Seeing America by train
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
If you want to become envious, he's also on Twitter - https://x.com/seatsixtyone - where he posts beautiful journeys. Just a shame it's all so expensive compared to flights!
On the bright side I got the experience of groggily asking a German border guard "what's up?" before I had a handle on why my makeshift curtain was being pulled aside at 3am
I've personally been checked in trains crossing from the east towards Germany multiple times, including the night train.
1. https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/17yy61g/current_re...
2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area under "regulation of internal borders"
On a tangential topic, the behaviour of railway staff when checking passports was interesting. With a paper Interrail ticket, they would always ask to see my passport or ID card, yet I don't think I have been asked once when using the electronic Interrail ticket - this is despite the rules being identical for both types.
For some reason Americans have a strong tendency to come up with these kinds of itineraries in the name of having a relaxing vacation, even though to any European it appears completely bonkers.
Am an American and wouldn't dream of doing something like this.
I'm trying a new thing as an experiment - Wizz air had an unlimited one year pass for 499 euro. Some unlikely destinations like Iceland and Maldives.
Few of my pictures are here https://www.kylehotchkiss.com/photography/collections/2024-c...
The railroad trip is a destination in itself.
A drive, a cruise, or a train trip have intrinsic value beyond moving from A to B. You experience the movement in a different way.
We need to start thinking a bit differently about the economics of transportation when travelling for leisure.
It looks like $104 by coach, which seems really reasonable but I can’t imagine sitting in a coach seat in a car that has both upper and lower levels for 33h. A private room is $619. A round trip plane ticket is about $139 and the flight is 1h37m. Amtrak needs to enter our universe.
I will say the coast starlight was pretty full when I took it from LA to Seattle. A lot of people take it and really really like it. The staff seemed more personable and to be enjoying themselves over the ones I’ve experienced in northeast corridor
Amtrak seems to be good at North to South on the coasts, and East to West in the middle, but bad at any diagonal routes.
So for 2 people in a room, about $1000
Why? This is in the EU
They just had to include that last bit, didn't they? Setting aside the fact that "the subjugation of indigenous people" in the American west began long before the transcontinental railroad, and so the whole comment is debatable at best (the Trail of Tears was 1831, and the first Apache wars were in 1849; the Oregon trail was 1830-1840, and the transcontinental railroad was begun in 1863), it's the sort of drop-in to an otherwise unrelated story that makes you cringe.
Literally anything in the world can be tied back to oppression of a people, if you want it hard enough. You're writing a nice little human-interest story about a train ride...can't you give it a rest for a minute?
> Can't fathom why this bothers you so much
Really? They just explained it particularly well.
> because it makes you uncomfortable?
I think they're taking issue over the fact that it is not only mostly irrelevant but it's also completely incorrect.
(To be as charitable as possible to your point, I did say "cringe", but I didn't mean it in the way that you're interpreting it. I just meant "cringe", in the same way that I cringe when I see someone who boldly expresses an opinion about anything that is factually incorrect, or perhaps, when a stranger starts selling you on their multi-level-marketing scheme in the bathroom. More like "oh god, we're going to do this now, are we?", than a "I reject basic facts of history that the average US high school student should know, including the approximate order of major historical events" sort of thing.)
But hey, I also don't think observing the basic fact that the railroads led to the "opening of the west" would qualify as "lauding" that fact, any more than observing that "George Washington was the first US president" would be "lauding" George Washington. For that matter, I can also enjoy a train ride without feeling the urge to "acknowledge" that Cornelius Vanderbilt did some bad things.
(...though I sadly acknowledge that we're well 'round that bend as a society)
It's like having a casual chat with a colleague and then they trauma dump about what happened to them when they were 15 or whatever. Like okay, cool, take it to therapy, this isn't the place, you're just making things awkward for everyone.
You're calling timr the bad guy for noticing. It's OK to notice things.
It's one thing to say "look, they said X" than to say "please don't talk about X on the internet".
And op’s point stands. Tech is power; and almost any tech can be used and abused. But tossing this in seems lazy at best.
[1] It might even work better, since it lets you draw your own conclusions about the anecdote. Not everything needs to be a lesson.
So did "empire building" and "westward expansion," but those assertions don't seem to have bothered you despite suffering from the same deficiency in the same sentence.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Las...
One could and probably should understand that the beauty of the Railroad is inseperable from the subjugation of the indiginous tribes and the labor abuses that built it. Should those things be ignored because they make you uncomfortable? It's perfectly contextual to have that in this piece....
... though I do concede the way that's mentioned and the article in general seems low effort and mediocre. But that's a different argument than "stop making me uncomfortable".
> One could and probably should understand that the beauty of the Railroad is inseperable from the subjugation of the indiginous tribes and the labor abuses that built it. Should those things be ignored because they make you uncomfortable? It's perfectly contextual to have that in this piece....
Someone else on this thread tried the same rhetorical feint. Who told you that I am "uncomfortable"? Did the fact that I cited events and dates somehow convince you that I didn't know about these events before now? That I just became aware of the story of the US westward expansion because this author dropped it into her Amtrak feature?
Look, if you want to write (or read) a thesis on the influence of the locomotive on the oppression of indigenous people, that's great. I bet there's one to be written. But this is just lazy, dumb, superficial propaganda, dropped into a puff piece.
There's definitely a delicious irony that Amtrak is about the furthest thing from an "empire" that you can find in America, though. They don't even own the tracks they run on.
Unless we're also willing to talk about Facebook as a generation-redefining technology that altered how people interact, without mentioning the negatives. I'm sure people will attempt to do that a century from now; it will be wrong then as well.
Looks like it's more universally human than one would like to admit.
The degree of indignation you're expressing here at this ancillary snippet (as opposed to the historical genocide itself, and the continuing injustices suffered by the survivors' descendants to this very day) seems to be in itself rather cringe.
I am not expressing "indignation" -- I don't think the author was unfair to me. I'm not even remotely upset. I just think it was a silly and unnecessary inclusion (in your words: "ancillary") that detracts from the piece.
Still - it does seem to be such a trifling fault with the article that it seems strange that it would be seen as worth devoting the time and energy to call out. When I come across minor hiccups like this (either in something I'm reading, or when someone is giving a talk) I usually just say to myself:
"Mmm -- but was it in good faith at least? Not too preachy / overbearing? Yes? Then let's move on ..."Unfortunately, the first trip on Amtrack quickly put down all my illusions. Not only was it hugely expensive for quite a crammed and uncomfortable cabin (and I traveled Soviet trains - somehow Amtrack managed to get theirs even less comfortable!), the rest of the experience was not that great too. The decor was old and shabby, the food was a huge disappointment too (I know it's hard to get good food into a plane, but the train is not supposed to have this problem?) and while there were some spectacular views, I've seen a lot more industrial warehouses and heavy equipment storage than I'd enjoy. So, the trip was quite a disappointment to me. From then on, it's either driving - when I can choose my own adventures - or flying, where I am getting to the point quickly and can have fun at the destination point instead.
I took the train. Los Angeles to Newark. Three days. I can't really imagine doing it today, because I'm like everyone else here, a whiny little prissy bitch. But back then, I shared a two-bedroom place with three other guys, slept in my car all the time, was used to an hourly job with no consistent schedule. Without any expectation of luxury or customer service, it was a pretty nice experience. My back was healthier then, too, so sleeping in coach wasn't a big deal. The great thing about taking Amtrak is the rail line didn't create towns the way highways do. You're truly remote for much of the ride. You're not seeing the "Americana" America you see on road trips. You're seeing the natural country. Following the Susquehanna River through Pennsylvania was my favorite part of the trip.
It was also amusing when the FBI questioned me in Albuquerque, as they apparently flagged anyone taking a long one-way trip after 9/11. 21 year-old aimless drifter with no plans dressed like Hunter Thompson. I don't even remember what I told them. Don't ever wanna go home, I guess, but you can check my bags and see I don't have a bomb.
The zephyr crew really goes the extra mile with fresh flowers in the dining car, haven't seen that on any other route
Conspicuously absent from a visual diary is the odor of toilets out of service
If something breaks it stays broken until the train can be serviced. I actually lack experience in clogging or unclogging Amtrak toilets so I don't know what must be done to keep them in service
Each superliner has multiple toilets in the lower level, most seats are upstairs but there are lower level seats particularly for folks who are not able to navigate stairs for whatever reason or just people who prefer the peace of not having people walk back and forth through the car (only the upper levels are connected by vestibule)
So anyway if you have a seat in the lower level you're down the hall from the toilets, and 2 or 3 days in the clogged toilets just stay clogged and it reaks
We made a video at https://youtube.com/watch?v=2BID8_pGuqA
I remember loading up ebooks, podcasts, etc, just in case I was “bored.”
No joke, I sat in the parlor car staring out at the landscape for 3 straight days!
It was absolutely glorious.
One fun thing (“fun”, depending on your perspective) is that you’re paired with random strangers at dinner.
The first night, I am telling the couple across from me how “awesome and civilized” this felt and it was nice not to have to deal with the bullshittery of TSA agents at airports.
They politely coughed and I knew instantly I screwed up.
“Yeah, we’re actually both TSA agents.”
Dinner was pretty awkward after that!
Before they changed their booking systems about 10 years ago, you could always get on the train with a coach ticket and ask the conductor if any roomettes would be free all night, and they'd negotiate a token price with you. I'd even haggle for one during the day for a long nap after a sleepless night in observation watching movies on my laptop.
You just have to know that the author almost certainly left out the heavy downsides of the journey, which would have been the totally unpredictable, frustrating, hours-long (maybe even good-part-of-a-day) delays along the route where Amtrak is stuck waiting for freight trains on rails that it does not own.
Unfortunately a few hours of scenery isn't worth the overall frustration at the state of US rail in my opinion.
It's..... it's quite an interesting perspective. All the little incidental stuff, the copious announcements from the staff, certainly add color to the story.
For those who “don’t get it” - it’s like a cruise that goes over land instead of water. (Though it’s fair if you don’t like cruises either)
It was great -- you could bring on as much as you could carry (I brought a beanbag chair my junior year) and the food was always good. You meet some incredible people on Amtrak.
Being in SF now I've wanted to check out the Amtrak scene to do some West Coast exploring!
And by “the rest of world” you mean Europe and parts of Asia?
I suppose Latin America doesn’t exist? Maybe they’re evolved enough to be considered real people? What about Africa? Also still not human?
The real situation is closer to "none" than "lots".
Get yourself a roomette. It provides most of the comfort, glamor, and privacy of the experience, along with the dining car access. It's expensive, but consider it an investment in a once in a lifetime experience (I probably wouldn't do it again until I retire).
The rest - the observation car - is nice, but you will have slightly annoying interactions there, and if you're going through a popular area, may have to jockey for a timed spot in the car. Coach is just depressing and uninteresting, with extremely grimy windows that are blocked half the time. They have now added rules to prevent people from sitting in the cafe car unless they're eating something they bought in the cafe car, so say goodbye to working on your laptop with a nice view.
Don't expect any connectivity on the train. Expect to be offline. Expect to spend about every other hour in the good parts of the trip just staring out the window; don't expect to work. And do talk to your neighbors.