Only 4 hours…but 2 hours of that were spent not getting anywhere because the train crew disappeared at a stop and never returned. All the passengers were eventually transferred to another train to finish the trip. (This is just one tiny piece of the most screwed-up 26 hours of travel I’ve ever experienced.)
As a kid, I remember taking the train from New York’s Penn Station down to Hollywood, Florida, to spend the summer with my grandparents. My memory is hazy, but I think the whole trip took a little more than 24 hours.
So, that’s the longest I ever spent on a train.
My wife and I got free/discount tickets from Seattle to San Francisco with a sleeper car. Nice and romantic 24 hour trip, but the beds in our 2 person compartment were bunks–enough room for one in the lower, and the other in the upper. Either snuggle together very very cramped, or apart. Still nice though.
I’m kinda curious to hear the whole story.
A month, but it was broken up with many interludes. 1967. With the Boy Scouts (don’t start:mad:). Albuquerque to Chicago, Santa Fe Chief. One day stay. Chicago to New York, New York Central. One day stay. Up to Montreal (don’t remember the line) for a one week incursion to Expo 67 and an additional week north of Montreal at some camp run by the local natives. Back down the coast to Washington DC. Two days. Down the coast to Atlanta. Saw the train station that was a part of the Gone With The Wind" story. Across the gulf states to New Orleans. I remember something about a WWII submarine. Across to Houston - Space Center and a visit to the Astrodome, at that time still a major wonder of modern architecture. Where Astro Turf was spawned. Back to Albuquerque. Best trip ever. I was 16.
About 25 hours from Beijing to Chongqing, China. I don’t remember it fondly. We were in first class sleeper compartments, but I was on day 3 of what wound up being a weeklong bout of food poisoning and subsequent intestinal distress. The compartment itself was nice but the communal bathroom was nothing but a hole in the floor of the train, so I spent about half the trip in there having diarrhea directly on the tracks and the other half curled up in my bed with stomach cramps. I don’t recall eating a thing in that 25-hour span.
Washington DC to St Louis, but it was two trains (switched in Chicago).
Does that count as one? It was one trip conceived as a continuous journey.
That was about 24 hours exactly.
15 hours: the night train from Zurich to Prague.
Two trips of three days each across Canada from Toronto to Vancouver.
One trip in first class from Cuidad Juarez to Mexico City, probably a day and a half.
One trip by third class rail from Mexico City to the Guatemalan border. Probably three days but seemed like an eternity. :eek:
11 hours, overnight from Seville to Barcelona. I had my own room (with shower), and the ticket included a wonderful dinner and breakfast. A totally enjoyable experience.
Portland, Maine to Chicago. I had to switch trains twice, and take a taxi across Boston so I don’t know if this counts but it took 36 hours all together. First train was from Portland to Boston north station. Then I had another train from Boston south station to Albany, NY. I took a third train from Albany to Chicago. There was a ridiculous amount of delays on the Albany-Chicago train which ended up running out of water for toilets and drinking.
Not that far. I once took Amtrak to LA from Salt Lake. Another time was from Penang to Singapore. The trips in Japan don’t seem as far as you qo quicker.
St. Petersburg, Russia to Simferopol, Ukraine (and back) or Novosibirsk, Russia to Ulan-Ude, Russia. They were both about 2 days.
Maybe 45 minutes or an hour. Just the occasional commuter train.
There’s not a train I wouldn’t take, etc., etc.
I made two lengthy trips on two-week railpasses on Amtrak and the Southern Railway (which at the time still ran its own passenger trains) in the mid-'70s. Longest individual legs were Chicago-Seattle And San Fran-Chicago, about 35-40 hours each. Next longest was probably DC-New Orleans on the Southern Crescent, about twenty hours.
In 1977 my Dad and I rode a double-headed steam charter from Pittsburgh to Altoona, PA via the Horseshoe Curve. Scheduled for about ten hours including stopovers, it ended up being more like 18 when one of the locomotives threw a rod during the westbound climb out of Altoona.
Longest run I made during my time in Europe was the overnight run Marseille-Paris, about ten hours, but three of that was spent sitting in a siding so that the train would arrive after sunup.
One day in the early '90s I was hanging out train-watching in Gare de l’Est in Paris, when a short consist of three Russian sleeping cars pulled in. I asked one of the passengers where they had come from, and he explained that it was a private charter that had traversed the entire trans-Siberian railway, then on to Paris via Moscow; about seven days for the entire run. I’m guessing that that one would be hard to beat for duration.
In 1959 I took the train from Chicago to Los Angeles. We spent at least two nights on the train, but I don’t recall exactly.
NYC to Chicago, as a kid. When we got off the train, for several hours it felt like the world was swaying back and forth, back and forth, without the clickety-clack clickety-clack.
5 hours 30 minutes
Fukuoka City to Tokyo via Shinkansen
Tacoma to Sacramento (actually Davis, CA) in the early 80s; probably about 28 hours. I’m glad I got to use Union Station for it’s original purpose before it was turned into a courthouse.
Did a few overnight trips in Europe a few years ago; managed to get a compartment to myself on the Nuremberg-to-Prague trip. Went from Paris to Nuremberg in the afternoon/evening; probably about 7 hours, but with changes in Brussels and Frankfurt. The engineer on the Brussels-to-Frankfurt leg must have been trying to make up time; it was a new, high-speed line and he kept it pegged at just under the maximum.
Not that long. Ten hours, maybe? Can’t really remember, but it was from Auckland to Wellington, NZ, in 1984.
I have also taken a few trips of six hours. So no big deal, compared to some. Even my longest ever plane flight was less than four hours.