I traveled from Tucson, AZ to Chicago last summer via Amtrak. I’m more covid cautious than most folks these days, because I already have chronic issues and have no desire to deal with the potential nightmare of long covid. I wore an N95 mask almost the entire 3 days on the train, except for meals.
I didn’t get covid, or anything else. Wearing a mask that long was not the most convenient thing, but it was tolerable, and it made me feel like I was a little safer. Who knows for sure?
It’s not a matter of “being afraid of COVID in public in 2025”; it is being aware and concerned of the potential of acquiring a severe respiratory infection (SARS-CoV-2 or otherwise) in a confined, poorly ventilated space shared with many people for hours or days on end. Managing contagion risk in public is a matter of making informed decisions about dining in open versus environmentally closed spaces, whether to wear a mask in higher risk environments, timing on vaccinations boosters, et cetera, just as riding in a car (which, agreed, is a more probable cause of injury and death) is a matter of choosing to wear a seatbelt, avoid driving in adverse weather conditions, et cetera.
Traveling on a train or in a cruise liner where you will be inside for most of the transit time and in which is uncomfortable and potentially impossible to wear a respirator mask consistently substantially reduces the scope of effective risk management steps. And, despite what you may have heard, there are still many people dying of COVID-19 (see CDC links above), and while it is predominately the elderly and immunocompromised people there are still younger people getting infected and still suffering from post-acute sequelae (‘long covid’) for months after infection. The “incremental individual risk” while not as high as it was this time three years ago is not “very, very close to zero”, even if you aren’t hearing much about it on the news as any information about science and medicine has been overwhelmed by the volume of discussion about a certain bloated and bloviating orange-man who, it should be noted, encouraged Americans to minimize their concern about an ongoing pandemic and is now seeking to install a vaccine denier as the head of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Train cars are separate, not sharing one ventilation system. A cruise liner is like industrial ground beef in term of risk. A train more small butcher level.
65, no high risk factors (and I’d include morbid obesity if present) and the risk is not zero but it is low. The decision is about maximizing the fun to risk ratio. If riding a train for days is their idea of fun then the ratio seems pretty good.
Wear a mask in crowded areas outside your cabin. Take plenty of hand sanitizer, use it when you can’t actually wash your hands.
Keep your hands away from your face.
Don’t worry about the political climate and whoever is in office. Not one thing they can do to stop germs.
You’re on your own.
America is no more dangerous than any country about Covid. Less than some.
Take care of yourself don’t worry about anything else.
This latter point is why you take the train—because of the chance to meet a lot of other people and share an experience together. The dining car, the lounge cars, the people you meet, it’s an entirely different way of travelling from flying. I have many great memories of the people I met and the fun we all had on a multi-day train trip across Canada.
I suppose you could isolate yourself in your compartment, interacting with as few people as possible, but it seems to me that’s not why we take trains. These days, when flying is as glamourous as a Greyhound bus, trains recall much finer days of travel. If it has always been your dream to take a cross-country train, then you owe it to yourself to take advantage of every part of the experience.
We really have little interest in hanging with other passengers; the idea of a hotel room on wheels, with a changing view, and avoiding driving and the indignity of airline travel noted by someone above, is what appeals about this particular mode this time. We are not exactly gregarious, and selfishly love each other’s company. Happy to converse politely and share space like dining and observation cars, but if we could afford a private railway car (think James West and Artemis Gordon) we’d take it.
I’ve traveled on a lot of trains in Europe but not overnight. It would be a wonderful experience for sure and one I would dive right into!
I recently traveled from Belfast to Dublin on a train and the scenery outside was breathtaking. That was only about 3 hours and I had a great time watching the world go by.
Just make sure you aren’t in a hurry. Trains are wonderful, but in America, passenger trains do not have track priority, and it is virtually certain you will end up delayed. So if I were you, I wouldn’t make any time-sensitive plans based on when you are supposed to arrive.
Are you just trading one set of indignities for others? Googling, the flight time from Seattle to Milwaukee is about four hours, while the Amtrak ride to Chicago is about thirty hours. I would rather deal with the shorter flight.
I’d have just said “have masks available if you’re in crowds” and if RSV is “The flu” we’ve got that (vaccine) too so I’d suggest it.
Dunno what Amtrak looks like yet if you don’t have to first go to Kansas City and change, Amtrak should be fine. Plus everything else said above (like hand sanitizers)
As true as that may be, the train cars I’ve been on in the last few years were clearly not very well ventilated (and frankly, not very clean, either). You can mask up for the few hours through an airport and on a flight (and frankly you only really need the mask going through security and pre- and post-flight when you can’t maintain some distance and get circulating air), whereas that is pretty impractical on a multi-day train trip, but to each their own.
I expect that you would find Amtrak a bit of a come-down from your European experience to say the least.
On the route the o.p. is taking, once they get past Glacier National Park and Shelby, MT there isn’t much to see except a short portion of the Missouri River and mostly featureless plains all they way past Fargo, ND, and even then it is mostly fields and small lakes until they get to the outskirts of Minneapolis. West-Central Wisconsin does some rolling hills and a nice view of the upper Mississippi River, and the final run from Portage into Milwaukee should go pretty quickly.
As much as I’ve grown to loathe flying, I would be inclined to take that mode, too, unless I just really wanted to burn a lot of time with an amicable companion…which, I think, is what the o.p. is looking for. So, maybe just mask up, be cautious about your food choices (or just bring food to eat as Amtrak fare is not particularly appealing), and bring a few books or other entertainments to wile away the hours spent rolling through the flat browness of eastern Montana and North Dakota, or sidelined for freight trains.
Life might be considered as the trading one set of indignities for another. We would not be in a hurry or tight schedule, would bring provisions including ebooks and crib board and food and blankets for the time spent on sidings. We have travelled by train across Canada and through Europe, and simply enjoy the clickety clack of the rails and the views and the calm pace. At the end, we would be seeing old friends.
And I assume the porters sing “Chattanooga Choo-choo” when they make up the rooms. At least a friend of mine did when he was a porter on Canada’s Via Rail in the 1980s.
It’s strictly how best to calculate and evaluate the Covid/respiratory disease risk we’re concerned about, and the range between @LSLGuy and @Stranger_On_A_Train sums up our back and forth, with each of us switching positions and back over the course of a couple of days.
Exactly this! Of course, Fargo is a must-see for Coen Brothers fans, though I expect it is best appreciated at night at 70 mph, and I’m fine with that. And as a couple born and raised by the mountains and ocean and Vancouver, we love the brown, flat prairie landscape: you get the best view because nothing gets in the way or distracts the eye…
Except the train, especially in a sleeper car like the OP will be in, is significantly more comfortable, and in my experience extremely relaxing. Long distance train travel isn’t merely a means of transportation, it’s an experience in and of itself (IMO a good experience).
Hard disagree on this. Amtrak food in the east isn’t the greatest, but on the western routes like the one the OP is taking they have brought back what they call “traditional dining.” When I took the California Zephyr a few years ago I thought all the food in the dining care was pretty good, and the steak was really excellent.
Long-distance travel on Amtrak is, indeed, a terrible choice, especially compared to an airline flight, if what you’re seeking is convenience, timeliness, and getting from Point A to Point B with a minimum of hassle.
The OP seems to be making clear that those aren’t the reasons why they are interested in taking the train, and that they recognize the limitations and the time involved (including potential, if not likely, delays en route). They are interested in an experience that they’ve dreamed about for a long time (as @WildaBeast just noted), and as they have noted reserving a private room, they’re apparently happy and willing to pay for that experience.
I’m a very healthy 54 year old, fully vaccinated. No lung issues and I can go out and bike hard for a few hours, or hike up a mountain (I exercise nearly every day of the year). I also avoided Covid for 5 years until last week. Guess how it hit me? Uff da! Very sick for probably 3 days. I wish I could’ve had some of those amazing progresses in whatever!
The good news is this is the first time I’ve been sick in 5 years of anything. Hopefully I can get back to not being sick because Covid SUCKED!
Were you admitted to the hospital? Did you end up in an ICU negative pressure room on a ventilator? If not, you certainly had a better Covid experience than many during the worst of it. If you stayed home, you experienced progress.
The likeliest route would be on the Empire Builder; Seattle is that route’s western terminus, and it stops in Milwaukee on its way to Chicago (its eastern terminus). So, if the OP is getting off in Milwaukee (or even staying on the train all the way to Chicago), they’ll never have to change trains.