Across the USA by Train for Just $213
dereklow.co
dereklow.co
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/2huw34/what_its_...
EDIT: Looks like a lot of it. Sigh.
* http://landscapevoice.com/the-california-zephyr-trip-recap/
* http://wheresmybackpack.com/2012/08/16/i-survived-the-lake-s...
A number of the images are direct copies from the first link (ie: sleeper car pictures)
The Lakeshore limited image was awkwardly cropped (to remove watermark) from the second link. Side by side: https://i.imgur.com/hu9viqf.png
The dining car photo came from: http://www.baune.info/train.html
Another dining car photo came from: https://akronrrclub.wordpress.com/tag/cleveland-amtrak-stati...
The Emeryville station came from: http://subwaynut.com/california/amtrak/emeryville/emeryville...
I went ahead and wrote to the author of the post you linked, and also reported the post on Medium.
EDIT: The author of the post you linked above got back to me. These photos were used without her permission.
He's a thief.
I call BS, and am wondering if he has indeed taken Route 66, or just telling some vague impression he has of what it would be to do so.
I've travelled Route 66 several times (and highway 1, Highway 61 -Louisiana to Canada-, Route 50, coast-to-coast several times, and several other long road trips for decades).
There's nothing "touristy" about Route 66, with the exception of a few small towns along the way with shops living off of the Route 66 travellers.
Considering the whole 2.500+ miles journey, those are a negligible part of the way. And even those few places are not touristy in the Las Vegas or Miami sense, but more of a decadent, quiet "that's what we've got from our past, and we preserve it and tout it to help make some bucks" sense.
And there's nothing (unlike on a train) that stops you from talking small roads and alternate routes to explore nearby smalltowns and counties.
Though I say that as somebody for whom those "western"/rocky/deserty looking places were extra enchanting and unfamiliar. So, if you're from the midwest in the first place, I guess it's not the same experience.
>When I lived in LA for a time we meant to hit the end of 66 in San Bernardino but never did.
The "official" end is in Santa Monica (right before the pier), with a memorial plate for the guy they named the highway after etc.
I'm convinced there's no better way to travel.
When you travel by airplane, you're pretty much rapidly moving from huge city to huge city. You miss everything in-between, from the terrain to seeing how people outside of the cities live.
Even driving from one place to another, you're confined to the freeways. You see a little bit more, but you're still in this weird world which was built around the freeway.
When you travel by train, however, you follow the lay of the land. That takes you into some interesting, fascinating places. Combine that with the fact that you can get a sleeper car and food, and it's an entire experience, not just a rush to get from point A to point B. I spent most of my time reading and looking out the window. It's bliss.
If just yourself, driving 3000 miles cost more time, $, mental energy.
You don't have to take the freeway ("interstate"). You can always go for smaller roads.
>If just yourself, driving 3000 miles cost more time, $, mental energy.
If time, $ and mental energy is at premium, train is not the solution either. A plane ticket will be the same cost or less and take 1/40 the time.
If we're talking about seeing places and travelling to see the "real side, kooky, etc" as he mentions, then driving is a far better option. It doesn't take reading Jack Kerouac to know this.
That's part of the the point; you don't have to think that way. You actually don't have to think or plan at all. You're not trying to consciously get from point A to point B. You're just sitting, thinking, reading, and going where the train takes you.
It generally takes you to some really interesting places, far from the well-beaten path. I suppose Jack Keroac or someone who would write Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance may do the same thing in a car, but I've never done so.
You have a point on the "relaxing" thing. OTOH, the problem I see with that is that it doesn't really "take" you to those places, it just passes through them. You can watch them go by, but not stop and check them out.
A plane makes a single day into a complete waste, plus the stress of having to deal with blue shirted fondlers and their enabling hordes who worship that "terrorism" tripe. But it gets you there the quickest.
Driving interstates/secondary highways direct wastes several days, but perhaps you have a bunch of stuff to transport. If you did this and enjoyed "seeing the country", you owe it to yourself to plan another trip with more time.
Taking the train uses several days, but they're relaxing and you can appreciate the scenery transitions without having to worry about logistics. It's probably the easiest way to "see things" while your goal is still the destination.
A proper road trip will let you see what you can see from the train, plus a whole lot more, plus actually stopping and checking things out rather than just passing by. But the journey itself has to be your goal. I wouldn't recommend it for any less than 8 days (one way), otherwise you're just doing a slower canonball run.
They're saying you don't have to focus on driving. On a train you can watch the scenery pass and not pay attention to piloting your mode of transportation.
http://election.princeton.edu/2015/05/13/train-travel-is-inc...
Plane to train is also the same as train to car.
The US has all sorts of non-expressway routes that are fun to drive and you see so much culture, culture you can actually stop and interact with trivially. For example, the classic Route 66, which you can still drive today. Or make your own routes with all this fancy GPS stuff we have today.
There's something wonderful about cars that I think we're going to miss as we continue to urbanize and move into self-driving taxi's or other exotic tech. The few long drives I've take out of the city have been very pleasurable.
One of my favorite things is to stop and photograph the crumbling remains of past glory. I've got a vague idea of collecting the works together into a show or book, trying to illustrate the fleeting nature of our dreams.
Here's my anecdotal list of downsides of amtrak train riding:
- People will talk on their cell phones in the cabin despite the rules. You wouldn't think this a big annoyance, but it gets annoying after several hours.
- Amtrak cars can have issues - I spent 12 hours in one with a door that kept opening and closing making a huge 'clunk' noise every 30 seconds. A passenger finally figured out a way to make it stuck open.
- Watch your stuff, Things can and will get stolen - particularly in areas where there's multiple close stops (e.g. the stops near seattle) - last time the person in the seat in front had their smartphone stolen while they took a brief break in the snack car.
- The co2 savings compared to flying depends on the actual route and timing - I have to point this out because amtrak does market themselves a bit on co2 savings - I calculated this once between flying and taking the train from seattle to spokane, and after factoring in the need to stay at a hotel an extra night for the train along with it's non-direct route, the co2 difference was negligible. Here's my math for those curious: https://i.imgur.com/zTHfSB8.png
- Certain trains are historically, tragically slow - amtrak has a website logging the timeliness of trains, typically 70% on time for a long train is on the good side.
This said, I do want trains to be more of a thing here - I've had great experiences with the ones in europe, wish the pioneer train ( http://pioneertrain.org ) and ski train ( http://www.skitrain.com/ ) make a comeback, and prefer taking the business class amtrak trains for shorter trips over flying or driving. Plus you can pack a folding bike like a brompton on amtrak just by tossing it into the overhead compartment.
More: here's a blog of someone traveling the us by railpass: http://railpass.tumblr.com/
In short: The coastal and rocky mountains are interesting. But after that the US is flat flat flatter and more flat. That first Midwestern wheat field is cool, but numbers 2 through 15239 are not. At least during the nights I'd see some deer. I remember driving for five hours without even touching the clutch. Then you hit the hills of the east coast. Wow. A tiny gravel river. A rusty old mill. If I run through my memories of the drive, the west is filled with images of places and people. The east is filled with traffic, gray concrete and rusty bridges. If I were doing this for fun I'd have turned around and repeated day one.
The west: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:I-90IDWallace.jpg (note the bend in the road)
The middle bit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LaCrosseCountySignI90.jpg (note the pickup truck)
The east: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:I-90_west_in_West_Seneca_... (note the traffic)
I've found that each vertical slice of the country has it's best parts. I love the hill country in Texas, the painted desert in NM, the Great Lakes, the Louisiana bayous, New England meadows, the Blue Ridge Mountains.
The real problem here is that it is very difficult to take one trip and hit all of these points while traveling.
Three points of advice regarding the "expensive" sleeper car: You pay for food unless you get an expensive sleeper, in which case meals are free. Suddenly that room is not so expensive. A hotel out in the burbs or even in a recreational area is cheap, making the sleeper car look expensive; however I'm avoiding staying in NYC or CHC for a night, and hotel rooms downtown are very expensive, suddenly the sleeper is looking like a good deal. Finally the station in CHC and NYC is right downtown. I've gone to business meetings and training in CHC literally two minutes walk from the station, suddenly not paying for a cab to/from Ohare and pay parking for my car at the airport is making the sleeper car downright cheap... As a room a sleeper car is expensive, as a total systemic cost of the overall trip from home front door and back again, its probably cheaper to take the train with a sleeper cabin than to fly.
You may have seen CHC in baseball
CHC is the Chicago Cubs
CHW is the Chicago White Sox
CHC is also Christchurch, New Zealand which looks lovely
I've lived in various locations on that route for most of my adult life, and take the train often enough that the conductors are starting to remember me.
On the plus side: I can say I've slept in an abandoned rail car on a siding now.
I once took the train from Chicago to Denver and back.
On the return trip, our train was delayed 24 hours total. We spent an entire extra day stuck on sidings in the middle of nowhere, as freight cars passed us by.
Ofttimes in those situations, the passengers are offloaded onto coach buses, but there were no paved roads nearby.
The U.S. just doesn't do passenger rail well. This wasn't the first time I had a bad Amtrak experience. I have, in fact, never been on an Amtrak train that has arrived at my destination before 150% of the scheduled travel time has elapsed.
And once we got past the washout, the train was positively flying - we made it into SF only about 1/2 hour late.
I loved pretty much the whole thing. High points were watching the scenery, and also interacting with other passengers - both in the observation car and, as the OP notes, at meals. But I'm really glad we did it "1st class" - that is, with a sleeper cabin. This was comfortable and quiet, and provided a way we could make it "our experience" when we didn't want to be stuck with the rest of the crowd.
The sleeper car is much more expensive, but includes meals. All told, I think the price of the three day trip including sleeper cabin and meals, works out similar to airfare plus hotels and meals for a similar time period.
diaper rationing.
30 minutes late on a 24 hour trip is not horrible. That's only 2% late. But 24 hours late on a 18.6 hour trip is 129% late. That's packing a lunch, eating it, then eating the snacks you packed because you know Amtrak runs late very often, then having another five meals on the train that you didn't plan for, because you never expected even Amtrak to screw up this badly. And this was before mobile hotspots. It was finishing your book, then finishing all the puzzles in your GAMES Magazine, then rereading all of yesterday's newspaper, down to the obituaries from a city you don't even live in, then staring out your window at the featureless nothingness of the Great Plains.
Your traveling companions go from "what an adventure!" to "maybe air travel with a baby over a holiday weekend wouldn't have been so bad," to pandemic cabin fever, to plotting the violent overthrow of the conductor with the guy you just met in the next car.
A ranking executive of Amtrak would literally have to kiss me on my literal ass and hand me a free first-class private sleeper cabin ticket before I would even set foot in another one of their siding-idlers ever again.
I did the math later, and determined that, while it would not have been accurate to say "it would have been quicker to walk", a professional touring cyclist would have been able to beat the train in a race, even including an 8-hour rest break, if he was taking all the performance-enhancing drugs and riding a faired recumbent bike.
But that's just my amateur understanding of the situation...
"An hour later, at a small Nevada town, there was a scene of confusion as the train pulled into the station with police cars standing by. The police boarded the train and arrested my dinner companion on suspicion of possessing firearms."
On the other hand, its totally legal in Nevada to open carry; a permit is required only for concealed carry. So I'm wondering what the fuss was about.
The time I took Amtrak cross country, my seat friend was "Ralph". He was nicely dressed, in the "import trucking" business, didn't like flying, and upgraded to a sleeper cabin with cash. The FBI got on at ABQ and started harassing people for their tickets. I was in the observation car at the time, but when I returned to my seat Ralph was still there! He had been hitting on the train attendant the whole time, and now she was giving him shit about the FBI's visit. He kept insisting they "just wanted to talk". I've no idea if he somehow successfully dodged them, or if they just wanted to scare him, or perhaps the train is a great place to do an exchange with an informant.
I'd imagine there's a lot of riff-raff (I use this word lovingly) on the train, because flying is hopelessly facist in the technical sense - eg that dance of responsibility that makes for the mandatory pervsearch. On the train you at least retain some skeleton of rights.
IMHO going West->East is the wrong way for scenery. All of the pretty geology up front, then flat nothingness for the remaining two thirds. At least this is my recollection of driving (I'm not even out of Colorado yet?!). Going East->West, there's a nice progression that keeps one entertained the whole time. But perhaps it's different to west coast native eyes as the green really starts filling in.
Not if all the passengers around them are aware of it.
Ah, but your opinion isn't what sends squad cars out. I didn't think that exploring an abandoned mall warranted five squad cars, two fire engines and a helicopter, but the Allen police department disagreed with me.
A lot of American friends were surprised we were doing this - they had this idea that it would be uncomfortable and boring. They just couldn't have been more wrong. Between the comfortable room-ette things, often very friendly and varied fellow travellers, surprisingly tasty food and absolutely amazing scenery, it's a fond memory.
Of course, we scheduled in plenty of time - if you need to be somewhere punctually, Amtrak is not really your best bet.
[NB He was always rather vague as to why he had to cross the US by train, but in between stints in North Africa, Arctic Canada and the Bahamas he seemed to have an interesting war]
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32694447
84k miles isn't very far. This was a 3400mile journey. So you are likely hurt/dead after doing this 25 times in the US, or 1500 times in Germany.
The numbers are a bit of an exaggeration as many US train deaths involve non-passengers (ie at train crossings) but I think my point stands. Train travel, US trains in particular, is not as safe as it may seem.
Eyeballing, it looks like 10 fatalities per 100 million passenger train-miles and about 1,300 injuries per 100 million passenger train-miles.
That's indeed ~1 injury per 100,000 passenger miles. And "Passenger fatalities and Injured persons include passengers on trains only"
Looking at http://safetydata.fra.dot.gov/OfficeofSafety/publicsite/Prel... , for 'Annual Report 2012 – Preliminary', Table 1-3, and picking 2010 as representative:
41 non-fatal conditions for Train Accidents
Excluding Highway-Rail Crossing (HRC) Incidents
112 non-fatal conditions for Highway-Rail Crossing (HRC) Incidents
1,213 non-fatal conditions for Other Incidents, Excluding HRC
If we leave out that large but unknown category, it looks about 10x safer than the numbers sandworm101 gave. Still worse than Germany by a factor of 5.
However, very cool, and has perhaps inspired me to make the same trip one day.
I was a little surprised he spent 2 days in and around Denver, but didn't post any photos of Red Rocks [1].
[0] https://instagram.com/p/3Rvfxvo6Ye/?taken-by=gerry_darrow is a slightly-cropped version.
For those who are interested: http://lianza.org/blog/2015/05/15/on-traveling-cross-country...
Wonderful write up.
Who is the victim, aside from you?
If you come from a culture where picking your nose in public is impolite, then it might disturb you to see someone really going at it. In the US, using the middle finger is generally considered rude or offensive, but the act on its own is meaningless and not especially prone to damage anything.
But acts do have cultural associations, which is why putting feet on a table, or window frame, may disturb others, even if it doesn't disturb you.
Personally, I have no problems with foot-on-frame.
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However given how congress is trying to defund everything, the infrastructure this runs over is probably dangerous as hell.