I Amtrak’d from North Carolina to Michigan via DC. Took 24 hours. To compare, to drive was about 10 hours. I went into it knowing it was likely going to be a bad experience, but I had things to read and I was curious.

I’d do it again, but I’d arrange for a sleeper cabin and plan stops along the way. 24 hours on a train sitting upright was too much.

Meanwhile in Japan I took a train from Tokyo to Kyoto, 6 hours drive, less than 2 hours by train. So comfortable, so much space, and so convenient. I could easily nap in their upright seats, extremely comfortable, climate controlled, flying through beautiful rural regions full of mountains and trees.

Until the US stops treating humans worse than freight, you are going to need a high tolerance for bullshit to make a cross-country trip by train.

I take Amtrak about every year, usually the California Zephyr.

The train will be late. Just expect that and then it’s a pleasant surprise if it actually arrives on time. Two hours late is normal. After four hours it kinda loses it’s place in traffic and things can get bad fast after that. My previous record was ten hours late but I beat that a year ago at 15 hours - I didn’t arrive on the expected day. Don’t plan much for the day you arrive and don’t arrange any tight connections.

Some of the equipment is old, from the 1980s or so. Some seats have a cutout where the ash tray used to be.

Coach seats are very comfortable with much more leg room than a plane or bus. They recline pretty far and have leg rests. Seating in coach will vary from station to station. Some places assign seats, some board by the size of the party, and some are a free-for-all. There is overhead storage for luggage, a space on the lower level for larger items, and a baggage car for checked items.

Roometts are small but private and surprisingly comfortable to sleep in. Actual rooms are much more expensive but have lots of space to move around. The sleepers have an on-board shower. Sleeper passengers have access to the Metropolitan Lounge available at some stations. The one in Chicago is very nice with free snacks.

Trains have a cafe car to buy snacks and a small seating area. The dining car is usually just for sleeper passengers. Food is microwaved but actually very good quality. There’s fresh coffee in the sleepers in the morning.

Some trains have an observation car with comfortable seats and large windows. It’s a great place to watch the scenery and meet people. On the western trains I’ve seen lots of antelope, elk, bald eagles, wild horses in Nevada, an occasional bear or moose. The Zephyr goes thru the Rockies, passing thru some canyons that are otherwise inaccessible except by kayak. One section of the Colorado is known as “Moon river” because the river guides encourage their clients to drop their shorts and moon the train. The Coast Starlight and Surfliner go right along the Pacific coast in places with beautiful views of the ocean.

Car attendants are generally courteous and helpful. Some conductors will get on the intercom and point out the sights or give a history of the area. There’s generally a brief stop every four to six hours where you can get off the train and walk around for a few minutes.

The nice thing about trains is that when you arrive, you’re right there - you don’t have to take a shuttle or rent a car to get to the city, you’re already there. In Chicago you’re a block from the Loop. In NYC you’re already in Manhattan. For San Francisco, you’re in Emeryville but there’s an Amtrak bus that meets the train to connect to the city. Trains feel like a more human way to travel. Airlines treat you as a threat and an annoyance and they’d be happier if you’d just buy your ticket and stay home. Trains can be fun and relaxing, they just require patience.

Not cross country, Seattle to Portland was bad enough.

Amtrak doesn’t have “right of way” on the rails, which means if a freight train needs to get through, the passenger train pulls off onto a side rail to let the freight through.

We sat for 3 hours in the middle of nowhere waiting for a freight train.

It only takes 3 hours to drive that trip.

It’s been 25 years for me so things have changed. I also didn’t go the whole width of the US. But at the time it was pretty great. One of those life adventures that I’ve thought about ever since.

I went from Barstow, Ca to Chicago and back at age 18 as a graduation trip with a friend in coach. We spent most of our time (awake and asleep) in the dining and observation cars people watching and talking to folks. There was a whole car of Girl Scouts in uniform for the return trip, which felt a bit like being in Wes Anderson movie… or occasionally The Shining.

We’d jump out at stops just to say we’d been to the city where the stop was. Usually that just meant a quick lap around the train station then back on board, but it was still fun as an 18yo. On the way back we got stuck in the Sierra Nevadas (for only about 6 hours) after the train struck an elk. We were nearish enough to Donner pass that we got to hear some of the older girl scouts (still in uniform) chat about who they’d eat first. I think of that every time I see a cookie stand.

It depends on which line you take. Amtrak has different service levels on different routes. When I took the coast starlight from Seattle to San Jose it was wonderful, with clean cars, great food, and courteous service. When I took the southwest chief from LA to the middle of the country, it was a completely different experience. The porters were still friendly but the equipment was grungy and frequently broken and the food was about what you’d get at Denny’s. Bear in mind that both times I was in a ridiculously expensive first class cabin.

I’ve never taken the empire builder, which runs east-west across the northern part of the country, but I’ve read that it’s a “premier” service, so it should be on par with the coast starlight.

Edit: c/grey food/great food/

Comparing the Amtrak I took to California to the high speed rail I took to Beijing, the former might as well have been an 1800s steam engine. Old, slow, stopped often, smelled bad, food was pretty bad, it was majorly late, and it took far longer than driving the same route would have. It’s been over a decade, but I’ll never consider one again until we move into the 21st century.

The one positive was the observation car. That thing was super nice, had more comfortable seats, and gorgeous views.

I will never ride AmTrak again. Here’s why:

Pre-COVID, myself and my bf at the time went to an anime convention outside of Chicago. His grandma lived in St. Louis, so we decided to take the train from Chicago to St. Louis because it was cheaper than flying (we lived in CO at the time and had flown to Chicago for the convention).

Neither of us had ever been on an Amtrak train, so we had no idea how it all worked, that seats weren’t assigned, that there were different prices on different cars, etc, we’d just gotten 2 of the cheapest tickets and assumed we’d have a seat.

Well, there were no seats by the time we boarded. People had spread their shit out even though they were traveling alone, and refused to move it even when we asked. So we said fuck it, let’s see if there’s room in the next car up on the line.

We get to the next car and it’s completely empty except for 3 kids, the oldest one was maybe 12. We’re like cool, we’ll just sit in here.

A full hour goes by and an AmTrak employee comes by to collect tickets. We hand them over and she says, and I quote: “You can’t sit here, this car doesn’t go to St. Louis”.

Immediately in my head I’m like, how the fuck can this car “not go to St. Louis” when we boarded in the car BEHIND IT and THAT car IS going to St. Louis?? Is this the fucking Hogwarts train??? Did the cars uncouple and reattach to a separate engine car in the 1 hour that’s passed and we didn’t realize it??? So I ask her what she even means by that, and explain that there’s no room in the car behind us so we came to this one because no one would move, and all she kept saying is that the car we were in didn’t go to St. Louis, and we had to go back to the other car now.

Luckily, she came with us into the first car and forced a single person to go sit with another single traveler, which was very nice of her, so me and the bf got to sit together, but the seat was uncomfortable as hell (springs might as well have been up your ass), and the rest of the ride sucked because of it.

Maybe the fancy cars with the nicer seats and panoramic view windows are great, but I don’t give a fuck. Never again.

I’ve done a few trips. When everything is on time it’s a great experience IMO. When it’s running late it can suck. A few things I tell interested people:

Have a different mindset compared to flying. A plane trip is hectic and cramped but it’s over in a few hours, it’s a means to getting somewhere. Your vacation begins when you land. On a train the voyage is part of the vacation. It’s chill and you’ll meet nice people.

Amtrak has a website where you can see where the trains are at in real time. It’ll tell you if they are on time or how late they are running. This is real nice because you can put off going to the station if they are hours late. The first time I rode they didn’t have this yet and we felt trapped.

I got the small room (Roomette I think?) twice. It’s small but so am I. It’s two seats facing one another that fold down into a one person bed. Another bed folds down overhead. I got my parents a full size room for their 50th anniversary. It was nice but they spent their awake hours entirely in the observation car.

In my experience their wifi sucks but may have improved. Download books and movies in advance.

Bring your own drinks and snacks! Two meals a day were included with the rooms.

When I took the Coast Starlight I watched a YouTube video in advance that gave good advice about when and where to sit in the observation car for seeing Mount Shasta.

Safe travels!

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Not quite what you’re looking for, but I recently did NYC to Montreal on Amtrak, about a 12 hour ride (officially it’s somewhat shorter, but delays can happen at the border crossing, and as others have noted Amtrak doesn’t have right of way over freight trains so you may get delayed over that, I’d plan on about 12 hours on this particular route)

Overall I enjoyed my experience. It would have been faster to drive or fly, but that comes with its own hassles, and since it was snowing for a good part of our ride, I definitely appreciated not having to drive through that.

The seats (all coach class on this train) were pretty roomy, plenty of leg room, and comfortable enough for my tastes. There’s power outlets at every seat, the wifi is basically useless so plan on having any movies or ebooks or whatever you want to watch downloaded before you go.

The cafe car onboard doesn’t have an amazing selection, hot food is pretty much all microwave stuff, but I found it adequate to hold me over, I wasn’t looking for a gourmet meal, just some snacks and drinks, and it was pretty nice being able to enjoy a beer or two on the train ride.

On the ride back, it seemed like the train’s air conditioning wasn’t working well and it got a little warm, not ridiculously hot, but enough that you might want to take off an extra layer or roll up your sleeves. They also mentioned that since their train fleet is aging a bit, some of them can start to leak a little in the rain, we didn’t experience any of that even though it was raining a bit, but that’s something to keep in mind.

We didn’t have any issues with the bathrooms, but at least on that route they won’t get cleaned during the trip, so if they get too gross they do sometimes apparently have to put some of them out of service.

Went up and down the west coast. Much more pleasant than flying but long.

As a journey or experience, do it. But if I need to get somewhere to do a thing and then go home… flight, for sure

When I was a kid (like 11 or so) my whole family went from Chicago to Portland and then a week later got back on the train and went back. It took a couple days each way. My mom hates flying and she didn’t want to drive. I remember sleeping a lot on very uncomfortable seats. Met lots of random people. There weren’t many other kids, so I befriended a lot of elderly people.

It was definitely an experience, but I’m kind of glad I was so young. I don’t know if I would want to sit for so long now. If I were to do it as an adult, I’d probably plan to stop a place or two along the way just to break up the trip.

Being Europeans, it’s funny to read amtrak stories, in France/Europe there is TGV since 1981, going 200mph, and now about everywhere. It’s incredible to read your stories, it looks like 1880

I never did it, but it’s interesting to read about. Last year I was planning a family vacation in Orlando, and we are in NYC area. The deal breaker for me was the cost which was like 3x of the flight. I understand that it would be more comfortable and probably I should compare with business class flight, but still…

I used to take the train quite a bit - like the general consensus here, it was scenic, comfortable, if slow and non-punctual. But I was willing to put up with that if I had a non-time-sensitive trip, since it was so much better than flying or driving. For one trip from Washington to Minnesota, I decided to fly out then take a sleeper car back (Empire Builder). All went well, until the train derailed and three people were killed. Not Amtrak’s fault, and I don’t blame them at all, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to ride another train since.