When I was a teen I was part of a group that did a Washington D.C. to Miami (and back) Amtrak trip. We knew it was going to take longer, but it was about $100 c

When I was a teen I was part of a group that did a Washington D.C. to Miami (and back) Amtrak trip. We knew it was going to take longer, but it was about $100 cheaper than flying -- and thought it might be fun to take a long haul train. It's maybe a 16-20 hour car trip. Less than a 3 hour flight. Amtrak turns it into a 23-24 hour train ride without delays. We were more than 8 hours delayed getting there, which caused all kinds of havoc with our local transport and accommodations. This is not in a sparsely populated part of the U.S. It's not the North-East corridor, but it's still pretty heavily populated for most of the run. I swore off trains ever again until many years later my wife thought it would be better to start taking trains around Europe and I finally understood how good they can be. More recently we were in Japan and took the Shinkansen (and a bunch of local trains) all over the country and experienced truly the dream that trains can be. As much of an improvement as the average Eurorail is over Amtrak, Japanese trains are the much of an improvement over Europe. Absolutely incredible.