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Comment by nonethewiser | Hacker News Reader

50 days one way? Some research shows it was £85 vs. £200-£400 for a one-way plane ticket. What is the use case for this?

I guess:

- very motivated to go

- plan to stay for a very long time

- absolutely CANNOT afford a plane ticket

- or, afraid of flying

Reminds me of a lot of Amtrack routes in the US. I looked at trips from NYC to Chicago. I thought it would be fun and I needed to get to Chicago. But it was more expensive than flying and like 25 hours. There is just absolutely no reason to travel that way.

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The point is the travel. If you have the time, then this would have been a great way to see a lot of the world. It's a bit of an adventure by itself.

I can't say it would have been very comfortable, so I guess it would be trading time and comfort for money.

I can say as an anxiety sufferer and avoider of planes is that the discomfort helps me feel grounded (literally hah). It's its own kind of comfort.

Cheers, I thought I was the only person like this :) (also didn’t tie it to my anxiety, but it’s extremely obvious in retrospect. This is too short and elides the own kind of comfort part, but I guess it means I can’t spin out, ruminating on or creating other problems, when I have stuff right here to complain about!)

Exactly. For many, the idea of being able to see England, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India in one 50 day trip with many similar minded travelers who aren't in a rush is really quite appealing.

Also, with bus travel you could, if you felt like it, leave the trip to enjoy many more local attractions and resume your travels later in a way not afforded by airplane or rail travel.

I have friends that take the long haul Amtrak route. One does it for environmental reasons. He also eats discarded food so as not to waste. Great guy. Just a bit of a nut.

Another travels by train with his wife because they are retired and both have knee problems that make sitting in a plane untenable.

But yeah, traveling by train in the US outside the Northeast corridor doesn't make except for unusual circumstances.

Eh, the Portland - Seattle - Vancouver BC Amtrak sector is also pretty usable. In practice I've found it's not substantially faster or slower than driving - at least not enough to make a big difference for me.

Pretty, yes, but geopolitical issues slow the service. We were at least two hours late thanks to various issues with crossing the border and fitting in with the cargo trains.

I believe you when you explain your experiences. All I can offer is anecdotal experience of having never encountered that myself.

If it's luck then I'm thankful if nothing else.

The conductor bent our ears for a while as we waited. He said it was common.

It's slow on the Canadian side, especially around the swing bridge. The US side is actually fairly fast, and the border crossing is quick.

Definitely my preferred way to do Vancouver-Seattle travel.

On a train I can read a book, eat some food, drink, stare at the scenery, check my phone, no problem because I'm not driving. On most trains a professional is driving, on a few a machine is driving, but either way it's not my problem.

For long distance trains, sure. But there’s plenty of shorter Amtrak routes outside of the NE Corridor where it could make as much or more sense than flying, to be fair

Los Angeles - San Diego: 2.5hrs downtown to downtown (less if you’re going to one of the many suburbs or beach towns in between), which is on par with driving and sometimes even faster than traffic. Also, a ticket is only $30-50, so about a tank of gas. This is likely why it’s Amtrak’s busiest and most profitable route outside the NEC. If the second phase of the California High Speed Rail ever gets built (lol), this trip is to take somewhere between 30-45 minutes.

I just took the Amtrak from Southern California to Seattle.

Pros:

- space! wide seats and leg room are awesome (I'm 6'5" so this is everything)

- Freedom to move around and explore. Lounge car, dining car, snack bar

- Spectacular views

- Train stations are much more pleasant than airports

- Opportunity to meet people from all over the place. On a plane everyone is going from A->B, people on the train could be starting/ending anywhere along the route, including small towns you've never heard of.

Cons:

- 32 hours of travel

- Pay an extra ~$500 to get a bed, or sleep in your seat

Overall I have no regrets but I'll probably not do this again until I'm retired or extremely bored.

I’ve traveled in the Coast Starlight I think maybe five times. It was enjoyable.

Some more pros:

- The food served in the dining car is far better than airplane food. If you get a bed, the food is included. Even if you get a seat, you have the option of paying for good food.

- You can bring a bicycle along for the ride. You do not need to disassemble it or put it in a box. Just walk the bike to the luggage car and someone will take it; when you get off the train walk to the luggage car and someone will hand it to you.

As a European, I was shocked by how slow trains are in the US.

It definitely doesn't encourage people to use them instead of flying.

I assume they have eliminated the "smoking" car by now? Last time I took Amtrak long distance, walking through the smoking car to get to the dining car basically ruined the experience. Literally blue haze air and you smelled the smoke in your clothes for several hours afterwards. This was the early 1990s.

I did NY to Miami in 2024, I was working in NY one week and Miami the next, made sense to me to have Sat morning down town in New York, then sit in a private hotel room with great food for 24 hours before arriving in New York Sunday evening in time for work the following day.

Could have flown Saturday evening and had an extra day in a hotel room in Miami instead, but I spend enough time in chain hotels

I see a lot of mentions of great food. On the train from DC to NYC, the dining car is like a little league concession stand. Is it better on longer routes?

You definitely don’t take long distance Amtrak today for cost or convenience. You go for the experience and views. I had a blast sharing a room with a friend on the Seattle to Emeryville route. I’m looking at Chicago to Emeryville next (or starting in Denver along the same route).

Also be prepared for delays up to 24 hours on any long distance routes especially west of Chicago.

The Wikipedia article made it sound like more of a "land cruise". The bus stopped at some tourist and shopping destinations along the way and the description make it sound more like a cabin cruiser than your typical bus. I can see the appeal for people who want to travel and don't have a lot of money. Definitely easier than hitchhiking across the continent.

The other motivation would be getting to see - albeit briefly - all of the countries in between.

If I had 50 days to spare I might choose that over a flight too!

For the most part, the purpose of the long haul Amtrak services isn't to make it economical go from one end of the line / one major city to the other (e.g. NYC to Chicago); It's to provide a transportation service for all the intermediate, rural stations who might not be near an airport or have any other public transportation options.

Can't believe you tried so hard to list reasons for taking the route, and missed an obvious one that other commenters suggested. Travel is not always just A->B as fast as possible.

This is HN, a place where people see dot A and people see dot B but they fail to connect the dots. Reminds me of HN's underwhelming reaction to Dropbox.

One would think that travelling across so many countries and continents would be quite clearly the point of the bus service.

I've given up on expecting any subtlety or nuance from the painfully literal nerds on here. "Must optimize my route for efficiency because I am an engineer! No fun allowed!" There's a certain depressing lack of joie de vivre.

It's not nerdism. It's the dominant ideology of our times - neoliberalism - which demands that everything be valued only in terms of dollars. A trip that takes 50 days is not dollar efficient because you could fly in one day and spend the remaining 49 days earning dollars, i.e. the value of time is only about dollars, and cannot be other measures, especially subjective ones like human enjoyment and wonder.

Road is the destination, thus you arrive a changed man, ready for the Indian sub-universe to experience and mold you further.

And specifically on this, clashing with a very exotic cultures and mindsets along the way, forming unexpected intense interactions and experiences that you will remember for the rest of your life.

I've done a similar thing to this since this specifically wasn't possible anymore without crossing battlefields and risking kidnapping and death - backpacking around India for 6 months together. No real destination or plan, just 1 thick Lonely planet book covering whole country in the backpack (this was 2008 and 2010), return ticket and fixed budget in cash.

Came back a bit different, dare I say in some ways enlightened person. Experience cannot be explained to others by mere words, but other folks who experienced similar understand without a word.

It followed the hippie trail, that was the motivation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippie_trail

An interactive article from CNN : https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/travel/hippie-trail-hist...

Amtrak is not for someone that simply wants to get from A to B. I suspect a 50-day bus trip would be the same.

When I take Amtrak, it’s because I want to look out of a window for a few dozen hours and see something new (to me) every time I look out the window.

It’s probably the bus trip that they want, and not simply “go to India.”

"There is just absolutely no reason to travel that way."

Some people liked to see all these places and meet people. The journey itself would be an adventure. The other alternative would be by sea.

I used to know someone who travelled to India overland long before the Beatles made it fashionable for westerners to visit.

I took the Amtrak from Chicago to SF and it was the highlight of that year for me and one of the best memories of my life. Eating breakfast as we snaked by the Colorado river with fresh snow on the rocks - that's a travel experience.

You don't need to do it in one trip.

The equivalent of this would be interrailing through europe... travel via train to one country, stay for a few days, travel to next, stay a few days, and continue, all with a single ticket: https://www.interrail.eu/en/interrail-passes/global-pass

There was only one bus, so waiting for it to pick you up again would be at least 100 days wait, so not really an option.

The same reason why people take month long road trips anywhere, it's to see everything on the way. I'd guess their clients were 20 year olds wanting to go on an adventure. Honestly, if this had been a thing when I was 21 and out of college and a friend asked me to go I probably would have.

I once took Amtrack from Chicago-Seattle-San Francisco-Los Angeles-San Antonio-Chicago. With side-trips to Madison WI, Vancouver and to Yosemite (via Green Tortoise company).

It was a 6 week vacation, the purpose was to travel and see the US. I enjoyed it very much!

I’m surprised you’ve missed the most important reason of all. The very journey and the time spent on it is the point I would imagine for a large majority of the folks. It’s an adventure. What sort of person misses this?

By way of comparison, it took pilgrims from England traveling on ships like the Mayflower about 66 days to arrive in New England.

Says so right in the opening paragraphs:

> became famously associated with the overland Hippie Trail of the 1960s and 1970s

Depends on the type of tourism you prefer, I absolutely love roadtrips because "journey is more important than the destination", it's an adventure and the best memories from trips I have are from the journey itself, the destination is just a cherry on top.

Judging by the facilities mentioned in the Wikipedia article, it was very much planned as a (relatively) modern-day Orient Express. Not everyone back then had the luxury to not work for 50 days (one-way), so it was very much a rich people service.

Or being a "nomad" type who considers the journey itself as an end.

Fits the hippie age quite well.

iirc it was more doing it for the experience than as a convenient mode of travel (and actually if you run the maths/do some estimation, the journey time would be much shorter if they were driving 24/7 - like 5-10 days maybe)

Really, more expensive than flying? The family and I are looking at taking a X-country trip on AMTRAK and it looks to be significantly cheaper than flying. Plus, we will get to see awesome sights.

You lucked out. I periodically have entertained the idea of a long train trip with the family, and it has invariably been a good bit more expensive than just flying. The only time it is even close is on short (say a few hundred miles) trips.

What if you want to enjoy the scenery?

drug and sex tourism

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