At the risk of a hijack, has the OP considered a riverboat cruise? Much more sumptuous surroundings than a train, several days long, plenty of room to walk around, and rural scenery.
I really enjoyed the week cruise I took 15-ish years ago from Memphis north to St. Louis.
You’re not going to get much spectacular scenery; riverboat compatible rivers tend to be flat running through flat-ish land. But it is amazingly restful. A very different experience than ocean cruising. Much smaller boats, far fewer other passengers, more intimate, etc.
Prairies are fascinating, in their own way. I’ve driven across the Canadian prairies numerous times, and it always boggles me that I can see a thunderstorm miles away, while I’m driving in bright sunshine under a clear blue sky.
The Rocky Mountaneer does indeed follow Canada’s “First Passage to the West.” It runs on Canadian Pacific tracks, following pretty much the same route that CP blazed in 1885, from Calgary westbound: through Banff, the Kicking Horse Pass, and the Spiral Tunnels. VIA’s Canadian follows the CN route from Edmonton, which was built some years later.
I’ve looked into the Rocky Mountaneer as a vacation option, but never taken it.
Are you the son of a Pullman porter or the son of an engineer or a mother with her babe asleep?
And the sons of Pullman porters And the sons of engineers Ride their father’s magic carpets made of steel Mothers with their babes asleep Are rockin’ to the gentle beat And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel.
I knew a guy who was the son of a Pullman porter. His dad was a tragic figure and so was he. I helped facilitate his (son’s) final tragedy, albeit unwittingly. Not a good feeling.
The train running between Sacramento and Reno goes over Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada. There are old wooden snow tunnels that it goes through. The pass is scenic, at least by car from I-80 it is, and the tracks parallel much of the highway. That isn’t a multi day trip but can perhaps connect to some nice railway scenery.
On another note, my mom took the train from Houston to LA. At times the train stopped in the middle of nowhere, and for quite some time too. Passenger trains have to yield to freight trains, she said. That might put a cramp in one’s trip.
I have looked into it too, and it’s on my bucket list - though of course the Canadian border needs to open to USians before I can actually do anything about it.
This is true. Through most of the country (except for some portions of the Northeast, where Amtrak owns the tracks), Amtrak rents track usage from the freight railroads. My understanding is that, in theory, most of Amtrak’s contracts are supposed to give them priority over freight trains on those routes, but in practice, it’s very common for Amtrak’s trains to get stuck behind freight traffic, sometimes for extended periods of time.
If you are going to consider these type of journeys then The Ghan would need to be up there.
Transcontinental Australia north/south, just under 3,000km in around 53 hours in a train up to a 1,000m in length.
In 2018 SBS showed a “slow TV” documentary extending for an uninterrupted 3 hours of the trip with no voiceover, mostly of footage directly from the front of the train which rated it’s socks off so the following week they showed the full 17hours doco. Brilliant.
The top of my bucket list is the The Silk Road.
BEIJING - XIAN - DUNHUANG - TURPAN - ALMATY - TASHKENT - SAMARKAND - BUKHARA - MERV - ASHGABAT - DARVAZA - KHIVA - VOLGOGRAD - MOSCOW
I’m an avid train traveler, though I have a lot of the world left to cover and I’ve never been able to justify any of the luxury rail cruises, such as the Blue Train, the modern Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, Mexico’s Copper Canyon route, or today’s version of the Canadian. I do think Amtrak’s most scenic route is the westbound Zephyr in summer from Denver to Sacramento.
I just want to note that THE website for us train travelers is the incomparable seat61.com. In the last decade I’ve relied on it for planning train travel in two dozen countries on four continents.
Yes and no. Amtrak has priority in a segment of track during the time when it’s scheduled to be on that segment; outside of that time frame, all bets are off. So once an Amtrak train falls outside its window, it’s likely to get later and later.
That’s the theory. In practice, the owners of the tracks tend to play fast and loose with the rules since there doesn’t seem to be much of an enforcement mechanism. Union Pacific is particularly bad, which is why the LAX-SEA train is commonly known as the Coast Starlate.
I’ve taken this from Santa Barbara to Seattle and it was great and really pretty. I’ve taken the train bunches of times from Santa Barbara to San Diego and that is nice also.
