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This is a thread dealing with Amtrak travel. While there is quite a bit to say about the politics of rail travel in the United States, this thread will (mostly) deal with the practical side of riding Amtrak. 1. What is Amtrak?. Amtrak is the United State's passenger rail service, and is (for our purposes) a quasi-government agency. Amtrak is ran privately, but is chartered to provide rail service as widely as possible, and receives some of its budget from federal (and state) funds. Amtrak runs both short and long distance route, and is the only long distance passenger rail service in the United States. 2. Where does Amtrak go? Amtrak serves 46 states and 3 Canadian provinces. It doesn't serve Alaska, Hawaii, Wyoming or South Dakota. It offers service to the Canadian cities of Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. While Amtrak serves 46 states, some of those states are served only nominally. The sole Amtrak station in Idaho is in the small town of Sandpoint, the sole Amtrak station in Kentucky is in Fulton. In Nevada, there are several Amtrak stations, but they are all across the sparsely-populated northern part of the state, while Las Vegas is not served. In practical terms, Amtrak serves areas with major population, with a few long-distance routes between them. Between Boston and Washington, D.C., Amtrak runs quite often. This is also true in a penumbra around this area: New England, upstate New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee and St. Louis have fairly good service between them, although not on the level of the Boston-Washington, D.C. corridor. In California, both the San Diego-Los Angeles areas and the San Francisco Bay-Sacramento areas are well served. Vancouver, B.C.-Eugene also has frequent service. Between these areas, Amtrak relies on long distance services, multiday routes that connect (for example) Seattle to Chicago, New York to New Orleans and the like. These trains often also pass through major cities, but usually only once a day and at a time that is inconvenient for traveling. Someone wishing to go from Minneapolis to Chicago, or Atlanta to New Orleans, better be ready to be at the train station at 7 AM. What this means is that while traveling on Amtrak can be done without much planning and for practical reasons in the corridors I mentioned, for long distance travelling it is usually done as part of a vacation, and with planning. 3. What are Amtrak trains like? Amtrak trains are much more comfortable to travel on than a plane or bus, which is good because you might be on them for a while. On long distance trains, there is two types of tickets: coach and sleeper. Coach is like an airplane or bus seat, only bigger and with more reclining. Sleeper comes in several sub-categories, starting with "roomette" (basically a Murphy bed with a door) going up to full rooms. These are pretty expensive (by my standards), usually costing 200 dollars for an overnight, and going up to 1500 dollars for a cross-country trip. Long distance trains also have a diner car and a lounge/sight-seeing car. They also have water fountains and bathrooms. Short distance trains don't have sleepers, or diners. They have lounge cars, and also have business class seating. 4. What are ticket prices like? Amtrak is usually fairly cheap, and gets (relatively) cheaper the further you go. Amtrak prices are actually at about the same level as Greyhound prices, with much better service and comfort. Prices go from around 50 dollars for a commuter level trip (Portland to Seattle, for example) to 100 dollars or so for an overnight. Even multiday trips usually don't go much above that. Amtrak also offers Railpasses, where you can ride the train for 15,30 or 45 days. 5. Are Amtrak trains reliable? . Not usually. Outside of the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak trains run on track leased from freight lines. The freight railways decide the schedule that the trains run on, and if an Amtrak train encounters a delay, it then is put at the end of its queue. For this reason, delays can start stacking up and on a long-distance line, an hour or two delay is more or less "on time". Sometimes trains on long distance lines can run 12 hours late. Amtrak is pretty good about helping customers who encounter delays, but it should be something that a traveller prepares for. 6. Is Amtrak nice? I've had good experiences with Amtrak lately. Amtrak has very good customer service, with all of the ticket agents and conductors I've talked to being knowledgeable, polite and pretty pro-active about customer comfort. Although I've been worried about the train schedules, I've never worried that an Amtrak employee would make my life difficult through laziness. 7. What do I need to know before going on the train in terms of comfort? One of the biggest problems is food: there is food offered on Amtrak, but it is monotonous and expensive. I ended up eating a lot of 6 dollar Digornio pizzas. I would suggest that for a longer trip, a rider pack plenty of dry, imperishable foods (crackers, granola bars, string cheese). There is water on the train, drunken out of tiny paper cups, so that is not much of an issue. The train bathrooms are relatively clean (the toilets flush, unlike bus toilets). The biggest problem I had while riding the train is that (unless you are in the sleeper car), there are no showers available, so after a few days, you probably end up stinking. Luckily, everyone else stinks too. Someone scheduling a cross-country Amtrak trip should probably schedule some type of stay at a hotel or with friends in the middle of it, because the griminess and bad food does catch up. Also, the limited amount of mobility on the train can also be bad: my feet started swelling up after a few days. All of this might sound bad, but (at least for me) it became relatively easy to grow accustomed to. 8. What if I am disabled/travelling with children/medically fragile/socially anxious or some other thing that makes travelling difficult? I can't speak to this personally, but all of these things probably make the train a lot less fun. The Amtrak employees and passengers I encountered all were polite and helpful to people in these situations, but there is of course a limit on how fun a 48 hour train trip with a two year old is going to be. 9. How does the Railpass work? Currently, the Amtrak rail pass is a way to travel the country for 15, 30 and 45 days for 500, 700 or 900 dollars. The holder of the pass is limited to 8, 12 or 18 segments. Basically, that means that the holder of the pass has that amount of tickets: which also means that the pass holder should plan ahead on how to use them. Going from New York City to Princeton, New Jersey counts as a segment, just like going from New York City to New Orleans. I just completed a railpass trip, and I think that it is a great deal and would recommend it to others. For 700 dollars (plus the cost of many overpriced pizzas) I saw 38 states in 30 days: I don't know another way I could have done this. The railpass holder still has to make reservations, and should do it a few days before traveling, because tickets can get sold out. Railpass tickets are also only good for coach seating. That is most of what I want to say about Amtrak, at least for now. There is probably lots of things that haven't occurred to me, so feel free to ask questions!
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Oct 15, 2014 22:22
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If you're on a time crunch in the Northeast corridor and money is not an issue, I highly recommend Amtrak's Acela line. It's expensive, but you'll get from DC's Union Station to NYC's Penn Station in 2 hours 45 minutes, and all the seats are business class. They're also given precedence when there are delays on the tracks!
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Oct 17, 2014 22:01
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TheLizard posted:If you're on a time crunch in the Northeast corridor and money is not an issue, I highly recommend Amtrak's Acela line. It's expensive, but you'll get from DC's Union Station to NYC's Penn Station in 2 hours 45 minutes, and all the seats are business class. They're also given precedence when there are delays on the tracks! I wanted to try the Acela service, but money was an issue. The entire Acela thing kind of shows the chicken-and-egg nature of establishing rail travel in the US. With Acela grade trains, it would probably be (roughly) as fast to get from NYC to Cleveland by rail as it is by air. But no one is going to believe that until they see it, and they aren't going to see it until they spend billions of dollars to build a high speed line between those cities. But that is getting into the politics of the matter and the like. More importantly, I bet Acela makes for a nice relaxing ride, but not for scruffy travelers like me!
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Oct 19, 2014 05:34
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Ehhhh.. Rail is held back in the US because of the size of the country and the distance between large populations. Acela's great and all but it's still only going at max 150mph. The difference between it and regional service is (sans delay, hahahaha) still only about 35 minutes or so. It's awesome that there are fewer stops though. Cleveland to NYC is almost 2x as long as DC to NYC. At that point air is likely going to be faster even with security theatre, not to mention far less traffic going there vs DC/PHL/NYC. Can you talk about your process of booking/reserving seats on the rail pass? Are they reserved? A way to upgrade on long segments? I did a similar thing with my frequent flyer miles and am always interested in multi-segment travel awards.
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Oct 20, 2014 05:38
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sellouts posted:Cleveland to NYC is almost 2x as long as DC to NYC. At that point air is likely going to be faster even with security theatre, not to mention far less traffic going there vs DC/PHL/NYC. Note: Amtrak does have its share of security theater, especially on the East Coast Corridor. I got my bags searched and was frisked in Dallas. Outside of that, no one really cares. Apparently, from what I have read, rail pass seats have a special code for discount/promotional seats. If all of those seats are taken, you have to pay a small fee to get a "normal" coach seat. (These seats are physically identical, it is just a difference of how the reservation system handles them). For the most part, I got my seats a few days in advance and never had to deal with that. But I still did have to get reservations: I can't just show up and show my railpass and hop on the train. As for upgrading, I only even asked about it once, on the last leg. Portland to Whitefish would have still cost me 200 dollars. I never tried any upgrading other than that, but I might have done so if I was planning more ahead. (Getting a lower level compartment probably would have been doable).
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Oct 20, 2014 19:56
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Acela is really only worth it for business travelers. In the DC-NYC-Boston corridor, it is almost always faster than flying, when you figure in airport transfers and airport security theater. Acela is almost always quite a bit more expensive than flying too. There are regional train options too, slightly less comfortable, very slightly longer travel time (you'll pick up an extra half hour travel time on NYC-DC taking NE Regional instead of Acela). Northeastern trains usually have WiFi access. Many of the cross-country ones, like Empire Builder or Capitol Express, do not. If you don't have 3G/4G, you'll be offline. For long hauls, bring snacks. Bring lots of snacks. Bring booze too. It's easy to get buzzed on trains, particularly overnight ones, if you're discreet. Most long-hauls have a bar car, but booze is expensive, and they often run out. Food on Amtrak is poor quality and very expensive for what it is. Service is almost uniformly bad on Amtrak. Employees are sinecured government employees, and practically have to rape a passenger or get busted shooting heroin at work to be fired. Sleepers are grossly overpriced. If you're traveling with a significant other, you'll often pay $400-500 per day for a sleeper. I take Amtrak when I'm in the States because I love trains. It is far, far inferior to Western European or Japanese train networks.
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Oct 31, 2014 14:24
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The cross-country trains need to hurry up and get wifi, nothing is more boring than riding through Montana with no internet.
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Nov 8, 2014 22:00
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Magic Hate Ball posted:The cross-country trains need to hurry up and get wifi, nothing is more boring than riding through Montana with no internet. My iPhone served me pretty well for most of the trip, although it did fade in and out of service. The only place I can remember having extended lack of cell coverage was on the California Zephyr following the Colorado River. But, honestly, I could afford to not use internet for two or three hours of gorgeous scenery.
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Nov 10, 2014 10:04
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Amtrak is at it's best if you are trying to bring a bike with you. Checking a bike box on Amtrak is ~$15 while on a plane it can be ~$100-200. I Just finished a bike trip down the California Coast and was able to get me and my bike back from Bay Area to Eugene for $110. I do wish I bought more booze before the trip but them's the breaks.
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Nov 22, 2014 06:46
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I took a round trip from NYC to DC this past weekend on Amtrak. During my ride to DC I get an email alert simply stating "There has been a problem with your reservation, please contact 1-800 BLAHBLAH". I showed this to the ticket guy as he was walking around, he scanned my ticket and said everything looks fine. Few days later I go to Union Station to head back to New York. I'm several hours early so I go up to their counter and ask for an earlier train. They told me they didn't have a reservation for me and to get on an earlier train it would be an additional $100. What the gently caress how do you just lose a reservation? I took the train here just fine. Luckily they were able to reinstate my original reservation but drat, sounds like a computer glitch or something to just screw up a reservation like that.
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Nov 22, 2014 14:16
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I live in the UK, but I've been considering buying either the 30 or 45 day railpass and travelling around the US next summer. Does anyone have any experience with these? How long would you generally get at each place you stop?
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Dec 4, 2014 13:21
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NAME REDACTED posted:I live in the UK, but I've been considering buying either the 30 or 45 day railpass and travelling around the US next summer. Does anyone have any experience with these? How long would you generally get at each place you stop? If you've never travelled around the US or Australia before, I'd seriously consider doing some test runs on maps to see how long distances are in the United States. Would you take a train from Lisbon to Copenhagen? If not, don't do Amtrak, because this distance (3000 km) is going to be pretty familiar to you (same as say, Boston to Houston). Unless you really *~* love *~* trains or have a clinical fear of flying it sounds pretty awful. Discount this if you just mean for traveling around the northeast of the country, where it's fine. From your post it kind of sounded like you wanted to do the entire United States in 30-45 days and not just one region, though.
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Dec 4, 2014 17:50
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Saladman posted:If you've never travelled around the US or Australia before, I'd seriously consider doing some test runs on maps to see how long distances are in the United States. Would you take a train from Lisbon to Copenhagen? If not, don't do Amtrak, because this distance (3000 km) is going to be pretty familiar to you (same as say, Boston to Houston). Unless you really *~* love *~* trains or have a clinical fear of flying it sounds pretty awful. I've done some travelling on the East Coast before, as well as from Calgary to Seattle, so I have some idea as to the distances involved, but I do agree that there does seem be quite a few times when I'm stuck travelling for upwards of 20 hours a day. Mostly, I was asking because it seemed one of the cheapest ways to do this - the number of flights I'd be taking to see as many places as I'd like to would make it way more expensive than Amtrak seems to be...
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Dec 4, 2014 22:02
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NAME REDACTED posted:I live in the UK, but I've been considering buying either the 30 or 45 day railpass and travelling around the US next summer. Does anyone have any experience with these? How long would you generally get at each place you stop? I took the 30 day pass, which is why I wrote this thread. It is honestly the best way to see the country, if you want to see a lot of different places, and are willing to put up with the discomfort. I mean, if you just want to see New York City and San Francisco, flying makes sense, but unless you have a lot of money, you can't fly to 10 different cities in a month. And if you could, you might miss a lot of the scenery you can see on the train (especially on the Western routes, where you will be going through some gigantic mountain ranges and deserts). On the other hand, the distances are long, and the long distance routes involve spending over 48 hours straight on the train. Chicago to San Francisco is like going from Warsaw to Madrid. The way the pass works is that you get a number of segments, and you can spend as much time at each city as you want to, as long as you finish your travel within the time. So you could (just for example) go from New York to New Orleans, spend three days there, then get on a train to Los Angeles, spend three days there, go to Seattle, spend one night, go to Chicago, spend a week, then return to New York. Of course, you have to plan ahead for lodging and tickets, which can be a bit of work. I hope I've explained that well...ask me any questions to clarify.
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Dec 5, 2014 09:32
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glowing-fish posted:
Even longer! It's Madrid to Minsk. Fortunately you don't have to cross any KGB border posts on the SF->Chicago route. The other option (maybe) would be to take the train one-way which sounds cool and then fly back from San Francisco or Seattle or wherever. Then you only have to do the 48 hour leg once.
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Dec 5, 2014 10:37
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My general experience is that Amtrak is inexpensive everywhere except the DC to Boston corridor. Recently went from Seattle to Portland, and there were representatives from the national parks stationed in the dining car. They would point out and explain various sites along the way and answer any questions. That would never be required on the DC to NYC route. Unless you had any questions about The Wire or the poverty stricken inner cities in general.
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Dec 7, 2014 16:50
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grellgraxer posted:My general experience is that Amtrak is inexpensive everywhere except the DC to Boston corridor. "Now here we see the largest pile of scrap iron and tire scraps in New Jersey, and it has been here since 1923..." Its actually a serious point, that Amtrak has a dual purpose. In a few areas, its used for practical transportation, but on all of the long distance routes, it is more about the "train experience". Which is an experience that not everyone is willing to spend the time and money to have.
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Dec 7, 2014 20:24
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grellgraxer posted:My general experience is that Amtrak is inexpensive everywhere except the DC to Boston corridor. I don't think its too bad up here. New haven to GST is about the same on Amtrak as metro north I think. Then again it could just be metro North is expensive. The Acela is expensive as hell though, like double the price to get to NYC 20 minutes quicker
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Dec 9, 2014 06:04
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I took the Empire Builder line this past summer from Chicago to Glacier. I brought a fifth of tequila, a few Arizona Fruit drinks and two ambien. I've ridden Amtraks dozens of times on the Saluki Express (Chicago to Carbondale) so I kind of knew what I was in for. It was supposed to take 30 hrs, and I was looking forward to meeting some people my age in the car or observation car that I could talk with or drink a bunch. Too bad I got stuck in a car full of about 20 Amish. Amish do not wear deodorant. Amish people turn pretty ripe in a train. They also spoke their moon language the whole time which sounds absolutely annoying. The damnedest thing is they weren't wearing deodorant but they could use iPods. The rest of the car was some senior citizens travel group. The cars did not have wifi so that blew but I had downloaded various podcasts, and packed a few books to keep me occupied. Our car ran out of water and so we had to go to the next car to use the toilet when we hit Montana, and we were running 4 hours behind so by the time we got to Glacier it was dark, which sucked. In the end I ended up finding a flight back to Chicago with a two hour layover in Milwaukee for the same price as my train. I took the flight. Would recommend only if you have a travel buddy.
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Feb 4, 2015 19:38
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Amtrak is excellent when you need to move since you can take a lot more bags than you can when flying for cheaper. I've done the California Zephyr from the east coast a couple of times and it's always been amazing. The scenery is wonderful and I typically get a roomette for the long sections so I have a bed & privacy & food. Even if you're not going to take Amtrak, it's still a great way to ship stuff to where you're moving to too. The cargo rates are very reasonable. For long distance trains, bring a small power strip so you always can use an outlet if you're on a train that only has outlets in the viewing car! Paying for a meal in the dining car isn't too bad since you end up getting seated with pretty cool people. One time I had a woman who worked in a bird sanctuary pointing out eagle nests when we were going through the Rockies. It was awesome because the entire car would go rush and look when she pointed one out, even the servers  P.S. If going west, prepare for delays and don't rely on the train getting there exactly on time. Especially in winter. Unlike in the east, Amtrak doesn't own the tracks and have to share them with freight trains who get first dibs while on the east coast it's the opposite. My first time doing a long distance trip (NY > CA), a freight train fell off the icy tracks into a lake in Sandusky, Ohio and we were right behind them so we didn't move an inch for five hours as they cleaned up the tracks and got the other train off. Nobody was hurt but most of the cargo ended up in the frozen lake. I wish I had taken photos of that but I didn't have my camera handy  I missed my connection in Chicago but Amtrak were cool and gave everybody who missed connections a hotel room + taxi fare. Ended up in a pretty nice Hyatt but I was a ~first class~ passenger (roomette) so your experience may vary. It all worked out though because my original train had to get off at Reno and spend a night in a hotel there since a snowplow fell through the tracks in the Sierras The lack of wifi wasn't too much of a problem and I had some access on my phone anyway. The scenery was so beautiful and they schedule the trains so you get to see the pretty stuff in the daytime and when you're sleeping, it's all boring stuff that you don't want to see anyway. Just load up your computer or tablet or whatever with some movies and bring books and relax. poo poo will happen but honestly it was all worth it and the pros outweighted the cons for me. Just don't do long distance trips if you HAVE to be there on time. And bring a blanket if you're not in a sleeper car, you'll be glad that you did.
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Feb 5, 2015 01:31
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How the poo poo do you have solid wifi flying from Anchorage to Saigon at 36000 feet but nothing on a train from NY to LA going at 60mph?
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Feb 5, 2015 07:15
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Pryor on Fire posted:How the poo poo do you have solid wifi flying from Anchorage to Saigon at 36000 feet but nothing on a train from NY to LA going at 60mph? The plane has satellite wifi. Trains have nothing but whatever you/they can grab off the nearest cell towers. When you're in the middle of nowhere it's hard to find a signal.
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Feb 6, 2015 03:58
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Liam Emsa posted:The plane has satellite wifi. Trains have nothing but whatever you/they can grab off the nearest cell towers. When you're in the middle of nowhere it's hard to find a signal. I'm pretty sure he means that if you can put it in a train you can put it in a train, as in, why do trains not also have satellite wifi in the US. Unless they're going through the world's longest tunnel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel it should be as feasiable as for a plane.
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Feb 6, 2015 14:12
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Some Amtrak trains have Wifi. Not all of them. The Northeastern Express and the Acela, for example, have Wifi, but the Cardinal and the Capitol Express do not.
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Feb 6, 2015 17:34
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I take the Pacific Surfliner pretty regularly. I've never had a serious delay, just two or three instances where the train had to stop for about ten minutes.
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Feb 6, 2015 21:17
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Hey guys I actually was really close to traveling around Amtrak a few years ago but I opted for flying and China town busses because I was on a tight schedule. I love high speed train travel but I was think I'm spoiled by Japanese and Chinese high speed train travel. I guess I haven't really done my research properly but price wise how does it compare with renting a car?
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Mar 15, 2015 18:59
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caberham posted:Hey guys I actually was really close to traveling around Amtrak a few years ago but I opted for flying and China town busses because I was on a tight schedule. I guess that depends on distance, and whether you would be sleeping on the train. I think that without hotel costs, it might come out about even. But in a car, if you are traveling overnight, you are going to have to stop somewhere. (Of course you could sleep by the side of the road, or just drive all night long) So the hotel cost is probably going to make the car more expensive. Of course, in a car you can stop and change your route, which is nice. And in Amtrak, you can relax and don't have to drive. So financially, I guess there isn't a lot of difference, it is more about preference.
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Mar 16, 2015 07:09
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glowing-fish posted:Amtrak is ran privately, but *is run I like trains and Ive taken Amtrak on a bunch of trips in the US but holy drat it is so so bad in every way compared to the trains in W Europe
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Mar 16, 2015 18:36
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Saladman posted:\Would you take a train from Lisbon to Copenhagen? If not, don't do Amtrak, because this distance (3000 km) is going to be pretty familiar to you (same as say, Boston to Houston). Note to non-Americans: this is only half way to the other coast
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Mar 16, 2015 19:14
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I took the starlight express from San Luis obispo to Seattle then a connecting bus to Vancouver. It was 33 hours, brought a bag of groceries from trader joes and sat up in the viewing lounge. Great seats, we were able to sleep comfortably. Maybe the commuter trains suck but for 113 bucks I'd do that trip again. It's no bullet train sure, but they give you enough space to spread out and relax. The only problem was our bags - we had a lot. I just checked mine in to Seattle, and never showed the dude my ticket to Vancouver. Then I just grabbed them when we unloaded in Seattle and chucked them on the bus. This was the right way to do it. My partner showed the other guy both her tickets and he said he could only check the bag into Seattle, which was fine, but he also decided to cancel her ticket from Seattle to Vancouver on the bus to do so, since they dont short- check bags. I didn't find out until we got to Seattle and I had to sort it out. What the hell Amtrak. Some cheap rear end goons might find the following useful: the trip was 113 dollars to vancouver bc and a ticket to Seattle would have been 111. When the dude cancelled my partners ticket from Seattle to Vancouver, he printed out a 27.35 dollar voucher for her as a refund. Of course we used this voucher to re- purchase her ticket to vancouver, but if someone else just wanted to get to Seattle... Maybe he hosed up or maybe it's a secret train deal!
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Mar 28, 2015 06:11
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Horatius Bonar posted:
I've never actually checked baggage on the train. The allowance for carry-on is pretty wide (two bags, plus unlimited laptop/personal bags) Of course, I am a guy who is pretty much t-shirts and pants, so I don't need to carry a lot.
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Mar 28, 2015 22:22
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My only experience with Amtrak was travelling from Montreal to upstate NY. Don't take the train cross-border. The border crossing took FOR loving EVER. Other than that, can't really complain.
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Mar 29, 2015 02:14
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