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Seeing America by train
- frereubu 2y agoI imagine many people here will know this site, but for those who want to travel across Europe by train, The Man in Seat 61 is an invaluable resource: https://www.seat61.com/ https://www.seat61.com/ If you want to become envious, he's also on Twitter - https://x.com/seatsixtyone https://x.com/seatsixtyone - where he posts beautiful journeys. Just a shame it's all so expensive compared to flights!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jazzyjackson 2y agoSeat61 definitely helped me set expectations for my trip, Last month I took a Paris-Berlin-Vienna-Venice-Paris loop utilizing the nightjet for 3 overnight trains in a row thinking the cost was at least offset by not needing a hotel each night, but alas, a hotel would have been money well spent as I spent that leg of the trip in a sleep deprived daze ! On the bright side I got the experience of groggily asking a German border guard "what's up?" before I had a handle on why my makeshift curtain was being pulled aside at 3am
- rjsw 2y agoYour journey was all within the Schengen zone, there are no border checks. Are you sure about why you were woken up?
- pedvide 2y agoThere are a lot of "temporary" internal border checks within Schengen [1], especially in the last 5 years. Wiki has lots of info [2] I've personally been checked in trains crossing from the east towards Germany multiple times, including the night train. 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/17yy61g/current_reestablished_border_controls_in_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/17yy61g/current_re... 2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area under "regulation of internal borders"
- noduerme 2y agoGerman police do check passports on trains within Germany. I was questioned on a train going from Munich to Prague, and as I had overstayed in Schengen, things got a bit tense. Ultimately they decided it wasn't worth it; they got off one stop before the Czech border and let me continue.
- seabass-labrax 2y agoI can attest this too; at Aachen Hbf. in April of this year, I witnessed a group of policemen verbally (in English) warning a passenger for travelling across the Belgo-German border without ID. On a tangential topic, the behaviour of railway staff when checking passports was interesting. With a paper Interrail ticket, they would always ask to see my passport or ID card, yet I don't think I have been asked once when using the electronic Interrail ticket - this is despite the rules being identical for both types.
- jazzyjackson 2y agoAll I know is they were banging on every door for passports, I can't say whether I was at the border, only assumed. Between Venice and Stuttgart.
- davchana 2y agoFrench Guards board train at Italian border & check everybody immigration (either a EU card or visa and passport), at least in 2016. They take passports with them, saying something in French, and bring it back after about an hour. Longest hour of my life.
- jonp888 2y agoSo you travelled 11 hours to Berlin in order to spend 9 hours there, then 12 hours to Vienna in order spend 14 hours there, then 11 hours to Venice? You would have been exhausted whatever mode of transport used. For some reason Americans have a strong tendency to come up with these kinds of itineraries in the name of having a relaxing vacation, even though to any European it appears completely bonkers.
- froggertoaster 2y agoReread his post - I think ultimately he's saying "lesson learned". Am an American and wouldn't dream of doing something like this.
- EricE 2y agoAlong those lines I've been enjoying Solo Travel Japan - he does more ferries than trains (gee, imagine that!) https://www.youtube.com/@SoloTravelJapan https://www.youtube.com/@SoloTravelJapan
- tim333 2y ago>shame it's all so expensive compared to flights! I'm trying a new thing as an experiment - Wizz air had an unlimited one year pass for 499 euro. Some unlikely destinations like Iceland and Maldives.
- Molitor5901 2y agohttps://archive.is/Irje1 https://archive.is/Irje1
- jazzyjackson 2y agoLove the illustrations of the roommette The zephyr crew really goes the extra mile with fresh flowers in the dining car, haven't seen that on any other route Conspicuously absent from a visual diary is the odor of toilets out of service
- triyambakam 2y agoIt sounds like you have experience with that? Can you share further?
- jazzyjackson 2y agoThese routes can be 70, 80 hours of runtime with only brief stops for a crew change If something breaks it stays broken until the train can be serviced. I actually lack experience in clogging or unclogging Amtrak toilets so I don't know what must be done to keep them in service Each superliner has multiple toilets in the lower level, most seats are upstairs but there are lower level seats particularly for folks who are not able to navigate stairs for whatever reason or just people who prefer the peace of not having people walk back and forth through the car (only the upper levels are connected by vestibule) So anyway if you have a seat in the lower level you're down the hall from the toilets, and 2 or 3 days in the clogged toilets just stay clogged and it reaks
- inglor_cz 2y agoIDK how Amtrak does it, but on some European trains, crews will board a defective train for emergency repairs if necessary, and simply get off when done.
- el_benhameen 2y agoIf you really want a fun train toilet experience, try a long haul hard sleeper on a Chinese train. 20+ people per sometimes-functional squat toilet!
- kylehotchkiss 2y agoI just took the LA-Seattle overnight train a few weeks ago to add a mini trip in before heading to Alaska. A lot of you HNers are west coasters. Do it! Get the little bedroom, it makes the trip a lot more fun. Few of my pictures are here https://www.kylehotchkiss.com/photography/collections/2024-coast-starlight-alaska/ https://www.kylehotchkiss.com/photography/collections/2024-c...
- Mistletoe 2y agoDo you mind sharing how much the ticket cost? That’s always my main deterrent for USA rail travel. The prices I get quoted are ludicrous compared to plane tickets. I’d love to ride a train instead but I don’t feel like it should come at the premiums it does.
- rbanffy 2y agoYou need to factor in meals and hotel stays when comparing prices. You will get to your destination a couple nights earlier, but you’ll need to eat and sleep during that time as well. The railroad trip is a destination in itself.
- radpanda 2y agoOn the other hand if taking off work means forgoing income, taking the slower rail journey is even more expensive. Instead of taking 6 days off work to fly and take a cruise, maybe now I need to take 8. For retirees or folks who can work on a train, the calculation might be very different.
- jazzyjackson 2y agoI think that was parents point, the train /is/ the cruise
- radpanda 2y agoI get that, that’s one way of looking at it. But other folks look at train vs plane for more utilitarian “getting there”. Depending on your situation and what you consider the train ride to be, the value offered by the train can be considered a reasonable deal or outlandishly expensive.
- cortesoft 2y agoMy family went across the country on Amtrak, from Sacramento one York, in 1991. Was an incredible experience, and I have a lot of formative memories from the time.
- noworriesnate 2y agoHow old were you? Our oldest LOVES trains and we're looking at getting a (much shorter) ride. We want to time it so that he gets the most out of it.
- cortesoft 2y agoSorry for the very late reply, but I was 8 when we took the trip.
- throwaway984393 2y agoYou can fly into Denver and take the Zephyr west, and you'll get all the best scenery right off the bat, at the right time of day, and end in California, where you can then catch a train along the coast, to a city with a big airport and cheap flights home. Get yourself a roomette. It provides most of the comfort, glamor, and privacy of the experience, along with the dining car access. It's expensive, but consider it an investment in a once in a lifetime experience (I probably wouldn't do it again until I retire). The rest - the observation car - is nice, but you will have slightly annoying interactions there, and if you're going through a popular area, may have to jockey for a timed spot in the car. Coach is just depressing and uninteresting, with extremely grimy windows that are blocked half the time. They have now added rules to prevent people from sitting in the cafe car unless they're eating something they bought in the cafe car, so say goodbye to working on your laptop with a nice view. Don't expect any connectivity on the train. Expect to be offline. Expect to spend about every other hour in the good parts of the trip just staring out the window; don't expect to work. And do talk to your neighbors.
- pvsukale3 2y agoIf you like this genre I would highly recommend checking out Downey Live yt channel. He has documented a lot of cross country train trips in north america. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA5QbK3C98Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA5QbK3C98Q
- pessimizer 2y agoSleeping in coach is awful. There's an untapped revenue source in auctioning off empty sleepers to people already on the train. Before they changed their booking systems about 10 years ago, you could always get on the train with a coach ticket and ask the conductor if any roomettes would be free all night, and they'd negotiate a token price with you. I'd even haggle for one during the day for a long nap after a sleepless night in observation watching movies on my laptop.
- davely 2y agoIn 2015, we took the California Zephyr from Berkeley to Chicago and then (I forget which train) from Chicago to Washington D.C. The connection was pretty smooth. Met a friend in Chicago for drinks for a few hours while we waited for the DC train to depart. I remember loading up ebooks, podcasts, etc, just in case I was “bored.” No joke, I sat in the parlor car staring out at the landscape for 3 straight days! It was absolutely glorious. One fun thing (“fun”, depending on your perspective) is that you’re paired with random strangers at dinner. The first night, I am telling the couple across from me how “awesome and civilized” this felt and it was nice not to have to deal with the bullshittery of TSA agents at airports. They politely coughed and I knew instantly I screwed up. “Yeah, we’re actually both TSA agents.” Dinner was pretty awkward after that!
- atum47 2y agoI found the experience of getting the ticket a little bit confusing. I was in San Francisco and heard mixed things about the train to San Diego. I wasn't exactly sure about where and when would the train leave as well, so I just took a plane. I do want to take a trip in a train though, I quite like trains.
- dandandan 2y agoCoast Starlight gets you from Emeryville to LA, and Pacific Surfliner would complete the trip to San Diego.
- ag8 2y agoApparently the California to Denver part is especially nice; I'd recommend starting with that! https://derikk.com/blog/zephyr.html https://derikk.com/blog/zephyr.html
- itronitron 2y agoSt. Louis to D.C. in the winter is nice by train, especially during a snow storm. My route went to Chicago then through Pennsylvania and down to D.C. if I recall correctly.
- myself248 2y agoAs it happens, I have another tab open at this very moment, watching the Steve Wallis Step 2 channel's latest video, "Amtrak Across America with Steve". It's..... it's quite an interesting perspective. All the little incidental stuff, the copious announcements from the staff, certainly add color to the story.
- karaterobot 2y agoI just watched that video last night! The weird thing is, I'm pretty sure (based on the weather and the delay he experienced) that the Chicago-Seattle leg of his trip happened just a couple days before I made the same trip. It seemed like he didn't enjoy his trip as much as the author of this article did.
- sourcecodeplz 2y agoWhat in the US seems like something fun you could do one summer, in the rest of the world trains are used heavily daily by commuters and others.
- david38 2y agoNo, this is not a commuter train. And by “the rest of world” you mean Europe and parts of Asia? I suppose Latin America doesn’t exist? Maybe they’re evolved enough to be considered real people? What about Africa? Also still not human?
- ks2048 2y agoTwo trains I've taken recently: Mexico's Tren Maya and Kenya's Nairobi to Mombasa are both probably better than anything the US has built in decades.
- jhbadger 2y agoWe have lots of commuter trains near large cities in the US. Many people who work in NYC, Chicago, Washington DC, and the like take commuter trains into and out of these cities from surrounding towns and cities. The issue is outside these big metro centers, most of the US isn't as densely populated to make this feasible.
- jeffbee 2y agoI think by international standards the idea that American cities usually have trains is not right. Basically there are five urban agglomerations with useful train service in America and the other cities have one train a day (that may depart at 2am) or, usually, no trains. Can you get from Dallas to Tulsa by train? Absolutely not. But a city the population of Tulsa would have several trains per hour if it was in Switzerland or France or Japan. The real situation is closer to "none" than "lots".
- supernova87a 2y agoThe positive aspects described in the story are all fine and nice. You just have to know that the author almost certainly left out the heavy downsides of the journey, which would have been the totally unpredictable, frustrating, hours-long (maybe even good-part-of-a-day) delays along the route where Amtrak is stuck waiting for freight trains on rails that it does not own. Unfortunately a few hours of scenery isn't worth the overall frustration at the state of US rail in my opinion.
- timr 2y ago> The railroad, lauded as one of the greatest achievements in U.S. history, also set the stage for an era of aggressive westward expansion, empire-building and the subjugation of Indigenous people. They just had to include that last bit, didn't they? Setting aside the fact that "the subjugation of indigenous people" in the American west began long before the transcontinental railroad, and so the whole comment is debatable at best (the Trail of Tears was 1831, and the first Apache wars were in 1849; the Oregon trail was 1830-1840, and the transcontinental railroad was begun in 1863), it's the sort of drop-in to an otherwise unrelated story that makes you cringe. Literally anything in the world can be tied back to oppression of a people, if you want it hard enough. You're writing a nice little human-interest story about a train ride...can't you give it a rest for a minute?
- BadHumans 2y agoCan't fathom why this bothers you so much but it is relevant as this sentence immediately leads into a story the conductor on the train was giving about the history of the rail. Would you rather the author leave that experience out of the story because it makes you uncomfortable?
- Cheer2171 2y ago[flagged]
- akira2501 2y ago>> it's the sort of drop-in to an otherwise unrelated story that makes you cringe. > Can't fathom why this bothers you so much Really? They just explained it particularly well. > because it makes you uncomfortable? I think they're taking issue over the fact that it is not only mostly irrelevant but it's also completely incorrect.
- timr 2y agoIt doesn't make me uncomfortable. I just think it's stupid. I guess it made me roll my eyes, so that was sort of uncomfortable. (To be as charitable as possible to your point, I did say "cringe", but I didn't mean it in the way that you're interpreting it. I just meant "cringe", in the same way that I cringe when I see someone who boldly expresses an opinion about anything that is factually incorrect, or perhaps, when a stranger starts selling you on their multi-level-marketing scheme in the bathroom. More like "oh god, we're going to do this now, are we?", than a "I reject basic facts of history that the average US high school student should know, including the approximate order of major historical events" sort of thing.)
- gretch 2y agoI’m looking forward to booking one of these with my girlfriend. Just trying to decide location. For those who “don’t get it” - it’s like a cruise that goes over land instead of water. (Though it’s fair if you don’t like cruises either)
- layer8 2y agoI naively expected some photos.
- nonameiguess 2y agoEarly in 2002, Disneyland cut its entertainment budget and laid me off, and my first wife got herself confined to a psych ward, in the process destroying our apartment and getting my lease terminated, so I noped out and decided to move clear across the country. I took the train. Los Angeles to Newark. Three days. I can't really imagine doing it today, because I'm like everyone else here, a whiny little prissy bitch. But back then, I shared a two-bedroom place with three other guys, slept in my car all the time, was used to an hourly job with no consistent schedule. Without any expectation of luxury or customer service, it was a pretty nice experience. My back was healthier then, too, so sleeping in coach wasn't a big deal. The great thing about taking Amtrak is the rail line didn't create towns the way highways do. You're truly remote for much of the ride. You're not seeing the "Americana" America you see on road trips. You're seeing the natural country. Following the Susquehanna River through Pennsylvania was my favorite part of the trip. It was also amusing when the FBI questioned me in Albuquerque, as they apparently flagged anyone taking a long one-way trip after 9/11. 21 year-old aimless drifter with no plans dressed like Hunter Thompson. I don't even remember what I told them. Don't ever wanna go home, I guess, but you can check my bags and see I don't have a bomb.
- zachlatta 2y agoSome of you may be interested in The Hacker Zephyr, where we took 42 high schoolers across America by rail, coding and hacking the whole way. We made a video at https://youtube.com/watch?v=2BID8_pGuqA https://youtube.com/watch?v=2BID8_pGuqA
- smsm42 2y agoWhen I just came to the US, I had a very romantic about the notion of traveling America by train. I mean, planes are fine, they are fast, they are convenient, but there's some sterile efficiency to them that makes the notion of going by train and enjoying spectacular views much more attractive when your goal is to enjoy the ride and not just get from point A to point B. Unfortunately, the first trip on Amtrack quickly put down all my illusions. Not only was it hugely expensive for quite a crammed and uncomfortable cabin (and I traveled Soviet trains - somehow Amtrack managed to get theirs even less comfortable!), the rest of the experience was not that great too. The decor was old and shabby, the food was a huge disappointment too (I know it's hard to get good food into a plane, but the train is not supposed to have this problem?) and while there were some spectacular views, I've seen a lot more industrial warehouses and heavy equipment storage than I'd enjoy. So, the trip was quite a disappointment to me. From then on, it's either driving - when I can choose my own adventures - or flying, where I am getting to the point quickly and can have fun at the destination point instead.
- lasermatts 2y agoHalf of college I'd take the Crescent from Philadelphia to Atlanta, then back at the end. It was great -- you could bring on as much as you could carry (I brought a beanbag chair my junior year) and the food was always good. You meet some incredible people on Amtrak. Being in SF now I've wanted to check out the Amtrak scene to do some West Coast exploring!
- mperham 2y agoI'd like to see more train cruises, just like we have sea cruises today. Stop in a city, see the area, train travels overnight, etc.
- bufordtwain 2y agoI get the impression that Amtrak is itself a tourist attraction, as opposed to a practical means of transportation.