat you as a threat and an annoyance and they’d be happier if you’d just buy your ticket and stay home. Trains can be fun and relaxing, they just require patience.
It’s been 25 years for me so things have changed. I also didn’t go the whole width of the US. But at the time it was pretty great. One of those life adventures that I’ve thought about ever since.
I went from Barstow, Ca to Chicago and back at age 18 as a graduation trip with a friend in coach. We spent most of our time (awake and asleep) in the dining and observation cars people watching and talking to folks. There was a whole car of Girl Scouts in uniform for the return trip, which felt a bit like being in Wes Anderson movie… or occasionally The Shining.
We’d jump out at stops just to say we’d been to the city where the stop was. Usually that just meant a quick lap around the train station then back on board, but it was still fun as an 18yo. On the way back we got stuck in the Sierra Nevadas (for only about 6 hours) after the train struck an elk. We were nearish enough to Donner pass that we got to hear some of the older girl scouts (still in uniform) chat about who they’d eat first. I think of that every time I see a cookie stand.
Not cross country, Seattle to Portland was bad enough.
Amtrak doesn’t have “right of way” on the rails, which means if a freight train needs to get through, the passenger train pulls off onto a side rail to let the freight through.
We sat for 3 hours in the middle of nowhere waiting for a freight train.
It only takes 3 hours to drive that trip.
When was this? They’ve recently changed it on the corridor routes so Cascades is mandated to get right of way now. I have taken it about 6 times and haven’t had any issues
Oh, years ago now.
give it another shot, Amtrak has upped their game especially on the Cascades cooridor. With the point defiance bypass completed we’re now down to 3 1/2 hours to Portland.
Only thing for now - they’re currently upgrading their rolling stock for Cascades and they’re still using the crappy “Horizon” cars, but the new ones are actually expected this year, and they’re supposedly going to be really, really nice
It depends on which line you take. Amtrak has different service levels on different routes. When I took the coast starlight from Seattle to San Jose it was wonderful, with clean cars, great food, and courteous service. When I took the southwest chief from LA to the middle of the country, it was a completely different experience. The porters were still friendly but the equipment was grungy and frequently broken and the food was about what you’d get at Denny’s. Bear in mind that both times I was in a ridiculously expensive first class cabin.
I’ve never taken the empire builder, which runs east-west across the northern part of the country, but I’ve read that it’s a “premier” service, so it should be on par with the coast starlight.
Edit: c/grey food/great food/
Empire Builder might have ok trains but the track is TERRIBLE.
That’s kind of true for Amtrak everywhere except a few dedicated Acela lines in the east. The rest of their trains run on freight rail and freight trains get priority.
Roughly 18 years ago, my buddies and I took the California Zephyr from the Midwest out to San Fran. We were riding coach and it was two days travel each way.
The train was fine–about what we’d expected, nothing amazing but in generally good condition. The trip was great, though. The scenery traveling across the west was almost always interesting, we played a bunch of poker, and we met a bunch of interesting characters we still talk about to this day.
The most interesting guy we met (we dubbed him “The Stranger” after Sam Elliott’s character in The Big Lebowski) was a guy who made an annual trip coast-to-coast and back. He had some kind of grift where he was getting unemployment checks from two different states and would schedule his Amtrak trips such that he’d always miss his Chicago transfer and get put up in a hotel so he could shower and sleep on Amtrak’s dime. He’d mail a suitcase to his destination with clean clothes, cigarettes, etc, and mail his dirty laundry back home. When we got struck with a delay in California, he left the train station and bought a bunch of pizzas at a nearby Domino’s for the passengers and staff.
I highly recommend it as an alternative to air travel if you can spare the time. I often think about doing it again.
I’ve done a few trips. When everything is on time it’s a great experience IMO. When it’s running late it can suck. A few things I tell interested people:
Have a different mindset compared to flying. A plane trip is hectic and cramped but it’s over in a few hours, it’s a means to getting somewhere. Your vacation begins when you land. On a train the voyage is part of the vacation. It’s chill and you’ll meet nice people.
Amtrak has a website where you can see where the trains are at in real time. It’ll tell you if they are on time or how late they are running. This is real nice because you can put off going to the station if they are hours late. The first time I rode they didn’t have this yet and we felt trapped.
I got the small room (Roomette I think?) twice. It’s small but so am I. It’s two seats facing one another that fold down into a one person bed. Another bed folds down overhead. I got my parents a full size room for their 50th anniversary. It was nice but they spent their awake hours entirely in the observation car.
In my experience their wifi sucks but may have improved. Download books and movies in advance.
Bring your own drinks and snacks! Two meals a day were included with the rooms.
When I took the Coast Starlight I watched a YouTube video in advance that gave good advice about when and where to sit in the observation car for seeing Mount Shasta.
Safe travels!
Comparing the Amtrak I took to California to the high speed rail I took to Beijing, the former might as well have been an 1800s steam engine. Old, slow, stopped often, smelled bad, food was pretty bad, it was majorly late, and it took far longer than driving the same route would have. It’s been over a decade, but I’ll never consider one again until we move into the 21st century.
The one positive was the observation car. That thing was super nice, had more comfortable seats, and gorgeous views.
I will never ride AmTrak again. Here’s why:
Pre-COVID, myself and my bf at the time went to an anime convention outside of Chicago. His grandma lived in St. Louis, so we decided to take the train from Chicago to St. Louis because it was cheaper than flying (we lived in CO at the time and had flown to Chicago for the convention).
Neither of us had ever been on an Amtrak train, so we had no idea how it all worked, that seats weren’t assigned, that there were different prices on different cars, etc, we’d just gotten 2 of the cheapest tickets and assumed we’d have a seat.
Well, there were no seats by the time we boarded. People had spread their shit out even though they were traveling alone, and refused to move it even when we asked. So we said fuck it, let’s see if there’s room in the next car up on the line.
We get to the next car and it’s completely empty except for 3 kids, the oldest one was maybe 12. We’re like cool, we’ll just sit in here.
A full hour goes by and an AmTrak employee comes by to collect tickets. We hand them over and she says, and I quote: “You can’t sit here, this car doesn’t go to St. Louis”.
Immediately in my head I’m like, how the fuck can this car “not go to St. Louis” when we boarded in the car BEHIND IT and THAT car IS going to St. Louis?? Is this the fucking Hogwarts train??? Did the cars uncouple and reattach to a separate engine car in the 1 hour that’s passed and we didn’t realize it??? So I ask her what she even means by that, and explain that there’s no room in the car behind us so we came to this one because no one would move, and all she kept saying is that the car we were in didn’t go to St. Louis, and we had to go back to the other car now.
Luckily, she came with us into the first car and forced a single person to go sit with another single traveler, which was very nice of her, so me and the bf got to sit together, but the seat was uncomfortable as hell (springs might as well have been up your ass), and the rest of the ride sucked because of it.
Maybe the fancy cars with the nicer seats and panoramic view windows are great, but I don’t give a fuck. Never again.
I regularly went between urbana and chicago and have never encountered this different cars to different destinations thing you encountered. Actually would often hang out in the food car just for a change of pace.
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Moral of all of these, if you’re going distance at all, book a sleeper.
I’ve done Seattle to Chicago (Bedroom), New Orleans to the Carolina’s (Bedroom), LA to Seattle (Bedroom), and Chicago to New York (Coach).
Along with dozens of smaller services.
Class matters on Amtrak. You book that super cheap ticket you’ll get a super cheap experience. Shared bathroom, no food, rude people, coach is a rolling greyhound for long hauls.
Coach on short links like the NE corridor or the Cascades is fine, but for 10 more dollars just upgrade to business. Coach is fine, but people are assholes no matter where you go, but at least you aren’t trapped with them.
Long hauls my wife and I get a bedroom, not a roommette. A bedroom has your own private toilet, and much more room to spread out. It’s pricey, but you get a nicer experience. However they still use the old superliners and for that much I wish they were nicer.
If you have a family, book the family bedroom, a ton of space, you get the full width of the car, and a private bathroom.
Amtrak is fine, held back because no one wants to fund it, but it’s getting better. It all depends what you’re looking for. Feel free to ask me more questions or let us know what type of trip, I can let you know more specifics
Yes yes yes. The best part of a train, and the part worth the extra time and money, is a horizontal sleeping situation. I can’t sleep sitting up or my back and neck destroy any joy that might otherwise have come from traveling.
Night and day experience. If I’m not getting there in a few hours, then coach isn’t for me
Being Europeans, it’s funny to read amtrak stories, in France/Europe there is TGV since 1981, going 200mph, and now about everywhere. It’s incredible to read your stories, it looks like 1880
*as long as you don’t count the lines that don’t connect to Paris
Went up and down the west coast. Much more pleasant than flying but long.
As a journey or experience, do it. But if I need to get somewhere to do a thing and then go home… flight, for sure
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Not quite what you’re looking for, but I recently did NYC to Montreal on Amtrak, about a 12 hour ride (officially it’s somewhat shorter, but delays can happen at the border crossing, and as others have noted Amtrak doesn’t have right of way over freight trains so you may get delayed over that, I’d plan on about 12 hours on this particular route)
Overall I enjoyed my experience. It would have been faster to drive or fly, but that comes with its own hassles, and since it was snowing for a good part of our ride, I definitely appreciated not having to drive through that.
The seats (all coach class on this train) were pretty roomy, plenty of leg room, and comfortable enough for my tastes. There’s power outlets at every seat, the wifi is basically useless so plan on having any movies or ebooks or whatever you want to watch downloaded before you go.
The cafe car onboard doesn’t have an amazing selection, hot food is pretty much all microwave stuff, but I found it adequate to hold me over, I wasn’t looking for a gourmet meal, just some snacks and drinks, and it was pretty nice being able to enjoy a beer or two on the train ride.
On the ride back, it seemed like the train’s air conditioning wasn’t working well and it got a little warm, not ridiculously hot, but enough that you might want to take off an extra layer or roll up your sleeves. They also mentioned that since their train fleet is aging a bit, some of them can start to leak a little in the rain, we didn’t experience any of that even though it was raining a bit, but that’s something to keep in mind.
We didn’t have any issues with the bathrooms, but at least on that route they won’t get cleaned during the trip, so if they get too gross they do sometimes apparently have to put some of them out of service.
