Travelling by Train

Factual Questions
21

Twenty five years ago I did a number of Montreal-NY round tripls by Greyhound and they were quite pleasant. There were these bus-plus affairs that went non-stop in about 7 hours and served a box lunch (ok it was pretty bad, possibly even worse than airline food, if possible). About 15 years, I did the same trip and it was awful, stopping at every rinky-dink town in northern NY State and taking more line 9 hours. Some years ago Greyhound bought out the local bus company and a pleasant 2 hour non-stop between Montreal and Ottawa has deteriorated into a many stop 2 1/2 trip, but the main problem is that the busses are awful with many broken seats.

Now for the last several years my wife and I have taken AMTRAK from Montreal to NY on or near Christmas. First off, it is very cheap, about $200 for two round trips (that includes a 15% senior discount). A trip by air would cost us at least $500 and that would be a good price. To go by air would require getting to the airport 90 minutes early and take us to, say La Guardia, a $30 taxi ride to downtown Manhattan, maybe more. The flight, should it be on time is only slightly over an hour. The train takes usually around 10 or 11 hours (it is scheduled for 9:30, but is always late), but leaves us at Penn station, less than $10 taxi from my daughter’s. Yes, the time is longer, but the lack of hassle almost makes up for it and the price difference does the rest. I have to say that my wife brings a bottle to piss in (and then empties it in the toilet) since she won’t sit on the seat. The johns are not kept clean although they start out in decent condition.

Someone mentioned NY-Philly. I have used that train innumerable times. The Amtrak takes only about a hour and half and you have to have be crazy to fly, since you kill more time than that at the airport. It is fairly expensive, about $90 I think. There is an alternative: NJ transit change at Trenton to Septa. Takes an extra hour, but at a quarter the price. The difference is even more striking for seniors since Septa charges I think $2 (one way) outside of rush hour. You need a PennDOT card but anyone over 65 can get one.

Twice I have taken the RT between Vancouver and Seattle. Leaving aside the feeble-minded customs agent I ran into once (the following dialog is not exaggerated: Where do you live? Montreal. Why were you in Canada? Huh? Why were you in Canada? We lie there. Oh, do you have any prescription drugs? No, I lied since I had overheard him tell someone else that no prescription drugs could be imported), I found it quite pleasant and on-time. The train from Seattle arrives arond 11:30 in the morning, the return is at 6:00 PM and from listening to people talking to the customs agent it is clear that there are a lot of Seattleites that go up spend the afternoon in Vancouver and come back the same day. The RT cost on the order of $50–heavily subsidized by Washington State.

One basic problem with AMTRAK is that they own no track. This means they have to yield to freight trains run by lines that do run the track, their speed is down to whatever is required by the poor maintainance of the owners (the overnight train through Vermont disappeared when a part of the track was condemned and the owner chose not to repair it) and the gov’t would like to end passenger train travel and will not support it, although it is far the most energy efficient way to go. European trains are very good, very fast, mostly on-time, and very expensive. They are also heavily used. Given my choice I would choose to go with a higher fare if they could do the Montreal-NY trip in 7 hours with some reliability.

Funny story: Several years ago taking the NY train in late December, we stopped somewhere along Lake Champlain. The conductor explained that the engine had stalled and they were trying to restart it. After an hour they announced that they given up and the northbound train, which would be along by and by, would push us back to the last station and busses take us to Albany where we would get a regular Albany-NY train. About ten minutes later the train started and we were on our way. I went up and asked the conductor what happened. He said that the controller in Albany had suggested as a desparation measnure that they reboot their computer and try again. They did and the engine started right up. Way to go Microsoft!

22

I regularly take Amtrak’s Capitol Corridor service between Silicon Valley (either Santa Clara or San Jose) and Davis. The equivalent drive for me would be 110 miles door-to-door and could easily take 3 hours or more given Bay Area traffic (I’d also need to stop and stretch a couple of times due to back problems, but Im not including that). The train takes 2.5 hours, which results in a 3-hour door-to-door trip. The fare is $40 round trip, or about 20 cents per mile. The “California Cars” are brand-new, bi-level (great views of the San Francisco Bay and the Suisun marshes), and have power outlets for laptops, so I gain work-time. There are even WiFi-enabled cars on certain trains. I can get up and move around (vital in my particular case), the snack car is not overpriced and sells decent beer and wine – important on the evening trip home. The staff are always friendly, and I’ve never come across a dirty bathroom.

The Capitol Corridor trains are very popular: there are 12 trains in each direction between the SF Bay Area and Sacramento (and some go beyond, into the Sierra Nevada foothills) and they’re almost always more than half-full. They’re subsidized by the State of California because they ease congestion on I-80, and would continue running even if the US Congress destroyed Amtrak’s long-distance services. Even though they share tracks with Union Pacific freight trains, the sheer frequency of the service means that it’s financially worth it to UP to keep Amtrak happy, so they rarely get held up in favor of freights. Trains rarely arrive more than a few minutes late, if that.

I used to take the NE Corridor between DC and Philly/NYC/Boston (where Amtrak owns the right-of-way, so doesn’t compete with freight trains) every weekend for a couple of years, and it was always better than driving. I’ve also traveled acrosss the US several times by Amtrak, and have always had positive experiences (although one has to be patient with the long-distance train delays). I’ve had a couple of romantic adventures on the cross-country trains, nearly been thrown off one due to mistaken identity, and narrowly avoided plunging off a trestle that was set on fire by arsonists (we were saved because the LA-bound train left New Orleans several hours late due to waiting for a connecting train from Chicago, which was itself delayed by some poor guy committing suicide-by-train earlier that day: his death may have saved the lives of dozens if not hundreds of passengers, since our tardiness meant that the burning trestle had been spotted by the time our train got to Tucson, so they could hold the train back there and transfer us to buses. If we’d been on time, we would have been going over the trestle just as the fire was really catching).

As all of the posts in this thread show, one’s Amtrak experience will depend largely on which route is being traveled. Here are two guidelines that I’ve found useful regarding likelihood of delays:

[ol]
[li]If you’re traveling on a route that sees fewer than two passenger trains per day, there’s a very good chance that the freight railroads that own will shunt your train into a spur to wait for freights to pass. Expect delays. Your trip just isn’t that important to the freight RRs.[/li][li]Long-distance trains usually start out on time, but often lose time as they proceed. So, if your journey is on the latter part of a long-distance trip (e.g. Daithi Lacha’s Savannah-Florida leg of a NYC-FL train), expect delays of up to several hours. On the other hand, the return leg Florida-Savannah would probably not lose too much time because that train starts in Florida.[/li][/ol]

23

They own all of the Northeast Corridor trackage between DC and NYC, most of the NEC between NYC and Boston, and some trackage elsewhere in the US. The Wikipedia entry claims that Amtrak owns 730 route-miles in all (out of 22,000 total Amtrak-traveled route-miles), but of course a major percentage of Amtrak’s operations involve their NEC mileage. Outside the NEC, Amtrak trains are, as you say, at the mercy of freight dispatchers.

24

The route that I am likely to take is the Sunset Limited. If I go anywhere, I will probably have to go on this route for some distance. I live in Louisiana after all, has anyone been on that route?

25

The Sunset is a Superliner equipped trainset, and probably the worst on-time performer on the system. 10-12 hours late is the rule, not the exception. The Sunlate’s performance has led to Amtrak no longer holding the Texas Eagle in San Antonio for its connection…even though there is a tri-weekly sleeper and coach that change trains there to continue to California.

The trip itself is fine, but be prepared for sloppy on-time performance.

26

I took the California Zephyr from San Francisco to New York. I did it because it was the cheapest way to get to NY ($99.00- obviously not in a sleeper), but it turned out to be one of the best things I’ve ever done.

I found coach to be quite comfortable- it was fairly empty so I always had two seats to stretch out on, and the footrests (with ample space in front of them- I didn’t even know what to do with all that space) go up to horizontal, making a decent sized bed for a smallish person. I packed a blanket and slept like a baby each night.

On the way, I met some fabulous people, some of whom I still keep in touch with. It takes interseting sorts to go cross country on a coach train. But those people also tend to be interesting ones to while away the hours with. I have fond memories of all the young people staying up in the lounge car playing cards deep in to the night…

I packed my own food (not to hard to do) so I can’t say much about the dining cars. Meals are included with a sleeper. I made a lot of sandwiches, instant oatmeal (there is hot water) and that sort of thing. The conductor would sneak me food from the dining car sometimes. Washing up can be difficult as there are no real showers in the coach bathroom, but it’s not too hard to get some privacy for a good sponge bath.

It was good times- spending hours reading, watching the rockies or the desert or the small towns roll by, hanging out in the lounge car chatting, listening to music, writing in my journal…it was like a miniature rolling retreat.

We did get delayed a few times. I was on such a long journey that it didn’t really matter. Train is definately not the way to go if you want to plan things to the hour, but if you are happy arriving when you arrive, it’s great.