There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train but I did it anyway (2019) | Hacker News Reader

There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train but I did it anyway (2019)

nytimes.com

112 pointsTomte125 comments

The long-distance Amtraks are more like a rolling hotel or land cruise-ship in some ways. Highly recommended if you have the time - https://www.amtraktrains.com is worth the research, as Amtrak's ticketing system is literally a 70s airline ticketing system and if you learn how to play it you can get sleeper car reservations for relatively cheap.

You can also find destinations that would otherwise be moderately difficult to reach - for example the Empire Builder stops at East Glacier in Montana from spring to fall - extremely small town with wonderful hiking, etc.

Here's a song about a similar route in Canada: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXcfRlEGJko

https://www.viarail.ca/en/explore-our-destinations/trains/ro...

You can also have a quite interesting "explore America" trip in both countries with some planning (a travel agent can actually help here if they're knowledgeable) - as you can break the trip up into "daytime travel", stay in a city like Chicago for a few days, and then "overnight" to the next city.

> for example the Empire Builder stops at East Glacier in Montana from spring to fall - extremely small town with wonderful hiking, etc.

The southern border of Glacier NP is the railroad.

https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/education/railway.htm

So, in 1891, the continental divide finally was crossed and the rail barrons were trying to get people to use the railroad. They saw people taking steamships out from NYC to Europe to go see the Alps, and, well, they knew a thing or two about mountains, now too.

So the Great Northern Railroad petitioned Congress to make a park in the area that the trains would service.

In addition to the park proper, a number Swiss style chalets were built through the park that were approximately 1 day horse ride apart from each other. With this setup, you could take the train to East Glacier or West Glacier, go hose back riding through the mountains, and then get back on the train on the other side and go home.

While many of these chalets have been lost to time, some still exist and are maintained - https://www.nplas.org/sperry.html https://www.mtpr.org/montana-news/2018-06-06/funding-secured...

Yeah, some of the most scenic landscape can be found crossing the Rockies.

> you could take the train to East Glacier or West Glacier

Be careful with this idea; East Glacier train station is not actually in the park, and services at that station are limited (West Glacier even more so). It's possible to rent a car at East Glacier, but I expect it would be expensive. You can walk from the train station to a hotel, then be based out of there, but you will be dependent on the shuttle and bus services to explore the park. Some good details about the current situation in this thread; note that services have changed a lot around COVID, and any information from pre-2019 should be considered as out of date, and not reliable:

https://www.amtraktrains.com/threads/need-advice-for-short-e...

If you like hiking, you can technically hike from town into the park - I've done it even with snow still on the ground.

But depending on what you want to do in the area, you will want to plan ahead.

> While many of these chalets have been lost to time

How can you loose something, less than 200 years old, to time ?!

Weather in the area isn’t a walk in the park, and I would assume the cabins are wood.

So does 'original' swiss chalets, yet, many of them are much older than that.

Many of those weren't abandoned for half a decade in the 40s.

My family has property in western Montana. There are cabins there that were built in the 1920s that are almost completely disintegrated. And that is just 100 years. This is an area that typically gets an enormous amount of snow in the winter (like 6-7 meters deep) that will completely crush a building if someone is not maintaining it all winter.

I think if something is from a recent as 1920 it’s just been poorly maintained, not ‘lost to time’.

I don't understand the distinction. If anything is now gone and wasn't destroyed in an unpreventable disaster or purposefully, it was "poorly maintained." Doesn't matter if it is 100 years old or 10,000 years old.

…because if it’s only a 100 years old then there’s hardly any time involved, so not lost to time, just lost.

If you bought an ice cream and drop it it’s not ‘lost to time’ because you can grab another any time. If you drop a Ming vase then you can’t replace that.

This is a ridiculous distinction. Both examples are highly idiomatic language, with no fixed definition that's even remotely close to what you claim. The original statement was perfectly understandable, and it's obnoxious behavior for you to try to pass your preference off as a "correction".

It's incredibly easy for an all-wood structure built in 1920 to be completely gone in a hundred years, especially in a harsh climate.

Sure there may be wreckage of it, but it's lost to time.

The 2015 fire in GNP destroyed some buildings and uncovered some historical artifacts too - https://www.nps.gov/gis/storymaps/cascade/v1/index.html?appi...

Well, there is no reason to maintain most of these structures. They were mining cabins, but the gold mines were closed up long ago. The “time” when these structures were needed has passed, so they are not maintained and are rapidly returning to nature. Soon all that will be left to mark them will be some square iron nails.

Weather does wonders on buildings - see the list of Missions in Baja California - many are just barely a foundation, some are absolutely nothing at all left.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_missions_in_Baja_Calif...

And that's even without major winter snow storms. I'm sure you could find ruins of the chalets (many of which might have been very rustic by our standards), but not much more.

Three years of no maintenance in the 40s.

> The hotels and chalets were closed for three seasons during World War II. The hotels recovered from the lack of use and upkeep, but most of the chalets suffered irreparable damage. The only two remaining chalets, Sperry and Granite Park, continued to operate, offering overnight accommodations.

As to the weather... I'm going to point out that we're in June now and https://www.nps.gov/applications/glac/roadstatus/roadstatus.... is the current road status.

> Spring plowing has begun. On the west side, the hiker/biker closure is at Logan Creek comfort station, approximately 3 miles past the vehicle closure when road crew is working and at The Loop when the road crew is not working.

Last year, the road was plowed and opened June 27th. https://www.ktvq.com/glacier-national-parks-iconic-road-now-...

Here's video of them plowing it from '08: https://youtu.be/M-9l1PojA6Q

Buildings in the area need constant maintenance.

https://www.nplas.org/goingtothesun.html

> Going-to-the-Sun Chalets stock had dropped considerably among Great Northern executives by the start of World War II. The structures had taken a beating from 30 years of harsh Montana winters. They required endless maintenance and repairs, and weren't considered even remotely historic or significant at the time. Unfortunately the designs were viewed as tired and obsolete in 1940. It was comparable to the way we would view an aging motel built during the 1970s: Very few people would clamor for preservation.

> As troublesome as the chalet complex was in the early 1940s, there were still a few in management who pointed to growth and profit in the recent past, but all that did was stave off demolition for a couple years. The Going-to-the-Sun Chalets stood empty after the war, and were ultimately razed in 1948. Sun Point has been returned to a (sort of) natural state; it takes an archaeologist's eye to recognize the traces of the Chalets.

How do you take a cross country train and stop at Montana to do hiking ? Won’t your train and all your stuff on the train have left by the time you finished your hike ?

I imagine the train only stops for half an hour or so for long breaks…

1. Disembark with your stuff

2. Hike (leave extra stuff in storage)

3. Take the next train

No different from flying: you disembark and then catch a later train, likely a few days later.

> Won’t your train and all your stuff on the train

…well you take your luggage off the train. Is that really what you were asking?

This is a "I've thought about this"...

Take the Empire Builder to Essex. https://www.amtrak.com/stations/esm.html

At Essex (7:41 pm), disembark, get a room at the Izaak Walton Inn - https://www.google.com/maps/@48.2787345,-113.6113756,3a,75y,...

Spend the following day hiking ( https://www.google.com/maps/dir/48.2784604,-113.6118791/48.3... )

Return to the town, have dinner, get on the train (at 7:41 pm) and continue on.

This becomes much easier with a rail pass: https://media.amtrak.com/2022/03/for-a-limited-time-amtrak-o... / https://www.amtrak.com/USARailPass

The Empire Builder actually has a park ranger get on the train and do nature lessons/wildlife sightings from a viewing car. It’s pretty great.

Is it true that Amtrak will ship your car for you? I thought about doing a cross country trip and the idea of having my car with me on the other side seemed like a solid plan.

There is a car train, but it runs along the eastern seaboard. Useful if you live in New York and want to visit/move to Florida for the winter.

To clarify, there is only one route in the US that has an auto train. It goes from Lorton, VA (about 30 minutes south of DC on I95) to Sanford, FL (a suburb of Orlando), and in the other direction. It has sleeper berths or regular coach class seats, leaves at 4pm and arrives at 9 am, and is generally full of "snowbird" retirees and families going to Disney.

I used to work for a shipping company, they did a lot of business shipping cars back and forth to Florida for baseball players doing spring training.

I've heard similar stories from a friend working at a major freight logistics broker here in Midwest, he also arranges the moving of parts for the pair of Boeing jets belongs to the New England Patriots NFL franchise.

It's not something that sits at the front of your mind, but it makes total sense: logistics for professional sports teams must be a whole industry all on its own.

When I worked for the Chicago Bears, I had the pleasure of driving the smallest of the moving trucks to training camps. A max length box truck. Followed by 3 semis _just of equipment_ - clothing, gear, weights that the college didn't have.

It is a circus production every year.

Bummer. Seemed like a great option to travel coast to coast if it was available.

You could arrange to have your car shipped separately, but the costs associated would be large enough that I'd just rent (unless you were moving).

The fares for this route have historically been dirt cheap, something like $95 one way was common. Adding your car was like $250. I moved from Florida to DC this way with all my possessions crammed into my car. It was pretty fun when they still had a dining car, had some great conversations with other passengers.

I've done it. It was pleasant. It felt like a throwback, because they had a dinner service where you dined with three other guests (or two if you're with someone). If you have the opportunity, I'd recommend it.

I'm not too familiar with airline ticketing systems, if you don't mind could you clarify what you mean by your 70's ticketing system comment?

The 70s ticketing system ran off of "buckets" where availability of fares at various prices wouldn't appear until previous buckets were emptied, or time ran out. I don't remember the details (my only sleeper car trip was paid with Amtrak miles) but if you studied it and worked it you could predict when new buckets would become available, or when a bucket was about to "expire" and the price might drop. If I remember right there was a sweet spot about six months before, and another very shortly before (and if you wanted to be risky, and knew the line, you could get a coach ticket and ask the conductor to pay to upgrade on the train - that is the cheapest of all if there is space available as it basically ends up being the cost of the meals).

It's also a bit weird in that if you know some of the limitations, you can do things like get a sleeper for overnight only (from the stop around 5PM to the stop around 8 AM say) and then get a coach ticket from then on - which if scheduled right would end up being the sleeper for the whole trip as there's no point in resetting the room.

You could also book "insane trips" that the system wouldn't let you do but were perfectly doable, because it wouldn't correctly recognize that you could make the layover, etc. People would also try to trick it into letting you book trips that wouldn't make sense unless you're trying to ride the train for as long as you can (sleeper car mile purchases were "zoned" in the past - so anything in "Zone 1" would be a fixed amount of miles). They've since changed that to the more standard "miles are just pennies against a normal fair" type of reward.

This is much less doable now than it was some years ago. Amtrak's revenue management has gotten a lot better, and most long distance routes start at the highest bucket pricing, and only drop down into lower buckets if demand sags. Demand is also higher than it was pre-COVID, and I don't think you can predict when buckets will expire.

> It's also a bit weird in that if you know some of the limitations, you can do things like get a sleeper for overnight only (from the stop around 5PM to the stop around 8 AM say) and then get a coach ticket from then on - which if scheduled right would end up being the sleeper for the whole trip as there's no point in resetting the room.

This is also risky, as it depends on the largess of the conductor, who is totally within their rights to kick you out of the sleeper and down into coach at the appropriate time. You also would not get the included meals during your coach segment, and would have to pay for them in the cafe car.

> if you wanted to be risky, and knew the line, you could get a coach ticket and ask the conductor to pay to upgrade on the train - that is the cheapest of all if there is space available as it basically ends up being the cost of the meals

Amtrak has also introduced a pre-train bidding system for empty sleeper car upgrades, so its very rare for a popular train to have empty sleeper car berths that can be purchased from the conductor.

> You could also book "insane trips" that the system wouldn't let you do but were perfectly doable, because it wouldn't correctly recognize that you could make the layover, etc.

Making any Amtrak trip dependent on tight layovers is a mistake, in my opinion; multi-hour train delays are somewhat common, and unless you are booked on a single ticket, Amtrak will not hold a train for you, nor will they reschedule you on a future train if you miss your "connection" between two separately ticketed trains due to their delay. My advice has always been to put an hotel overnight between any connection involving two unrelated trains; it makes your whole trip a lot less stressful.

Yeah, the usual "layover it won't let you book as a single segment" that I would look at were the ones where the system deemed it too long and wanted to count it as two separate trips.

Realistically how hard is it to just wing it? Like say I book one long trek to start - can I just wing it as I go along or is it a much better idea to plan the whole thing out train by train beforehand?

Depends on what you're willing to do - the worst case scenario may be getting stuck in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere for a day or two waiting for the next train.

But they do have the rail pass: https://www.amtrak.com/tickets/departure-rail-pass.html $500 for ten segments over a month, isn't bad.

I’ve only ridden when that$500 was discounted to $300. Amazing for the price.

What is the general quaillotynofbthe cars and passengers.

I’ve thought about taking it a few times, just to go somewhere random, but for some reason, my mind always wonders to bad experiences greyhound busses. I’m also in the south, so it’s rare I find an interesting looking route/destination that’s much cheaper than just flying.

Unless it's a short hop (and often even then), even modestly long Amtrak routes will often cost more than flying--and even more if you book a sleeping compartment. There are only a few long distance routes I'd consider--all out West. And I'd pretty much only take them on the western part of their routes.

I only really have experience in the eastern half of the U.S., but on some routes I've found Amtrak significantly cheaper (in coach) than flying, so I consider it if I'm not in a hurry and it's a day train under ~8 hours (not sure if that qualifies as "modestly long"!). The price difference is especially large in Amtrak's favor if you're doing a one-way trip, or to/from smaller cities that don't have much airline competition.

For example, to pick Richmond, VA as a city I know about. Amtrak's Richmond to NYC service is about 6 hours 15 mins, and as low as $32 each way if you buy in advance. Flying is only around 1.5 hours but typically $150 one-way or $200 round-trip. Going the other way, Richmond to Charleston, SC is typically $68 one-way and 7 hours, 15 mins, versus about 3.5 hours and $200 to fly one-way.

I have had zero bad passenger interactions on any long-distance train I've ever been on; part of that may be the cost keeps out the riff-raff, but there's a certain group that travels by train and everyone gets along quite well in my experience.

> you can break the trip up into "daytime travel", stay in a city like Chicago for a few days, and then "overnight" to the next city

My limited experience with Amtrak in the West or Midwest is that it's impossible to reliably plan like this. Amtrak is renting access to rails owned by freight carriers and constantly gets delayed or blocked by freight trains with higher priority.

Their "schedule" is an absolute best-case scenario that never actually happens. The trains usually arrive somewhere between 2-8 hours after the scheduled time, and occasionally it just doesn't show until the next day. They have an app that's supposed to give the "accurate" arrival time is often wildly off as well.

Chicago is the exception here, though. It's the core hub of the entire system, and there are no trains that pass through Chicago. A Chicago train will nearly always leave on-time, unless there are equipment issues.

Similarly in the eastern corridor or at least all the major cities between Boston and Richmond, VA.

Air travel has become such a nightmare that I'd rather take a 7 hour train ride than a 1-2 hour flight.

I enjoy Amtrak even for short distances.

In my younger days I traveled a fair amount across the midwest. Greyhound would get me there pretty cheaply and fairly comfortably; but it was boring and many of the bus stations were sketchy (although fellow passengers were always great). My preference was strongly for Amtrak, though. More room, the ability to walk around, order food and drinks, and also to see parts of the country that aren't immediately off the interstate. Compared to flying, the travel time is longer (but you gain some of that back by not having to hang out at an airport for so long), but it's a lot less hassle, there's more room, and it's just ... relaxing.

This isn't really my kind of writing, so forgive me if my response is somehow impertinent, but there is a very good reason to cross the U.S. by train, which is that this is an enormous, beautiful continent and the train takes you to otherwise untouched parts of it that aren't visible any other way. I took the California Zephyr from Denver to San Francisco (technically Emeryville) a few years ago and it was one of the best experiences of my life. Truly unforgettable.

I hope I get the opportunity to do the Empire Builder and Southwest Chief routes at some point!

Yup, Amtrak from Chicago to Emeryville is probably one of the most impressive routes one can take, and I feel sad for folks who will never get to experience it.

Agreed re: Zephyr.

I took it from SAC to CHI last month, even riding coach it was a pretty good two days I spent mostly fasted, drinking black coffee while programming in the observation car. It's the perfect duration for a short fast and that eliminates a bunch of the bathroom and food needs, just caffeinated coding with great views. And in the end I've gone from CA to IL for ~$150 with a mountain bike checked to boot.

Something worth noting is the dining car still wasn't available to coach travelers on my trip, only sleeper cars could access it. Vestiges of the pandemic according to the announcements. It felt a bit like skimpflation to me, but they still had the little snack bar below the observation deck available to all.

That is amazing! Hope the view didn't distract your ability to focus since it is so gorgeous.

Does the train have WiFi? Or you are just coding offline?

I don't know about US trains, but many European trains offer free Wifi. I hope the ones in the US do too.

It’s not important whether the train has a WiFi router or not. What is important is what the WiFi router connects to. I don’t know what is common on European trains, but in the US they connect to whatever cell–phone network is closest. That is ok in urban areas, but in the US there are wide stretches of countryside where nobody lives. Somehow the phone companies never end up building cell towers in the middle of the deserts or on top of the Rockies. The train could easily be 50 or a 100 miles away from the nearest cell–phone network at any given time.

https://www.google.com/search?q=amtrak+rockies&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=amtrak+sierra+nevada https://www.google.com/search?q=amtrak+desert&tbm=isch

The train does have free WiFi, but my experience with it is pretty bad. You're also often remote enough that you can't use a cellular hotspot, so I wouldn't ever travel on Amtrak assuming you'll have a reliable Internet connection the whole time.

The train’s wifi is just hooked up to the same cell networks anyway. Maybe soon they will have Starlink instead.

Starlink appears to require the dish to be stationary.

It doesn't.[0] Nothing about Starlink inherently requires the dish to be stationary. Starlink is being integrated into several airlines[1][2] over the next year, and I'm certain other airlines are exploring Starlink as an option... the existing in-flight internet options are terrible, so Starlink could make a real difference there, especially over the oceans.

Proper support for moving vehicles probably benefits significantly from a dish designed for that, but airlines, trains, cruise ships, yachts... there are many markets where such a dish would be valuable, so Starlink would be pretty dumb not to be designing one that works well for that.

Hawaiian Airlines certainly isn't planning to just bolt the existing dish to the outside of the plane and hope for the best.

[0]: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1529089543969943553

[1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/25/spacex-signs-hawaiian-airlin...

[2]: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/21/spacex-first-starlink-inflig...

Current subscribers are only authorized to use their dish in one specific area. However, this has more to do with capacity planning than anything else. Starlink recently announced a slightly more expensive plan that allows the user to roam from area to area without contacting customer support to reauthorize them for each new location. And as someone else pointed out already, the are definitely working on providing service to customers on boats and planes and other moving vehicles. I doubt they will ever make a dish designed to be mounted on the roof of a car, but larger multi–passenger vehicles are an obvious move.

Incidentally, Starlink dishes showed up on the landing barges used by SpaceX some time ago; they use them to stream live video of the landings now.

Mostly coding offline, but I did have a cellular hotspot that managed 4G LTE for most of the trip. I didn't investigate the train's WiFi since my needs were covered.

There was one state I didn't seem to have any cell service at all, Wyoming maybe? It seemed very similar to driving cross-country via i80 in terms of cellular coverage, with a few additional dead-zones where only the train goes. But in those spots the scenery is so beautiful you won't miss the cell network.

That's a pretty incredible price, was it a special offer?

Not a special offer, just booked a month in advance before the train filled up.

That is the lowest bucket for the Zephyr, a fare of 220 or 270 would be more common: https://www.amtraktrains.com/threads/long-distance-train-coa...

It required very little effort to get the ~130 coach rate though, the biggest price knob seemed to be booking far enough in advance.

What was far more challenging was getting a "trainside checked bike" ticket. The Amtrak web site just kept saying sold out for the +bike option no matter what I tried. But I had no trouble getting the same rate +bike when I went to the SAC station IRL and spoke to a ticketing agent. Apparently my problem was ending the trip at NPV instead of CHI, because NPV can't handle checked bikes. The web site is awful WRT +bike tickets. Maybe this will prove helpful for anyone reading wanting to go ride some distant trails via Amtrak.

Yeah, if you're flexible on time, far enough out, and willing to ride coach, it's definitely doable. Summer is also peak season (more sunlight); avoiding June-August helps too.

Amtrak's system is terrible when something you want is not available, it usually reports "Sold Out" or "No Train Service" when the actual issue is that there is no train that day, or no facility for checked luggage, as you describe.

Yeah, Amtrak is one of those cases where actually calling or going into the station is highly worthwhile, as the station attendant has more knowledge and options than you do on the website.

They're even allowed to book "impossible" tickets if you're nice (for example, checking a bike to the last station before the one you want that has checked bikes, and working with the conductor to move the bike into the normal train can be done if the train won't be that busy).

> They're even allowed to book "impossible" tickets if you're nice (for example, checking a bike to the last station before the one you want that has checked bikes, and working with the conductor to move the bike into the normal train can be done if the train won't be that busy).

That's useful information, and re: bikes something a conductor alluded to on my ride to CHI, when I asked why I couldn't just get off at NPV with my bike which was my actual destination. He was perfectly willing to let me have my bike stowed somewhere out of the way if I hadn't already checked it for unloading @CHI.

It’s definitely skimpflation (great word, btw). They eliminated traditional dining service entirely on several other routes. Instead of sitting at a table with other passengers having a nice conversation while waiters take orders and serve meals, everyone now gathers quietly in the dining car waiting for a single waiter to prepare tv–dinners and shout out room numbers.

Per https://www.amtrak.com/onboard/meals-dining/dining-car.html, it looks like traditional dining is available west of Chicago/San Antonio.

Yep. I was super disappointed the last time I went cross–country. The service was so bad that I haven’t bothered since then.

Note that while the Zephyr between CA and Denver is a breathtaking journey, the span from Denver to Chicago is nothing but an infinite plane of corn punctuated by a crossing of the Mississippi. If you're just in it for sightseeing, you can skip half the trip.

For some of us taking a train across the Mississippi was part of the point of the journey, but yes, the scenery is considerably better from SF/Emeryville to Denver.

I've flown across the country many times, but have only done it on the train once. I ended up doing a loop going from Boston to Washington DC to Chicago to Sacramento to Los Angeles to San Antonio to Chicago and finally to Boston.

The whole trip took 10 days, with 7 nights on the train and 3 off the train. In the roughly 8,800 miles of that trip, it was amazing to see so much of the country that I'd only flown over. Time also seemed to stand still, as I really lost all sense of place and time. It was the most relaxed I've ever been in my live.

I agree that if anyone was to do just one overnight train trip in the US, they should do Chicago and/or Denver to Emeryville. In fact, that was the leg that seemed to have have the most tourists, vs. the route across Texas which was more people going from point A to B that didn't want to spend 12 hours on a bus.

One bonus of the trip was having a glass of wine and some cheese with Gene Shalit on the final leg. Apparently he was a regular and knew many of the station and train staff by name.

> I agree that if anyone was to do just one overnight train trip in the US, they should do Chicago and/or Denver to Emeryville.

The other routes I've done are Charleston -> Savannah, Fort Worth -> Austin, Boston -> Chicago -> St. Louis, Boston -> Portland, St. Louis -> KC, and many trips to every stop on the Northeast Corridor. They were each interesting in their own way, but I just like trains and for a more general audience I'd say the Zephyr is really on a totally different level.

> I agree that if anyone was to do just one overnight train trip in the US, they should do Chicago and/or Denver to Emeryville.

Also (from experience) you might be able to get your job to pay for it if you work in Chicago or Denver and are attending an SF area conference. Roomette instead of coach is the way to go if possible.

Reminds me a little of the experience described in song “America” by Simon & Garfunkel. Although I think they’re on the bus, but much the same experience.

Another good reason is if you find yourself on a no-fly list, without trial or recourse.

But why then not pick the car? The US are mind-bogglingly car-centric. If you want to explore them, chances are you need a car even if you then want to hike, bike or do whatever.

On our road trip from Miami to Seattle (via New Orleans, Los Angeles) the only National Park that wasn’t offensively car centric was Carlsbad Caverns, even though they did want to blow a hole in the mountain in the 1930s to change that. (Maybe Shark Valley in the Everglades, too. Though in both cases you need a car to get to the entrance.)

I get the remote wilderness (no matter how touristically attractive) needs cars. It‘s just that if you take the train you can’t really get there. Unless you get out and rent a car all the time.

I certainly didn’t enjoy any of the cities. They were all car-oppressed hellholes that aren’t much fun to be in.

Road trips are long and require focus.

I've done plenty of long US road trips: Chicago to Seattle, Chicago to to East Coast, Michigan to Florida, Seattle to southern California, a loop of the southwest starting and ending in Vegas, etc.

I've done road trips throughout my life (Seattle to Socal was less than a year ago) and do smaller (~3hr 1 way) ones on a regular basis (Seattle to Portland or Vancouver). I've also taken trains in the US and in other countries and it's a different experience.

Having to focus on the road for more than an hour at a time wears you down. If you have a car full of people such that you can rotate drivers, it's bearable but that just means sharing the load. In comparison, in a train I can simply relax and enjoy the sights and the trip. If there's a beautiful mountain I can focus on it without worrying about a car or animal in front of me. If I want to eat or drink or use the restroom I do without having to wait miles to find somewhere to pull over. If I want to read or use my laptop or have a beverage (even alcohol if I want), it's fine.

I've driven Seattle to Portland dozens of times. I've also taken the train several times. When I drive, I arrive in PDX tired. When I get off the train I am invigorated and ready to start my day (even though when I've done it I usually had to get up at 4 to catch a 5:30AM train, times which usually don't exist for me and should seemingly leave me tired)

As far as exploring cities: while infrastructure in the US is bad, there is a strong correlation between cities worth exploring and some form of bus/bike/scooter rental. Train stations are also usually centrally located. If I want to explore I go walking and there's plenty to do within a few miles of the station. If it's further out I grab a bus. If I'm there for multiple days AND there are far-out things I want to do I could rent a car but it's almost never been necessary. Amusingly the only time I did a combination train-car trip was in Germany, where I wanted a vehicle to bounce between small towns the train didn't hit (but took the express train back from Berlin to Munich). In America it hasn't come up because the kinds of towns that don't have public transit are overwhelmingly either so small you can walk anywhere or so generic and boring that I don't get off the train except to stretch my legs.

Yes, I'm sure that folks can find counterexamples. I'll poke a hole in my experiment with East Lansing, MI: A fairly standard college town with a beautiful walkable campus.....and an Amtrak station in the middle of an industrial park a fair walk from anything good. Even then, though, it's a 1.5 mile walk to the middle of campus or 2 miles to the bar district, so it's still not the end of the world.

Heck, I already hate having to stare at the car in front of me for the 45 minutes or so it uses to take me to drive home in my US town. At least there's a bus that works well enough, so now I spend most of my commute reading a book out commenting here.

Driving works, but I'd much rather take a train. Too bad they are generally terrible here. I've been to Europe; it can work!

My opinion having driven across the country on interstates, road tripped, and taken the train -

Interstates are utilitarian travel for getting where you want to go without much sightseeing, because you're hauling cargo or transporting your vehicle or whatever. Yes, there is some sightseeing. And if it's your first time seeing a new landscape it's always going to be awesome. But ultimately interstates are very insulating.

Road trips, as disjoint from interstates as possible, are a great way to see scenery, but they take time. Even two weeks to get across the country is too short. I'd say you want a month minimum.

Train trips are a nice middleground for getting a taste of the road trip scenery (but not the waypoints) within a short amount of time, where you have a little more time to spare than flying (several days cross country), but not much.

The train often does not parallel the highway. There are some remote parts of the country, particularly through the mountains, that can only been seen by rail. And because we have nothing comparable to a TGV or Shinkansen, you get to relax and see everything at a leisurely 40-60/mph, "rocking to the rhythm of the rails"[0].

[0]https://youtu.be/fF1lqEQFVUo

The train ride is less of an exploration, more a viewport into, a meditation on what is happening outside the window.

I've done the road trip - a slow meandering journey spanning tens of thousands of miles across the United States and Canada across many months. It's wonderful, but it's also fully engaged while being very hard on the body to drive so much. The engagement is obviously the point, but it's a particular way of travel.

I've also done the Zephyr in both directions, lakeshore limited, etc. on sleeper trains. It's very relaxing, but you also don't get to actually interact much with what is going on outside. But that's not such a bad thing at times. Sometimes it's exactly what you're looking for.

New Orleans is car-oppressed?

Parent was talking about national parks along the route. And, yes, although a few have shuttle buses--which may even be required--most require a car to do a lot more than take in a scenic overlook. Indeed, even in more compact parks (e.g. Crater Lake) just getting to a central jumping off point will be hard without a car.

(New Orleans itself is pretty explorable without a car.)

I have also driven from St. Louis to San Francisco and back. It's just a very different experience. They aren't really the same thing.

The first time I saw a bald eagle was from the observation car of the empire builder along the Mississippi south of the twin cities! I hope you get the opportunity as well.

OTOH I used the empire builder purely for utility for a time, and the price wasn’t bad to go about 70 miles, but several times about 10 years ago it was 16, that’s right 16, hours late for an hourish journey.

> I took the California Zephyr from Denver to San Francisco (technically Emeryville) a few years ago and it was one of the best experiences of my life. Truly unforgettable.

The first time I took the Zephyr and they announced we were going over Donner Lake, I thought they were kidding. A place were people resorted to eating each other out of isolation, and I'm gliding past it slicing a steak with a waiter refreshing my water.

I would recommend the Empire Builder, I've never heard so many spontaneous collective oohs and aahs on a train after coming around a corner or out of a tunnel.

I've driven across the country, twice, and I can recommend that too. It's no prob if you have good luck with hitchhikers. I took two guys aboard outside Chicago and we rotated driving & shotgun & sleeping all the way to L.A. stopping only for food, gas, beer, and playing frisbee at the St Louis arch. Coast to coast took just about 72 hours.

I hit rock bottom in 2002. My first wife, who I very stupidly married when I was 21, was committed to a psych ward. My landlord terminated my lease because of damage she did to the property that I had no means of paying for. I was an entertainer at Disneyland, of all things, and cuts to the entertainment budget meant layoffs in my department. Perfect confluence of shitty events, and I was living in my car for a few weeks.

So I definitely did have a reason to cross the US by train. Several reason. At least then, it was cheaper than by plane if you didn't get a sleeper car, and you could bring more cargo, so it made for a decent relocate across the country method. I had a friend willing to let me live with her in New Jersey, so Los Angeles to Newark in roughly three days.

As others have said, there isn't much you can see from 35,000 ft, but you can see quite a bit from a train, including places that are nowhere near roads and otherwise not very easy to see.

Weirdest part of the trip for me was getting caught up in one of those post-9/11 dragnets and getting questioned by the FBI in Albuquerque. I guess they found someone buying a one-way cross-country ticket suspicious.

That's cool. Good you didn't end up that low again.

Yeah the dragnet...well note beyond questioning you they didn't do you any harm. They are allowed false alarms too, mass transit attracts terrorism, because of the number of people and the speed at which they travel, together with collateral damage to the traintrack and congestion, everything. With high-speed rail it would be even worse. Trains are very sensitive to trainwrecks, always have been. On a mountain pass? It's no joke.

Sorry you had to go through this: My story had a similar path, though I didn't find my way out for some years later. Ex wound up in a psych ward numerous times, the first through a suicide attempt. It was out and in, and I sometimes wish I hadn't stayed so long. Then again, my life is pretty wonderful now and who knows if it would have turned out like this if I had left earlier.

If you've never ridden the Zephyr cross-country, I can't think of another time I've felt so deeply frustrated that USA hasn't developed a high-speed rail network connecting all its major cities.

If you're on the fence about trains vs. planes and have never done it, give it a try and imagine what it'd be like to be traveling ~200MPH while in the observation car. Still enjoying the decadent landscape views, drinking your beverage of choice, emitting far less carbon than flying, while still traveling quickly, without most of the obnoxious TSA theatrics.

We did a round trip, Paris-Nice-Paris one summer. The trip to Nice was overnight on a sleeper car, and the way back we had first-class TGV tickets. I loved the sleeper car very much, but watching the French countryside fly by at 200mph was a vision of a civilized future that my American mind could scarcely comprehend.

> without most of the obnoxious TSA theatrics

That's just naive. If train travel ever becomes common again, the TSA WILL get their grubby little fingers into it.

And the fact is that if you travel regularly and have TSA Pre, I do still get to the airport early but I pretty much breeze through security the vast bulk of the time. No shoes off, laptops out, etc. It's rarely a headache.

I think TSA is mostly useless, but people really overblow how much of a pain it is to go through security for domestic flights. It's never taken me more than 45 minutes to go from dropoff to gate for a domestic flight, and most are closer to the 20 minute range (mostly just walking to the gate itself).

All of that not even being TSA-Pre.

Not sure about that. Flying is also horrible in Europe but on Trains even international ones you usually just have border controls between 2 stations. If even. No idea why the US would be so different, especially as there is little or no 'international' crossing.

Because you're naive and ignorant about government goons justifying their existence?

I am totally ignorant when it comes to us government yes. I just put up a European perspective. A little hope if you will

> without most of the obnoxious TSA theatrics.

This is theater that easily could have been applied to trains. And the TSA really fought to be on them, but the CEO at the time was really stubborn. They were able to get away with the same attitude since[0], but government pressure was high[1], and the new guy seems to be ideal for the internal security force hammer to come down[2].

-----

[0] "TSA Administrator: No need for airport-like security for rail travel" https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/01/tsa-administrator-no-need-fo...

[1] "Lawmakers push TSA to strengthen Amtrak passenger security" https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/288502-house-lawma...

[2] "Former CSX executive becomes new Amtrak CEO" https://wtop.com/business-finance/2020/03/amtrak-names-forme...

"Amtrak CEO asks Congress to expand TSA’s ‘No Fly List’ to rail passengers" https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/amtrak-ceo...

There will always be a difference since you can't fly trains into the World Trade Center. Planes are basically missiles.

The Audm app has a fantastic narration of this that I've returned to a couple times in the past years for a laugh.

>Even on short plane trips, every passenger is offered the kindergartner’s communion of juice and cookies, as if a majority of adults are incapable of going 90 minutes without such provisions. On trains, passengers are treated as individuals even more powerful than adults: independent teenagers who just want to smoke. Amtrak knows you want to smoke. Amtrak knows you love to smoke. But while you’re living under Amtrak’s roof, you have to follow the rules, of which there is only one, and that is: Don’t smoke inside.

The author Caity Weaver also wrote a fun autoethnography on #VanLife[0].

[0] https://archive.ph/1OKC6

> Train people are content to stare out the window for hours, like indoor cats.

Last year I drove my car round trip San Francisco to Chicago, this year I'm taking the Amtrak Zephyr instead (fortunately I don't need a car at my destination). When I hitched around Europe after college I took multiple overnight trips on trains (and boats) but this will be the first time I have dedicated sleeping accomodations on a moving transport.

While I am looking forward to the trip I think there are some minor perils that should be noted (I haven't finished reading the linked article yet).

Tracks are shared with freight trains, sometimes there are unplanned delays of hours.

Bad weather, fires, or other incidents can also cause delays, a half day or more is not unheard of.

Because of Covid, it seems that for now, coach passengers are not allowed in the dining car, only those with roomettes (not 100% sure about this). I've read blog posts that on some Amtrak trips, meals were only served in the roomettes, so the dining car not in use (easier to keep clean, I guess?)

Wifi is not available on all trains.

The following discussion forum for Passenger Trains has daily commentary on various Amtrak comings and goings, photos etc. The first page is free to view, to see more requires a 3-month or full year membership (disclaimer: not affiliated with this site).

https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/list.php?4

> Because of Covid, it seems that for now, coach passengers are not allowed in the dining car, only those with roomettes (not 100% sure about this). I've read blog posts that on some Amtrak trips, meals were only served in the roomettes, so the dining car not in use (easier to keep clean, I guess?)

Check out https://www.amtrak.com/onboard/meals-dining/dining-car.html to see which services have traditional dining available.

I've used Amtrak in California & Ohio, and I don't remember the dining car ever being available to passengers traveling in Coach class. The closest thing I can think of is this: On the Coast Starlight (Los Angeles to Seattle), the Dining Car was available to passengers traveling in Business Class.

It is available to Coach passengers, but they have to pay for the meal. Sleeper passengers just write their room number on the check, because the meal price is included in their ticket.

Before becoming a hagiography of Rick Steves (who deserves it, surely) the first part of this essay read like a parody of a New York Times writer who just discovered there exists a world between the coasts, and that people live different kinds of lives than they do.

https://archive.ph/hFVSY

Here's another chance to mention the greatest train song ever written: City of New Orleans, by the great Steve Goodman (RIP).

Be sure to watch the related video where Arlo Guthrie talks about how Steve importuned him after a show at the Quiet Knight and played the song for him.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4ztWNJYFrU

How fast could you go from coast to coast in one of those high-speed trains that exist in other countries? 10 hours maybe?

The fastest train currently in long-distance service is the Fuxing Hao CR400AF/BF which is currently in service at 350 km/h (220 mph). San Diego to Jacksonville is 3350km (2100mi) straight line. That gives a lower bound of 9.5 hours. Of course the actual path couldn't be a straight line, and the train would need to accelerate and decelerate several times for intermediate stops.

15 hours if the train didn't stop, considerably more if the practicalities of an actual rail system were in play.

Japanese high speed rail has a top speed of 200 mph but not all lines, coast to coast is 3000 miles in the US depending on where you want to start and stop.

If you take exist to be “exists as a prototype” or “exists, but only serving a short route” then you could cover ~3000 miles in 11.5 hours without stopping using the Shanghai Transrapid,[1] or 10 hours using the latest Transrapid[2] or L0 Series shinkansen.[3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_maglev_train

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transrapid

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L0_Series

I took the Southwest Chief from Chicago to Los Angeles a few years ago. I went coach and it was about the same price as an airline ticket, maybe $10-$20 less. The Southwest Chief was nice, but the train to Chicago was noisy and dirty.

The sleeper car would have been about triple what we paid for the two coach tickets. It wasn't bad sleeping in the coach seats, though I am sure the sleeper car would have been fun. We bought our own food and ate on the train. We took a 2 day stop to visit Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon before continuing on to LA.

It's worth doing. I enjoyed the ride and got paid for it too because I was able to work while aboard the train.

i made a similar trip from chicago to san francisco.

also in coach. during the day i walked down to the lounge car with the extra large windows. that way my coach seat felt like a semi-comfortable place to sleep, and not a place where i would be stuck for three days.

it was a wonderful trip. my only regret was that the train was moving at night and i missed seeing half of the scenery while i was sleeping.

I took Amtrack around the US: Sacramento -> Santa Barbara -> LA -> New Orleans -> New York -> Boston -> Syracuse -> Chicago -> Sacramento.

I didn't buy the Rail Pass because I wasn't sure before I started that I'd enjoy it so much.

What was great was WikiMapia – as the train was rolling through the countryside I was able to know what was around me.

http://wikimapia.org/

https://www.amtrak.com/tickets/departure-rail-pass.html

Ha, it's funny I'm seeing this now! I'm doing a cross-country trip from Charlotte, NC to San Francisco (technically Emeryville) by train later this month (June 18th-21st). It was something of a spontaneous decision. I have an on-site with my team in SF later during the week of my arrival, so I felt this was a good excuse to experience something different! I'll be in a sleeper car for a short leg of the trip (DC to Chicago, iirc), then coach the rest of the way. Hopefully I survive, lol.

> (The nonprofit National Safety Council reports that a person in the United States is several times more likely to die of “sharp objects” than a plane or train crash, though the events that preceded the recent emergency Boeing groundings make such statistics cold comfort)

Somewhat OT, but I wonder: Do statistics like this actually take the priors into account or are they just comparing the absolute counts? Or in other words, could I add my own statistic and advertise the safety properties of unicycles for highway travel?

I did the Zephyr from Denver to Sacramento during the pandemic. Wearing a mask for 40 hours is no easy feat, so of course the passengers respected the mask mandate less and less as time went by. Even so, I would do the Denver-SLC Westbound portion again in a heartbeat. The entire time you travel through mountains, canyons and plains where no automobiles can go. When I went, the observation car had excess seating capacity for the entire trip. If I was from a foreign country, experiencing this would be on my bucket list.

> "a six-hour $129 nonstop flight"

How you know this article is definitely a few years old. :)

Now that the mask mandate has finally gone away, taking cross country trip on Amtrak is something that is on our 2022 plans. Surprisingly, most of the trains we've looked at have been at capacity or near it. Not sure if they're running shorter trains or if Amtrak has grown in popularity. Hopefully we'll be able to do it this year!

I did it in November, 1993. From Albany thru Chicago. Then to LA and up to San Jose.

It was great. Fantastic scenery. Private room once I got to Chicago. Met a lot of great people, because you share tables in the dining car.

Even had a friend visit met at the station in Albuquerque.

I was moving and they let me bring 60 pounds of stuff.

Weird. In Firefox, on Android, reader mode gets me a long article about some people in Alaska.

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