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This past summer, I took the Coast Starlight from Seattle to Monterey with my wife and kids. I loved it. It's hard to convey how different it is from flying. W

This past summer, I took the Coast Starlight from Seattle to Monterey with my wife and kids. I loved it. It's hard to convey how different it is from flying. Whenever I fly somewhere, especially these days when flying is such a miserable cramped experience, I always feel like my vacation starts after I endure the entire airport + plane experience. The whole travel part is in the same "chore" bucket as packing, finding a pet sitter, etc. With a train, the second we reached the train station, it felt like the trip had started. Many train stations are beautiful historical buildings right in the heart of downtown, so you're already experiencing a city and cool architecture. The staff and the whole process is very laid back without all of the security theatre nonsense of the TSA. It's about as formal as going to a play. Then you get on the train and you get to completely relax. I brought a book to read and some stuff like that, but I spent more than half the time literally just looking out the windows. Train tracks don't need much surrounding infrastructure, unlike freeways, so their routes often go right through little towns, along the coast, etc. You'll be seeing into people's backyards, storage area for businesses, farmland, everything. It's like a perfect cross-section of the entire US experience. And it's quiet. No constant roar of engines like a jet. You can talk at quiet volumes. The observation car feels like a chill coffee shop with an amazing always-refreshing-itself view. Time slows down. You watch the sun set and then watch the light leak out of the sky. You go to bed and get rocked to sleep. Taking a sleeper car train ride isn't cheap in terms of time or money, but I would highly recommend it. I can't wait to do it again.

RandallBrown 4y ago
I planned a trip from Seattle to New Mexico on Amtrak and it was pretty cool... until they canceled the leg of the trip from LA to New Mexico and I had to take a Greyhound for like 19 hours. I was only in business class but that got me access to the dining car. Since I was alone they sat me with different people for each meal and the food was actually really good! Of the 5 or 6 times I've taken Amtrak only once has the trip not been delayed or screwed up in a way that horribly affected the trip. I would love to do more train travel but my experiences have been so bad I can't imagine doing it much more than I have to, especially when it's way more expensive and takes way longer than driving a car.
- munificent 4y ago
  I was worried about delays and canceled legs too but we got lucky on our trip and everything was exactly on time.
  - judge2020 4y ago
    Amtrack has a page on it, with no route performing delivering more than half of riders on-time https://www.amtrak.com/on-time-performance https://www.amtrak.com/on-time-performance
    - hm-nah 4y ago
      Part of the allure! “We’ll get ya there…sometime.” It’s not their fault. Passenger trains in the US run almost exclusively on freight lines. They are high risk, low revenue…burdens(?) from that perspective.
      - dreamcompiler 4y ago
        Amtrak has also been starved of cash by politicians who want to kill it, so they don't have the funds to properly maintain their rolling stock. Engine breakdowns are frequent.
        ericmay 4y ago
        Exactly. If we spent as much on rail as we did airline infrastructure we wouldn’t have as many issues. I don’t have a big problem with it like travel, but it’s like a car. Should be used less frequently and walking (riding the train) should be more common.
        philwelch 4y ago
        Airlines are (barely) profitable. Amtrak is not, outside of the Acela corridor.
dbrueck 4y ago
> I always feel like my vacation starts after I endure the entire airport + plane experience Your whole comment brought back so many great memories for me, but this hits the nail on the head. I've only done one long train ride but the experience was so great that I'm eager to do it again. Being able to take a shower and lie down at night was a game changer - I slept so well. For me it was sort of a working trip in that I brought my laptop and did some emailing and light development, but I spent way more time just looking out the window and relaxing.
- tomcam 4y ago
  I have a pretty big shower but I pretty much never lie down in it ;)
throw7 4y ago
Your writing reminded me of this music video. The artist noted how during the pandemic he was captivated by train videos (like the first person videos of city walks/rides): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpBO0RbLKJ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpBO0RbLKJ0
kccqzy 4y ago
I have taken the Coast Starlight multiple times. Unfortunately once I tried it with my wife who hated it. Granted we got the cheapest sleeper car option (roomette) but she found it far from comfortable. She'd rather take a flight and be done with the trip sooner.
wincy 4y ago
So, do normal people not feel like they’re going to throw up literally the entire train ride? I had a hard time taking a half hour train ride, much less a long one, but I also have a hard time being in the back seat of someone else’s car. I feel like they must not because it’s very seldom talked about. But googling it says 1 in 3 people experience motion sickness. Maybe mine is just really severe? Without Dramamine or meclazine I’m hopeless on a train.
- pwg 4y ago
  > So, do normal people not feel like they’re going to throw up literally the entire train ride? No, no issues with the motion at all. And absolutely none of that onboard a cruise ship for me either. > But googling it says 1 in 3 people experience motion sickness. Maybe mine is just really severe? That sounds to be the case. Perhaps discuss with your MD?
- laurencerowe 4y ago
  I’m unable to read on a bus or car due to motion sickness but never have that problem on trains.
- fumeux_fume 4y ago
  I find it pretty unsettling how many people are raving about travel by train. If your standards are insanely low then I suppose you can say the food is good, dining with random people is fun and the cabins are comfortable.
  - zerocrates 4y ago
    It's a low bar to clear when you're comparing to the comfort and food on a typical flight nowadays. Of course, the train trip will be longer so, tradeoffs.
    - Akronymus 4y ago
      With the whole check-in/boarding process planes actually become close to as slow as trains on short-ish trips.
yafbum 4y ago
I did this once (different trip, but similar distance) and freaking hated it. The beautiful buildings in downtown are full of vagrants and the restaurants there suck. The train kept being stopped to let freight go first on single track sections. On the return trip our train was 90 minutes late and there was absolutely nothing to do in the station while waiting. Americans don't know how to do trains right.
- rafram 4y ago
  > The beautiful buildings in downtown are full of vagrants In every single town along Amtrak routes in the United States?
  - yafbum 4y ago
    Just talking about my experience in cities like Los Angeles - grand buildings, little passenger traffic, many people there sitting around like they're just using the station as shelter.
- nunez 4y ago
  Well you can thank white flight for that! Those Greyhound and Union Stations used to be magnificent back in the day. As the city declined in favor of the suburb, so too did these stations.
  - yafbum 4y ago
    And the automobile, and the interstate, etc
seanmcdirmid 4y ago
I find train travel so much better in Asia or Europe. I can’t really find it enjoyable in the states, even for a short jaunt from Portland to Seattle (though it still makes sense vs flying). I did a 3 night hard sleeper from Shanghai to Urumqi once, and the scenery was nice, I can’t imagine it being that nice in the states even with a better bed (hard sleepers are a bit cheap).
- rafram 4y ago
  > I can’t imagine it being that nice in the states Depends what part of the US you’re going through! East Coast, sure, the train scenery might be a bit plain. But the Mountain West is absolutely gorgeous. And the Coast Starlight goes right along the California coast, hugging cliffs the entire way - it’s completely surreal. I believe that the scenery is nice along that route in China, but if you think the US doesn’t have anything that can match it, you haven’t seen the US.
  - nunez 4y ago
    Agreed. The Coast Starlight is incredible as is the Zephyr through the rockies.
  - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
    I live in the west coast now so I know the scenery is great. But the train experience just isn’t there. The food isn’t good (well, nowhere near boxed dinners and the dining car on a Chinese K/Z train), there are lots of delays (Chinese trains run on time), and you are offloaded at stations along the way (you can step off for 5 minutes at big cities, but that’s risky and you don’t need to get off until you hit your destination…3 days).
- baby 4y ago
  I did Shanghai Beijing. 15hours, no seats. Man I will never do this again.
  - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
    The spring festival express :) Ya, traveling without a seat is crazy hard.
baby 4y ago
Agree. That’s why when I’m in Europe I just train everywhere. Milan Paris? Fuck it I’ll take the 5h train. It’s so chill and nice and I’m door to door.
- sofixa 4y ago
  Another vote for the Milan or Barcelona to Paris trains. I've taken them multiple times over the plane, even though on theory the plane is faster (but in practice it usually isn't if you count all the time wasted in getting to and from airports, the security checks etc.). Added bonus for Milan - Paris is that it passes through the Alps and has a few stops high up with magnificent views.
gambiting 4y ago
Funny, I feel the exact same way about driving. We normally travel to visit family in Poland over christmas(we live in the UK), but the thought of airports and air travel around christmas is filling me with such dread, that we decided to drive this year - and it was glorious. Yes it took us nearly 3 days instead of 2 hours by plane, but I would do that again in a heartbeat. Overnight ferry to Amsterdam, then one hop to a hotel in Germany, then finally drive to family in Poland - it was great, pretty relaxing, and much much much less stressful than flying. I've done the drive across many times before, but now we decided to have a stop in the middle(we have a kid now, so didn't want to spend 12h+ in the car in one day) and it made the whole trip much more relaxed. We stopped in some small German village, had a look around their christmas market, went for proper German good in a tiny gesthaus.....just brilliant.
mlindner 4y ago
> The staff and the whole process is very laid back without all of the security theatre nonsense of the TSA. It's about as formal as going to a play. Note that TSA is working to change this. They've wanted to add airport-style security at all train stations for a while now. If we ever have a shooting on an Amtrak train it'll happen right away.
- actionablefiber 4y ago
  I don't think my heart could take it if that happened. Much of the majesty of taking Amtrak is being able to show up to the station in the downtown core minutes before departure and simply hop on the train, and then hop back off in the downtown core of your destination. I would take arriving at Moynihan Train Hall over JFK ten times out of ten. If they made it an undignified time-consuming hassle I might think to myself, "eff it, megabus is so much cheaper."
- ryukafalz 4y ago
  Pretty sure this would instantly kill off what remains of rail travel. Its big advantage in the Northeast is that you don't have to account for the unpredictable time to make it through security like you do for air travel, so the times often even out anyway. Remove that advantage and you've just driven a stake into Amtrak.
fatnoah 4y ago
> I loved it. It's hard to convey how different it is from flying. > Then you get on the train and you get to completely relax. I brought a book to read and some stuff like that, but I spent more than half the time literally just looking out the windows. One of my dreams was doing a transcontinental train trip in the US, and in the months before our child was born, my wife sensibly let me know that "now" was a great time to do it, so I took a 10 day trip around the country that would start in Boston and end in San Antonio, where my wife was traveling for work. As it turned out, her trip was cancelled, so I made a round trip: Boston -> Washington DC -> Chicago -> Sacramento -> Los Angeles -> Chicago (via Texas) -> Boston. The trip took 10 days and nights, 7 of which were on the train. I loaded my Zune with as many Sopranos episodes and movies as it would carry, and had some books to pass away the time. I'm pretty sure I made it through about 30 minutes of one Sopranos episode. I went to bed near dusk, awoke and showered at dawn, and spent the rest of the time chatting with folks in the lounge or diner, or watched the world go by from my room. Total cost at the time was $1800 for the entire trip, including hotels and meals for non-train nights. One moment really stood out to me. We were in the Nevada desert somewhere (this is early 2000's, so no smart phone or GPS for me), and I didn't know where I was, what time it was, or even what day it was. What I did know was that I had a 5pm dinner in the dining car. It was, by several orders of magnitude, the most relaxed I've ever been in my entire life. Time and life move differently from the overnight train. When a leg of your trip is a 24 or 48 hour end-to-end journey, a couple hours delay on either end doesn't make much of a difference. Seeing the US from this perspective is amazing, from fields to factories to mountains to deserts to valleys and everything else. >Taking a sleeper car train ride isn't cheap in terms of time or money, but I would highly recommend it. I can't wait to do it again. I have the benefit of in-laws living in FL in a town that has a train stop, so I managed to convince my family to take the train one time. They liked it, though they did think it got a little long in the end. However, given that our last trip via an airline took 20 hours, including sleeping on benches in an airport, I might be able to convince them to take the train again. Being late isn't fun, but it's far more palatable in a conveyance where you have your own room, can get up and walk around, and has both seated dining and a cafe.

RandallBrown 4y ago

I planned a trip from Seattle to New Mexico on Amtrak and it was pretty cool... until they canceled the leg of the trip from LA to New Mexico and I had to take a Greyhound for like 19 hours. I was only in business class but that got me access to the dining car. Since I was alone they sat me with different people for each meal and the food was actually really good! Of the 5 or 6 times I've taken Amtrak only once has the trip not been delayed or screwed up in a way that horribly affected the trip. I would love to do more train travel but my experiences have been so bad I can't imagine doing it much more than I have to, especially when it's way more expensive and takes way longer than driving a car.

munificent 4y ago
I was worried about delays and canceled legs too but we got lucky on our trip and everything was exactly on time.
- judge2020 4y ago
  Amtrack has a page on it, with no route performing delivering more than half of riders on-time https://www.amtrak.com/on-time-performance https://www.amtrak.com/on-time-performance
  - hm-nah 4y ago
    Part of the allure! “We’ll get ya there…sometime.” It’s not their fault. Passenger trains in the US run almost exclusively on freight lines. They are high risk, low revenue…burdens(?) from that perspective.
    - dreamcompiler 4y ago
      Amtrak has also been starved of cash by politicians who want to kill it, so they don't have the funds to properly maintain their rolling stock. Engine breakdowns are frequent.
      - ericmay 4y ago
        Exactly. If we spent as much on rail as we did airline infrastructure we wouldn’t have as many issues. I don’t have a big problem with it like travel, but it’s like a car. Should be used less frequently and walking (riding the train) should be more common.
        philwelch 4y ago
        Airlines are (barely) profitable. Amtrak is not, outside of the Acela corridor.

dbrueck 4y ago

> I always feel like my vacation starts after I endure the entire airport + plane experience Your whole comment brought back so many great memories for me, but this hits the nail on the head. I've only done one long train ride but the experience was so great that I'm eager to do it again. Being able to take a shower and lie down at night was a game changer - I slept so well. For me it was sort of a working trip in that I brought my laptop and did some emailing and light development, but I spent way more time just looking out the window and relaxing.

tomcam 4y ago
I have a pretty big shower but I pretty much never lie down in it ;)

throw7 4y ago

Your writing reminded me of this music video. The artist noted how during the pandemic he was captivated by train videos (like the first person videos of city walks/rides): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpBO0RbLKJ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpBO0RbLKJ0

kccqzy 4y ago

I have taken the Coast Starlight multiple times. Unfortunately once I tried it with my wife who hated it. Granted we got the cheapest sleeper car option (roomette) but she found it far from comfortable. She'd rather take a flight and be done with the trip sooner.

wincy 4y ago

So, do normal people not feel like they’re going to throw up literally the entire train ride? I had a hard time taking a half hour train ride, much less a long one, but I also have a hard time being in the back seat of someone else’s car. I feel like they must not because it’s very seldom talked about. But googling it says 1 in 3 people experience motion sickness. Maybe mine is just really severe? Without Dramamine or meclazine I’m hopeless on a train.

pwg 4y ago
> So, do normal people not feel like they’re going to throw up literally the entire train ride? No, no issues with the motion at all. And absolutely none of that onboard a cruise ship for me either. > But googling it says 1 in 3 people experience motion sickness. Maybe mine is just really severe? That sounds to be the case. Perhaps discuss with your MD?
laurencerowe 4y ago
I’m unable to read on a bus or car due to motion sickness but never have that problem on trains.
fumeux_fume 4y ago
I find it pretty unsettling how many people are raving about travel by train. If your standards are insanely low then I suppose you can say the food is good, dining with random people is fun and the cabins are comfortable.
- zerocrates 4y ago
  It's a low bar to clear when you're comparing to the comfort and food on a typical flight nowadays. Of course, the train trip will be longer so, tradeoffs.
  - Akronymus 4y ago
    With the whole check-in/boarding process planes actually become close to as slow as trains on short-ish trips.

yafbum 4y ago

I did this once (different trip, but similar distance) and freaking hated it. The beautiful buildings in downtown are full of vagrants and the restaurants there suck. The train kept being stopped to let freight go first on single track sections. On the return trip our train was 90 minutes late and there was absolutely nothing to do in the station while waiting. Americans don't know how to do trains right.

rafram 4y ago
> The beautiful buildings in downtown are full of vagrants In every single town along Amtrak routes in the United States?
- yafbum 4y ago
  Just talking about my experience in cities like Los Angeles - grand buildings, little passenger traffic, many people there sitting around like they're just using the station as shelter.
nunez 4y ago
Well you can thank white flight for that! Those Greyhound and Union Stations used to be magnificent back in the day. As the city declined in favor of the suburb, so too did these stations.
- yafbum 4y ago
  And the automobile, and the interstate, etc

seanmcdirmid 4y ago

I find train travel so much better in Asia or Europe. I can’t really find it enjoyable in the states, even for a short jaunt from Portland to Seattle (though it still makes sense vs flying). I did a 3 night hard sleeper from Shanghai to Urumqi once, and the scenery was nice, I can’t imagine it being that nice in the states even with a better bed (hard sleepers are a bit cheap).

rafram 4y ago
> I can’t imagine it being that nice in the states Depends what part of the US you’re going through! East Coast, sure, the train scenery might be a bit plain. But the Mountain West is absolutely gorgeous. And the Coast Starlight goes right along the California coast, hugging cliffs the entire way - it’s completely surreal. I believe that the scenery is nice along that route in China, but if you think the US doesn’t have anything that can match it, you haven’t seen the US.
- nunez 4y ago
  Agreed. The Coast Starlight is incredible as is the Zephyr through the rockies.
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  I live in the west coast now so I know the scenery is great. But the train experience just isn’t there. The food isn’t good (well, nowhere near boxed dinners and the dining car on a Chinese K/Z train), there are lots of delays (Chinese trains run on time), and you are offloaded at stations along the way (you can step off for 5 minutes at big cities, but that’s risky and you don’t need to get off until you hit your destination…3 days).
baby 4y ago
I did Shanghai Beijing. 15hours, no seats. Man I will never do this again.
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  The spring festival express :) Ya, traveling without a seat is crazy hard.

baby 4y ago

Agree. That’s why when I’m in Europe I just train everywhere. Milan Paris? Fuck it I’ll take the 5h train. It’s so chill and nice and I’m door to door.

sofixa 4y ago
Another vote for the Milan or Barcelona to Paris trains. I've taken them multiple times over the plane, even though on theory the plane is faster (but in practice it usually isn't if you count all the time wasted in getting to and from airports, the security checks etc.). Added bonus for Milan - Paris is that it passes through the Alps and has a few stops high up with magnificent views.

gambiting 4y ago

Funny, I feel the exact same way about driving. We normally travel to visit family in Poland over christmas(we live in the UK), but the thought of airports and air travel around christmas is filling me with such dread, that we decided to drive this year - and it was glorious. Yes it took us nearly 3 days instead of 2 hours by plane, but I would do that again in a heartbeat. Overnight ferry to Amsterdam, then one hop to a hotel in Germany, then finally drive to family in Poland - it was great, pretty relaxing, and much much much less stressful than flying. I've done the drive across many times before, but now we decided to have a stop in the middle(we have a kid now, so didn't want to spend 12h+ in the car in one day) and it made the whole trip much more relaxed. We stopped in some small German village, had a look around their christmas market, went for proper German good in a tiny gesthaus.....just brilliant.

mlindner 4y ago

> The staff and the whole process is very laid back without all of the security theatre nonsense of the TSA. It's about as formal as going to a play. Note that TSA is working to change this. They've wanted to add airport-style security at all train stations for a while now. If we ever have a shooting on an Amtrak train it'll happen right away.

actionablefiber 4y ago
I don't think my heart could take it if that happened. Much of the majesty of taking Amtrak is being able to show up to the station in the downtown core minutes before departure and simply hop on the train, and then hop back off in the downtown core of your destination. I would take arriving at Moynihan Train Hall over JFK ten times out of ten. If they made it an undignified time-consuming hassle I might think to myself, "eff it, megabus is so much cheaper."
ryukafalz 4y ago
Pretty sure this would instantly kill off what remains of rail travel. Its big advantage in the Northeast is that you don't have to account for the unpredictable time to make it through security like you do for air travel, so the times often even out anyway. Remove that advantage and you've just driven a stake into Amtrak.

fatnoah 4y ago

> I loved it. It's hard to convey how different it is from flying. > Then you get on the train and you get to completely relax. I brought a book to read and some stuff like that, but I spent more than half the time literally just looking out the windows. One of my dreams was doing a transcontinental train trip in the US, and in the months before our child was born, my wife sensibly let me know that "now" was a great time to do it, so I took a 10 day trip around the country that would start in Boston and end in San Antonio, where my wife was traveling for work. As it turned out, her trip was cancelled, so I made a round trip: Boston -> Washington DC -> Chicago -> Sacramento -> Los Angeles -> Chicago (via Texas) -> Boston. The trip took 10 days and nights, 7 of which were on the train. I loaded my Zune with as many Sopranos episodes and movies as it would carry, and had some books to pass away the time. I'm pretty sure I made it through about 30 minutes of one Sopranos episode. I went to bed near dusk, awoke and showered at dawn, and spent the rest of the time chatting with folks in the lounge or diner, or watched the world go by from my room. Total cost at the time was $1800 for the entire trip, including hotels and meals for non-train nights. One moment really stood out to me. We were in the Nevada desert somewhere (this is early 2000's, so no smart phone or GPS for me), and I didn't know where I was, what time it was, or even what day it was. What I did know was that I had a 5pm dinner in the dining car. It was, by several orders of magnitude, the most relaxed I've ever been in my entire life. Time and life move differently from the overnight train. When a leg of your trip is a 24 or 48 hour end-to-end journey, a couple hours delay on either end doesn't make much of a difference. Seeing the US from this perspective is amazing, from fields to factories to mountains to deserts to valleys and everything else. >Taking a sleeper car train ride isn't cheap in terms of time or money, but I would highly recommend it. I can't wait to do it again. I have the benefit of in-laws living in FL in a town that has a train stop, so I managed to convince my family to take the train one time. They liked it, though they did think it got a little long in the end. However, given that our last trip via an airline took 20 hours, including sleeping on benches in an airport, I might be able to convince them to take the train again. Being late isn't fun, but it's far more palatable in a conveyance where you have your own room, can get up and walk around, and has both seated dining and a cafe.