True story…
I once took an 8 hour greyhound trip - not many people on the bus. 2 hours in, I was by myself in my seat when a young lady asked if she could sit next to me. She said that some creep was sitting behind her poking his hand through the seat and trying to grab her ass. Shortly after, I sensed someone slipping into the seat behind us. Waited… waited… Creepy fingers started to poke through the seat. I was forewarned. I punched the fingers as hard as I could. Stood up and stared my best death glare at creepy little man who scuttled off back to the back of the bus. That lady is now my wife.
No, not really, she went up and grabbed a seat next to the driver for the rest of the trip.
There is one huge advantage the train has over the bus: on the bus, you sit there for hours, because your only reason to not sit there is to go use that smelly, sloshy thing in the back; on the train, I sometimes go downstairs and stand in the middle of the car looking out the door, just to take a break from sitting. And of course the huge advantage over the plane is that you walk onto the platform and step onto the train, without the ever-popular strip search.
On a shortish trip, you can sleep pretty well in a recliner seat.
Short/medium-distance trains offer coach seating featuring wide, comfortable reclining seats with ample legroom for your comfort. You’ll find a fold-down tray, individual reading light and 120v electric outlets right at your seat.
Coach seats on single-level Viewliner trains and bi-level Superliner trains that travel on long distances route have all these amenities, but let you stretch out even more, with extra legroom, footrests, leg rests, and even curtains at your seat.
I have done parts of it, in a recliner seat, it is great. I also would like to to LA to Seattle in a sleeper. Sounds fantastic.
Whack-a-Mole is also citing the Rocky Mountaineer. That train is more accurately described as a rail cruise. Its job is not to get from A to B (in its case, Vancouver to Calgary), it’s all about the trip, the fine dining in the dining car, and a night in a luxury hotel. Its schedule is set so its passengers see the mountain scenery in daylight, and it pays Canadian Pacific a lot for running rights on CP trackage. There are motorcoach excursions to sightsee from various stops along the way, making the whole trip four days in total. Not too different from a cruise ship, but in no way comparable to Amtrak, whose job is simply to take people from A to B. Or ViaRail (Canada’s equivalent of Amtrak), whose job is the same.
I looked at ViaRail between Vancouver and Edmonton (note that Via does not run from Vancouver to Calgary, as the Rocky Mountaineer does.) Two adults in a two-person bedroom on that trip starts at $2155 Canadian (or $1077.50 per person). Regular economy for two people starts from $800 Canadian ($400 per person). The scheduled time for the Via trip is 26 hours, 50 minutes–a long way from four days on the Rocky Mountaineer, and a lot less expensive.
Which is not similar to Amtrak’s pricing structure. On Amtrak, you buy the ticket and the room separately – it is like you buy 2 coach tickets and then add the room. One person in the roomette is quite expensive, but two in the room is only the additional cost of the base fare.
For some perspective, a sleeper fare on the 20th Century Limited from New York to Chicago in the 1920s cost $51.30, at a time when the average weekly wage was about $36. And the $51.30 got you a berth closed off from the corridor by a curtain - a private compartment cost extra.
If you want a semi-historic experience, the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express offers a trip from Florence to Paris for £2900.00. That includes meals, but you have to share your cabin with someone else, who is virtually guaranteed not to be Eva Marie Saint.
My train memory from back in the day involves a family vacation in which we took a train from New York to Chicago, then the California Zephyr from Chicago to Salt Lake City (my mother was deathly afraid of flying). The accomodations and food were pretty nice on the way out, the western scenery spectacular. The return trip from Chicago to N.Y. was on the New York Central at a time when that line was in its semi-death throes. Meals were out of a machine on board - like the Automat, only not as good.
Part of me would like to take the Empire Builder to Chicago - but in a sleeper car, it’s about $750 (obviously that differs depending on date - but unlike most airlines or even buses, Amtrak doesn’t really let you search multiple dates).
Even with $5/gallon gas, I can drive there, stop where I want along the way, have similarly tiered food and accommodations (the food and the sleeper cars look nice, but they’re 2.5* hotel nice), and probably get there faster.
Or I could just fly straight to Chicago for about $150 (on sale) and then spend two days there in a nicer room than Amtrak is offering for two nights.
The Coast Starlight is even worse.
It would be nice if they had something mid-tier. A little cheaper, a few fewer “amenities” (maybe no food?) but that made it a little more competitive with flying or driving.
But they’re obviously selling out, so someone must be riding these, they just must have a much different cost/benefit analysis than I have.
I’ve taken the Coast Starlight several times — but only in coach, not in a sleeper car. For trips about 10 to 12 hours long (i.e. not the entire route). It’s very affordable, and amazingly comfortable.
I’ve done two round trips on the entire length of the Capitol Limited – some 20 hours each way. Always booked coach but, for most of those trips, I wasn’t actually in coach. I preferred the observation car, even when stopped in Toledo for a few hours at night.
I’m not sure what the mid-tier option would be; coach is already quite nice, at least as nice as a first class airplane cabin. Meals aren’t included in the coach price, so you can’t cut those. (I don’t think they’re included in the sleeper price, either, but I could be wrong).
I’ve ridden coach on the Coast Starlight several times; I find it much more enjoyable than flying or driving, though obviously not so fast as flying. You also have to be able to deal with the fact that it is NEVER on time.
I agree that the sleepers are not a good deal, but some people (in my experience, people who REALLY don’t like to fly) obviously feel otherwise.
Except for the logistical challenges. If you do something like the morguedrawer berths such as are depicted in Some Like It Hot, you are still stuck with what to do with those people when they are not horizontal, which is most of the time. That takes up a lot of space.
What would a mid tier option look like? Something like the berths in an old school Pullman sleeper would take up almost as much space as the Roomettes, but without the privacy. Something like a domestic first class airplane seat, where you’d still be sleeping in a recliner, but a somewhat comfier recliner than the regular coach seats maybe?
My real only experiences on trains was a vacation in Bavaria. Took trains from town to town but short trips except for one. Three weeks.
The couple hour trips where great. BUT we got a ‘bedroom’ on our last trip back from Vienna to Nuremburg. It’s interesting to take a shower which is really nothing more than a vertical torpedo tube. Really a waste of money for us. Their train cars and seats where much more comfortable.
My LaCrosse — Everett round trip was about $1k (two nights each way), I liked the roomette but not something I would do regularly— great for a treat (I chose Amtrak partially for the roll on/ off bicycle option, as it was part of a fully loaded bicycle camping trip)
That’s what I always do, whether it’s rail or air or hotel accommodations. Or, it’s through a travel agent, who can do the same thing, but who also can “fix” anything that goes wrong. You cannot go wrong with a phone call where you connect to a live person.
I recall having to get to Toronto, for the funeral of my father. I checked schedules online, selected one, then called Air Canada–boom, done. I called my favourite hotel in Toronto–boom, done. Took me all of 20 minutes. My sister, on the other hand, was wading through Expedia and Kayak and others, trying to find the cheapest flights and the cheapest hotels. (Sis is notoriously cheap.) She spent about a day-and-a-half doing so.
My time is more valuable than spending a day-and-a-half looking at Expedia and Kayak. I simply picked up the telephone, and took care of everything in about twenty minutes.