Hi
I’ll be traveling across the US by train. Does Amtrak offer anything like a pre-paid travel card, much like a subway card? It would be convenient.
I look forward to your feedback.
nm
Are you looking for a pre-paid pass that will let you travel anywhere on the network? I don’t think they have that. You have to get a ticket specific to the route you want.
You can get a “USA Rail Pass” which is good for a set number of segments during a set period - e.g. you can get a Rail Pass that will allow you to travel 8 segments over a period of 15 days, or one which will give you 12 segments over 30 days. But a rail pass is not a ticket - you still have to make reservations and book tickets, “paying” for the tickets with the segments on your rail pass.
Their trains do sell out, so you must have a reserved seat.
I took the train from DC to Glacier National Park via Chicago a few years back. I can tell you this: try to make sure you’re getting on at the beginning/end of the line. Because passenger trains must always yield to freight trains, all the stops in the middle of line are always late. Like hours late. The only way to get on a train that leaves on time is to get on at one of the ends.
Right. The NE corridor has dedicated tracks. Not so much for most of the rest of the country. “Hours late” can mean even 12 hours. Too hot? Speed restrictions. Raining? Tracks might be flooded.
Their website says they offer passes for so many travel segments in so many days: https://tickets.amtrak.com/itd/amtrak/selectpass
I’ve ridden them on the east coast between Washington DC and NYC where they seem to have the best service and you can actually use them for business. Fort Worth to San Antonio is nice ride but long and only one trip each way each day so it not the most convenient for anything other than leisure travel.
And if you can afford it, if you’re going to be on the train more than one night, a sleeper car is worth the extra money, IMO. The seats are very comfortable for sitting, and fine for a short nap, but you really do not want to sleep multiple nights in them.
Trust me, even leaving from one of the ends can be late. I’ve had multiple hour delays leaving Chicago because the train that was supposed to take us was late getting in.
I would not recommend taking Amtrak across the US. Compared to train travel in Europe and Asia, Amtrak is slow, inconvenient and expensive. This is primarily due to non-contiguous routes with many turns, etc. Property rights of individuals in the US make having long stretches of straight track unfeasible.
Fly or rent a car. You’ll get there faster and be able to see the things you really want to see.
Amtrak train travel may be fun when you’re moving, but, at least in the western USA, you just have to throw the timetable out the window and accept you’ll get there…sometime.
On my last trip, we were delayed for:
flooded tracks
freight engineers who were past their hours and couldn’t move their trains, which were on a single-track segment, blocking everyone
Waiting for other freight trains
random stops in the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason
Deranged passenger who jumped off a moving train in the middle of the night in rural Oregon
Thanks txtumbleweed. What exactly js meant by segments? Routes? I’m not thrilled about flying in the US. I was quite happy with the New York -DC route the last time I used it several years ago. How does the mid-west fare?
Thanks for the tip DCnDC. The mid-west is where I’m heading.
Back in the 90s, when I was riding Amtrak regularly, the tickets were for routes, but not for any particular train. Like, you could buy a ticket from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, but there’s be a train on that route every hour or so, and you could just show up to any of those and take it. And if you missed your train, you just got on the next one. Is it not that way any more?
Of course, that also meant that a train being twelve hours late just wasn’t a thing. But then again, most of my travels were on passenger-only rails, which I’m sure also helped.
The “Northeast Corridor” is Amtrak’s route from Boston, through New York and Philadelphia, to DC. The tracks themselves are largely owned by Amtrak, and it’s generally considered to be where Amtrak does the best (for speed and schedule reliability).
Outside of the Northeast Corridor, riding on Amtrak is a very different experience. Their trains are almost always traveling on tracks that are owned by freight railroads. As other posts have noted, the trains very frequently wind up running late (sometimes very late), in large part because the railroads that own the tracks will often prioritize running their own freight trains over Amtrak’s trains.
If time isn’t a big factor for you, and if you want to take the train in order to see the country, Amtrak can be fun (and some of the routes do run through some gorgeous scenery, though not so much in the Midwest). But, if your goal is to get to a particular city at a particular time (or even on a particular day), outside of the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak probably isn’t a great idea.
I just want to point out that Amtrak doesn’t really travel “across the U.S.” To go from New York City to Los Angeles, for example, you take a train Philadelphia or Washington, then transfer to a train to Chicago, then transfer to another train to Los Angeles. The Chicago-L.A. leg by itself is listed at 43 hours, 15 minutes and makes 28 stops between the two cities.
??? Safety concern. Flying is probably the safest mode of travel anywhere.
Dealing with TSA? They’re harmless, they are just time wasters. Still faster than Amtrak.
Faster may not always be better. (In many things…! :D) Maybe davidmich wants to see the country, not look down through the clouds at it. Taking a long-distance train ride is a challenging but often rewarding experience. Can be pretty social, too, since–at least with the trains that haven’t cut their real hot-meal dining car service–it’s easy to strike up conversations with fellow travelers at meals, snack breaks or hanging out in the viewliner cars.
BTW, kunilou, it’s possible to go from NYC to Chicago without any transfers. That’s what the Lake Shore Limited’s all about. But yep, Chicago is the main hub that we cross-country riders all travel to, from which Amtrak then routes you to your destination across the land.
I encourage as many people to use Amtrak as possible. First, because it’s a helluva cool experience, though it can be wearying on the super-long treks. (I’ve been from NYC to Oregon, and NYC to Arizona.) Our government is of the opinion that the only trains that matter are those along the Northeast Corridor, Boston - NYC - Washington route (gee, I wonder why?), and they’re increasingly talking about shutting down the longer routes. So I’d love to see ridership and support for our national rail system (which is in dire need of improvement, not cuts, so that we have something at least 1/8th as useful as Europe’s railways), which might help remind those holding the Amtrak purse strings that people should actually be able to ride out to see the Midwest, not just fly over it.
Some Amtrak lines do offer what the OP is asking. Multi-Ride Passes - Amtrak Downeaster
My BIL and his wife took Amtrak from PA to AZ. They had planned to make it a round trip but rather than subject themselves to it twice that cashed in the second half and flew home.
A bedroom of some level would have been a good idea (they just had regular seats that wouldn’t recline properly) but it ~triples the cost of the trip.