My longest train trip was nothing as amazing as some of the stories in this thread.
I take the train from my home in Chicago to my work site of Kansas City and back many times a year, which takes about seven hours. I find it a relaxing break especially after the inevitable crush of work in the last day or two before I leave. I watch a movie, eat, watch a second movie (of the same movie’s commentary track) and I’m at my destination.
A few years back I traveled from Chicago to Boston for a concert. We flew there, as we wanted to make sure we got there in time for the concert, and took the train back. There is no direct route from Boston, so we took a train from Boston to Washington. As the Capital Limited leaves Washington at 4:50 PM and arrives in Chicago at 8:45 AM, we decided to splurge on the roomette. My wife, being raised by a family of RVer’s, could sleep in the back of a cement mixer, but I have to be lying down to sleep.
A week after making our reservations, Amtrak called up back and offered to upgrade our “roomette” to the deluxe room for $50. It was totally worth it! Instead of two facing single seats, it was this really big room with a bench, a chair and a toilet with a shower. At night, the bench turned into a nice wide bed. There was enough room that I was able to pull out my laptop and camera and digitize and begin editing the footage I shot at the concert. We had a nice dinner and settled down for the evening, her to read, me to work on the video. We took showers and settled in for the night. It was dark so we didn’t see much out the windows, except that the view Pittsburgh at night available via Amtrak is beautiful.
Oh, and it’s totally worth the upgrade to a sleeper to make love on a moving train.**