I am looking at pictures of travel on Amtrak’s website. I see people sitting comfortably in a passenger car on a train. This is great. I am suspicious however that the train ride is not going to be as wonderful as the makers of the web page envision.
I envision a smelly car with disfunctional toilets, kinda like the last greyhound bus that I rode on. I envision terrible lunches and hateful wait-staff, kinda like the last plane I took. Lastly I envision being shaken to death because of a disfunctional railroad system.
So there-in lies my question, what is it like to travel by train?
I’ve taken Amtrak from Seattle to San Francisco a couple of times. We had a two person sleeping compartment each time, so I don’t know how the coach accomodations are. There was a snack bar and a dining car. The dining car serves restuarant style meals, not airline food, because they have the room and can carry the weight of a real kitchen. Airlines just have microwaves.
The bathrooms are very tight. Pretty much the same as airline bathrooms. They have staff to keep the bathrooms clean, although if the last person to use it had bad aim you could have a nasty experience. Unlike on a bus, there are cleaning staff that can clean the train while en route.
The train itself wasn’t very shaky. Much smoother than traveling by bus. Biggest problem was that you sometimes get delayed. In their infinite wisdom, the powers that be have decided that cargo trains get priority over passenger trains in this country.
In the past, my mom had taken AMTRAK from dallas to chicago twice… twice she hated it and complained that seats were very uncomfortable, not enough leg room and food not available on the train (<–i’m not sure about that, or perhaps was available in 1st class cars/sleeper cars?) and of course, too long.
I spoke with a cousin recently who raved about motorcoach trips, as being far better than Greyhound buses, and much more comfortable with less stops and a tiny fraction of the cost, comparativelyspeaking.
I’ve traveled by train from Montgomery to Florida years ago and taken many excursion trips, and I love train travel! The food was decent (on Amtrak) and you can walk to stretch your legs. Some people might not like the rocking motion (if you are prone to seasickness or motion sickness) but I find it soothing.
I regularly travel overnight on the train.
The trip I take is about 10 hours by train. It would be about 7 to 7.5 hours driving. I find that the ability to get up and sit in the sightseeing car is wonderful. Walking around, relaxing. There is a snack bar for small food and a dining car for meals. Both are expensive but you can bring your own food also.
I think it’s about 10x as comfortable as flying but it takes significantly longer. It doesn’t save a lot of money but I think it’s a more enjoyable trip.
In the east, you’re more likely to ride Amfleet or Viewliner equipment, which is single-level and a bit different than the double-decker Superliner equipment that I’m used to.
The Superliners are quite comfortable. All the restrooms on the train, save one in the sleeping car, are located downstairs in the vestibule, so you wouldn’t be stuck in the smelly seat next to a bathroom. Each car has several potties downstairs, and I’ve not yet encountered one that is out of order. The coach seats are quite comfortable; they recline further than airline seats, there’s more legroom (akin to first class on a plane, with about half again as much space) and each seat has a foldout legrest. There are also footrests on the seatbacks ahead of you.
The food is quite good, although if you’re on the train for a week or longer it tends to get a bit repetitive. All passengers can eat in the dining car, with sleeper passengers getting priority in reservation times. Meals are included with sleeper fare, so if you’re in coach I’d expect to pay between 15 and 20 bucks per meal. The lounge has a cafe downstairs with pretty good food. It is fairly steep in the grand scheme of things, but you get good portions.
Travel by train is what you make it. Be prepared for the train to be behind schedule for most/all of the trip. The freight railroads typically don’t dispatch favoring Amtrak.
There is no smoking on the train.
It will take a while, but I always ride the train. Once you know what to expect, it’s a great way to travel.
I took Amtrak from Ann Arbor to Chicago. Time was about the same as driving. Sititng and watching the scenery go by was nice, and it was a nicer view than you get from a freeway. The seats were clean enough, and you could get up and walk around. It was just my wife and me. I’d do it again, and I’m certainly glad I did it the one time.
I think long distance train travel is something everyone should do at least once if they can, though there are some obvious disadvantages as well as advantages.
Advantages:[ul]
[li] You really can relax. You generally have much more room to spread out than you would crammed into an airplane. It’s wonderful not to have to worry about meal, bathroom, and gas stops as you would when traveling by car.[/li]
[li] It’s way better than the bus; there’s no comparison.[/li]
[li]Some of the scenery you can’t see anywhere else. For instance, the Coast Starlight between Santa Barbara and L.A. gives you a better view of the ocean than much of the road.[/li]
[li]The food, in our experience, was excellent. If you go whole hog and pay for the overnight accommodations, your meals are included in your accommodation charge.[/li]
[li]Various other amenities depending on the train. For instance, the Coast Starlight has afternoon wine tastings for the sleeper passengers.[/li][/ul]Disadvantages[ul]
[li]Can be slow.[/li][li]Can be expensive if you get the sleeper, although this can vary widely. We paid only about $470 for the two of us, from Seattle to L.A. including fare and accommodation. OTOH, when looking into cross country trips I found the cost to be over 3K.[/li][li]The basic 2-person sleeper, in its daytime configuration, has seats facing each other, so it’s hard to stretch out.[/li][li]Bathrooms were clean, but showers were weak.[/li][li]During the night, coach passengers tend to take over the view lounge and sprawl out over the seats and sofas.[/li][li]Definitely not quick, though IMO that’s not a deal breaker for leisure travel.[/li]
[/ul]
All in all, a great experience and I’m glad we went, but when we were approaching downtown L.A. I had never thought I’d be so happy to see Van Nuys and the Budweiser plant, and then San Fernando Blvd (a rather scuzzy thoroughfare) and finally home.
I frequently travel the Northeast Corridor Amtrak trains between New York and Philadelphia. They are probably better-maintained than most, as it’s Amtrak’s busiest route (indeed, the only route that makes money).
I have few complaints. Their delays are no worse than planes or car traffic. The bathrooms are tiny, but I’ve never found one not working or really disgusting; the trains are clean, the a/c usually works. When the train has more than five cars, there is usually a Quiet Car, which is bliss to me. And when there is a loud yapper nearby, you can get up and change your set, unlike in a plane.
The post above mine reminded me: my mother and I took a sleeper car from Phila. to Charleston a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. If I ever have enough time, I would love to take a sleeper car cross-country to L.A., but that would be a big chunk of time, to and fro.
Not quite true; I’m told that that the LA-San Diego route turns a profit too.
How they manage to schedule, most days, 11 round trips along a route that is mostly single-tracked, and which is shared with freights, without horrendous accidents I’ll never understand.
OK, well I guess I do understand a little of how they do these things, but it’s still remarkable.
I have to add another negative feature, at least with regard to traveling from Seattle to L.A. via the Coast Starlight. Although the trains are generally sold out, by the time you arrive in Los Angeles, around 10PM, most people have alighted at prior stops and you may have only a dozen or so stragglers arriving in a nearly empty station. When we did this, a couple of beggars were waiting for us in the baggage area hoping for handouts.
I once took Amtrak from Chicago to Buffalo, NY and back again.
The food was good and the seat (in coach) was reasonably comfortable, but I never got any real sleep. Throughout the night, there were always people going from car to car. I constantly had to hear the doors sliding open and then slamming shut all night long. I’d recommend trying to get a seat in the middle of the car to get as far away from that noise as possible. If I go again, I’ll bring ear plugs.
Had a horrendous experience the last time we rode Amtrak from Savannah, GA to Florida, three years ago. We were supposed to leave at 10 in the morning; en route from NYC, the train had encountered track flooding, and didn’t get to us until 5 in the aftenoon. Some of the people had already been aboard for twelve hours, and so we were surrounded by cranky, loud people. The kitchen was 100% sold out of food. During a brief stop at Winterhaven, they brought supplies aboard: faux KFC dinners for everyone. The chicken was cold, but the little container of applesauce had heated up nicely. I think we got back to our destination at 5 in the morning - ten hours behind schedule.
The freight companies own the tracks; they lease them out to Amtrak, ergo the freight companies take priority.
Back in the early 90s, I commuted between New York (Manhattan) and Washington DC by train for 2 years. Train is definitely the best, most reliable method for that particular jaunt. It was faster to fly, if and only if everything went off exactly on schedule, flightwise. That was rare. The trains were comfortable enough, unless you took the first unreserved, cheap-seat train on Friday evening - in that case you usually had to stand for half the trip, often as far as Philadelphia.
The trains were bouncy, no arguing that. And the bathrooms tended from tolerable to ick. Which I guess is the situation on any method of travel, including airplanes.
As far as other train travel: 3 years ago we took the Auto Train from Lorton VA to Florida. It beat driving by a long shot. Though that route isn’t particularly scenic. It certainly would have been faster to fly, but then we’d have had the hassles of getting to the rental car place at the other end, lugging suitcases, etc. It was no cheaper than flying, since we splurged on sleeper accommodations - without sleeper accommodations, it would have been quite a bit cheaper. That bunk cost a fortune! Meals were included and fairly decent; not sure what the folks in Coach had but I know they had food available.
I’m a committed train-lover though and would readily choose train travel over any other method unless the train is simply undoable.
I’ve ridden Amtrak from Philadelphia to Chicago and back once, and I travel up and down the Northeast Corridor lines regularly. I’ve never run into a smelly car or rude staff or a really nasty bathroom. Granted, the bathrooms are less pleasant towards the end of a long trip, especially if there are a lot of men with bad aim on the train.
I bring my own food on shorter trips (I’m a cheapskate, that’s all) but the meals on the Chicago trip were quite decent. Menus vary depending on the train; I came back on one of the posh trains, the Lake Shore Limited, and the dinner choices included steak, Cornish game hen and risotto with scallops and shrimp.
If you’re going to share a regular sleeper compartment you’d better be on very good terms with the person you’re sharing with. There is not a lot of room (I could sit in one seat and put my feet on the other, and I’m 5 feet 2), and on the Viewliner sleepers the toilet is right there in the compartment with you.
One big advantage over airlines: Amtrak is not nearly so anal about baggage. You can carry on two good-sized suitcases (plus briefcase, purse, whatever) and check up to three more at no charge.