I heard a commercial on the radio today about riding Amtrak, as opposed to driving or bussing to locations. I thought it would be a cool thing to do, but upon looking at the website, it appears that there is no way to go from anywhere to anywhere.
Specifically, I was curious about training(? railing?) to Vegas rather than flying there for the honeymoon. We’re getting married in Abilene, so we’d leave from there or someplace close, like Dallas (close if close is 3 hrs) but no matter where I put as our origin or destination, it said that there was not service. I changed dates, locations, and nothing. Then I looked up the individual stations themselves. Well, both Abilene and Las Vegas are ‘unstaffed’ stations. I assume that means that it stops there, but no one is there to take tickets, handle bags and what-not.
So, can someone explain this to me? Why would Amtrak advertise when you can’t seem to go anywhere unless you leave from specific places and arrive at specific places? I understand that trains are on rails, and they just can’t turn left at the next light, but it seems to me that you can at least board certain trains that would be stopping at certain destinations. Or are these trains just for touring now? Get on in Chicago, ride to LA, see the great west. I don’t know. Can someone shed some light on my rail-ignorant butt?
I’d say if you want the skinny, you should try the toll-free number, 1-800-USA-RAIL, and talk to a live human being. I can’t believe there’s not passenger service to Las Vegas, though what do I know?
I will tell you that I just took the train from Seattle to Whitefish, Montana, about a month ago and it was kinda fun. I paid quite a bit more for a sleeper though (which was tiny), since I didn’t relish sleeping upright all night in a bus-type seat. And the route through the North Cascades is supposed to be one of the most beautiful train trips you can take in the lower 48 states.
Going from Abeline to Las Vegas, OTOH, is IMO a trip that is best made in a plane. If there is scenery less inspiring/more boring than that of West Texas/East New Mexico, I haven’t seen it. IME, the train was not significantly cheaper than the plane (at least, not if you pay for a sleeper) and I bet you’ll find you can fly to Las Vegas for less (maybe far less) than you would pay for the train – at least out of Dallas. That’s my prediction, anyway.
Oh, and I noted that they said they were “updating” their Website, so maybe that’s why it’s acting so screwy.
I experienced the same thing; I wanted to take the train to get from here at school in Mississippi, to Gunslinger’s place in Texas. No service. :rolleyes: So I’m going Greyhound.
[sup]I leave friday night. i’m so excited[/sup]
Well, they don’t have passenger lines going everywhere, or enough people originating at certain locations to make it worth paying someone to staff a station. For example, at my parents’ house, to get on or off the train you have to go to a town 30 miles away.
Anyway, I’ve ridden Amtrak a lot between Ann Arbor and Chicago. It’s one of their most profitable and busy lines. I am sure that when Amtrak whips up an ad compaign, they’re aiming mostly for people like me who live on a train corridor or are in major cities. Hell, it’s like airline sales. When you live in East Back Porch like my parents do, you don’t get any of the sexy fares.
However, this is not to say it’s not possible to take the train. If it’s an unmanned station, I suspect you make a reservation, show up fifteen minutes before the train arrives, and board the train schlepping your luggage. When the conductor comes by, he’ll take care of the ticketing situation. I’ll bet they do this all the time. Even at manned stations, no one takes your ticket. You get on board and the conductor comes by after you’re under way to get your ticket. It’s very different from plane travel. You may be keeping your luggage with you the whole time (baggage handling is surprisingly scarce on Amtrak, but storage above the seats is ample) but if service is available at a future station, maybe you can hand it off then. Call the number or check out the website and see if there is more info on these aspects.
I love how relaxing train travel is. No long waits to get going, no commands to raise your seats upright and fold up the tray tables. You can stretch out, walk around, visit the dining car, play cards… I think it would make for a memorable honeymoon.
I have to take Amtrak from here to Minneapolis sometimes, because an airline ticket is too damn expensive. So, it’s either shell out $300 for a one hour flight that takes me directly to the airport for my connection, or $150 for an 11 hour train ride with cramped airline seats, noisy clackety-clacking all night long, and without the fun li’l airline food plasticware sporks they give ya.
They may not have a direct route between Abilene and Los Vegas - even if both locations have a station. I had this problem when trying to get from Jeff City, Mo to Homewood, Il. Call the 1800 number to see if this is your problem.
Oddly, Amtrak has pulled their route maps from their main site. But http://www.amtrakwest.com still has one, and it shows Las Vegas as now being served only from Los Angeles, not as part of a transcon route. To get there from Abilene, that means changing in LA, and the online schedule may have eliminated that as an option anyone would want to consider.
Apparently the Chicago-LA “Desert Starlight” got the disappearin’ railroad blues, and the casinos had to lobby to get the LA-LV segment restored. Even that may not work.
Have you checked Southwest Airlines? They’d probably be as cheap as Amtrak, and you wouldn’t be treated as any more like cattle.
I live in NYC and sometimes take the train to Albany or Philly. Once I took the train to NC but that was not unlike hell. It was a commuter type train for 8 hours. Bleah!
The train isn’t too bad 9 times out of 10. I go from Illinois to Louisiana and back once or twice a year. It’s a little noisy, but I like the fact that I don’t have my knees in my chin the whole way.
However, that one time out of ten is often anightmare. Last Memorial Day we were headed down to New Orleans when a freight train derailed in front of us. We stopped while they cleared the wreckage. For ten hours. It’s already a 14 hour trip, and we were delayed ten more. And at no point did Amtrak even pretend to be concerned about whether this might be a problem, even for the woman who missed her father’s funeral because of it. In fact, one of the conductors, when asked if he knew how long we’d be delayed, said, “They can stay all day for all I care, I’m paid by the hour.” I haven’t much wanted to go on Amtrak since.
It’s convenient for me because the City of New Orleans runs from where I live to where I go, so tickets are a breeze. And it’s cheaper than flying, much cheaper for me. So there’s a lot of cost and convenience appeal for me. Without those, though, it’s not worth it. There’s not much exciting about a train ride - it’s similar to riding the interstae, which no one gets misty-eyed about. There’s no “experience” to experience.
I usually fly now, because it’s faster, and when I take days off, I don’t want to spend an entire day on the train each way, but especially in college, I would take the train home to Albany, NY from Washington DC. I also took a day trip once to NYC.
I can’t drive, so I use the train as my main transportation between college and my parents’ house, which is in the next county. I take Metrolink when I can, because it’s half as expensive and there’s no tourists, but it only runs certain ways at certain times on certain days. So I end up using Amtrak at least half the time.
Forget their website, it’s useless. Call the 800 number, or try http://www.transitinfo.org/Amtrak/Scheds/ (the link doesn’t have any maps, so it may take some searching to find the right line) My hometown has an unmanned station, since the brilliant bureaucrats decided to charge way too much for Amtrak to have a ticket booth, so I just get on with my stuff and when the conductor comes by asking for tickets I buy one from him. They take credit cards, but that can be kind of a long process, so cash (or maybe checks) is easier. Oh, and bring stuff to eat because it’s bloody expensive in the dining car.
I just tried amtrak.com and it says that Las Vegas is served via bus service from LA. There is no direct service from Dallas to LA, you’d have to get to San Antonio first. Perhaps the website isn’t capable of finding routes involving more than one transfer?
I’ve been on the Captiol Limited (DC to Chicago and back) twice. Nice trip, only problem is it takes 24 hours!
I adore trains, and have always lived within earshot of tracks. However, I’ve only ridden Amtrak twice in my life, once from Austin to Fort Worth, and once from Martinsburg WV to NY, NY. The seats were better than airline coach, but you had to pay for snacks, meals and such seperately. I found it comfortable, but painfully slow. I suppose I had expected it to be faster than driving, but I guess we just don’t have trains that go that fast hereabouts. Oh, well. ([hijack]Non-freight rail in America is so dead if it continues to be so slow and expensive compared to road travel. We need fast trains and better routes to be competitive. Going to LA to get from Abeline to Las Vegas is just silly![/hijack]) On a more rail-positive note, I just won tickets on the Hill Country Flyer, a restored steam train…woo-woooo!
Wierd. When Mrs. Tranq and I went on our honeymoon, the train stopped in LasVegas both ways. Of course, we were leaving out of SanDiego, and went by way of LA, so what do I know? When Mrs. Tranq transferred from SanDiego to Washington, DC, she went by sleeper car, and loved the trip. I, on the other hand, when transferring from SanDiego to Philly, drove, and it was pretty rough (Of course, I did the trip in only three days, so that might have had some impact).
I find Amtrak much more useful for business commuting, say between Wilmington (DE) and NYC, or Wilmington to DC.
I used to take the Amtrak train from NYC to Rochester several times per year when I was going to school in The Place Where It Always Snows. It was pretty relaxing. I quite enjoy trains, and would spend most of my time in the cafe car working on my laptop (as long as the tables were not in high demand) and striking up conversations with random strangers.
The food sucks, however, so I reccomend brown bagging it.
I’ve taken Amtrak back and forth to Chicago from St. Louis a few times. On one leg, there was a delay of four-five hours, on-track, because we had to sit still, then board passengers from another train that had won a disagreement with a truck. Well, it had one, but apparently was in no shape to continue. I got home very late, and much later the busses wouldn’t even have still been running to take me back home.
On another leg, it was delayed for several hours outside of Chicago because a bridge was stuck in the up position, apparently.
Those were the two worst delays; in general though, it ran sadly slowly (oh, for a country-spanning bullet train network), the seats are like airliner coach, only in worse repair, and the food indeed does suck. The first time I ever ate on one though, I bought a hot dog from someone who was, I swear, Wesley Willis himself. That was entertaining.
The experiences were always tainted, however, by the unavoidable fact of what St. Louis’ Amtrak “station” is like. It’s maybe a step up from a tarpaper shack, it’s called the “Amshack” for good reason. It did make an amusing contrast going from it to Chicago’s.