Moral of all of these, if you’re going distance at all, book a sleeper.

I’ve done Seattle to Chicago (Bedroom), New Orleans to the Carolina’s (Bedroom), LA to Seattle (Bedroom), and Chicago to New York (Coach).

Along with dozens of smaller services.

Class matters on Amtrak. You book that super cheap ticket you’ll get a super cheap experience. Shared bathroom, no food, rude people, coach is a rolling greyhound for long hauls.

Coach on short links like the NE corridor or the Cascades is fine, but for 10 more dollars just upgrade to business. Coach is fine, but people are assholes no matter where you go, but at least you aren’t trapped with them.

Long hauls my wife and I get a bedroom, not a roommette. A bedroom has your own private toilet, and much more room to spread out. It’s pricey, but you get a nicer experience. However they still use the old superliners and for that much I wish they were nicer.

If you have a family, book the family bedroom, a ton of space, you get the full width of the car, and a private bathroom.

Amtrak is fine, held back because no one wants to fund it, but it’s getting better. It all depends what you’re looking for. Feel free to ask me more questions or let us know what type of trip, I can let you know more specifics

It’s funny that you should ask, as I just completed the 2nd portion of an almost-complete cross-country Amtrak journey last week.

In 2012, I bought one of those USA Rail passes, and for the first segment went to Glacier National Park, then to Seattle, Los Angeles, backtracked to Emeryville, then Phoenix (via LA), Houston, and finally home via Chicago. The train was already late getting to Columbus, one of the first few stops out of Chicago, and achieved epic levels of lateness on the way. We had record-high temperatures across North Dakota and Montana, so the rails expanded and buckled. The train could only go 65MPH instead of the normal 85MPH. As others have noted, freight trains had priority, so we sat on sidings to let them pass. In one Montana town, a grizzly bear in the area meant that the railroad workers couldn’t get out of their truck to switch us back onto the mainline for almost an hour. We got to the station in Glacier 6 hours late, at 2AM, so I ended up sleeping on a bench on the platform rather than finding accommodations.

The lateness trend continued, such as when the locomotive of the Coast Starlight lost power while climbing the Cuesta Pass, and we had to return to San Luis Obispo and wait for UP to rouse an engineer to come down and hook up a standby locomotive to get us over the mountain. On the Emeryville to Phoenix portion, the Coast Starlight was late getting into Los Angeles, so they had to hold the Southwest Chief for passengers making the connection.

Don’t get me wrong, though, it was a fabulous time. The only place I needed to be was “here,” and the only schedule for getting places was “when I get there.” The scenery was great, the crews were friendly and competent, the trains were in decent condition. The coach seats recline enough to sleep, there’s legroom for days, and a leg rest that can be raised. The onboard WiFi was a cellular service, and out west, there were plenty of portions of the journey with no network coverage. That was fine, I had a Kindle if I didn’t feel like taking in the scenery.

Last week, I took the Lake Shore Limited eastbound to Massachusetts, and it was like the polar opposite of the western trains! The scenery was mostly active industry, or decaying Rust Belt hulks. It was interesting to see, but far from beautiful. The train follows almost the entire south shore of Lake Erie, but at night, so I didn’t see that. However, Amtrak has control of the rails, or priority, on much of the route. On the way out, the train was on-time for every single stop out of Chicago, until we entered CSX territory just before Pittsfield, MA. We had to wait for a freight train, and that put us 8 minutes behind schedule. On the way back, we were maybe 15 minutes late into Albany, but that’s a long stop where the hook up the cars from NYC, so we rolled out on time, and had no more delays. That was good, because I had to make a bus connection to get home to Madison.

In summary, the western trains seemed designed (and suitable) for pleasure rides, while the eastern train felt like all business. In comparison, I’d say fuck the bus. Either type of train journey is ten times better.

Interested in knowing this as well.

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/

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.

I Amtrak’d from North Carolina to Michigan via DC. Took 24 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.

Roughly 18 years ago, my buddies and I took the California Zephyr from the Midwest out to San Fran. We were riding coach and it was two days travel each way.

The train was fine–about what we’d expected, nothing amazing but in generally good condition. The trip was great, though. The scenery traveling across the west was almost always interesting, we played a bunch of poker, and we met a bunch of interesting characters we still talk about to this day.

The most interesting guy we met (we dubbed him “The Stranger” after Sam Elliott’s character in The Big Lebowski) was a guy who made an annual trip coast-to-coast and back. He had some kind of grift where he was getting unemployment checks from two different states and would schedule his Amtrak trips such that he’d always miss his Chicago transfer and get put up in a hotel so he could shower and sleep on Amtrak’s dime. He’d mail a suitcase to his destination with clean clothes, cigarettes, etc, and mail his dirty laundry back home. When we got struck with a delay in California, he left the train station and bought a bunch of pizzas at a nearby Domino’s for the passengers and staff.

I highly recommend it as an alternative to air travel if you can spare the time. I often think about doing it again.

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I tried Amtraking from Austin to Dallas. The train was over four hours late. I ended up driving and reached my destination before the train even arrived in Austin.

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.

Did LA to Chicago many years ago in a small bunk sleeper. It was fine.

Did LA to Seattle. Also fine.

Took the ferry to Canada and did via rail to Toronto. So much better than Amtrak. We hung out in the fancy caboose car/bar.

It was great! Me and like forty other college students did it from Chicago to Denver and back again a few days later. Basically a mobile party rolling across state lines with no DDs needed.

This was after smoking cars got the kibosh but before vape pens, so the smokers had to to rush outside every time the train stopped; that was the only downside.

Bring your own food, bring your own drinks, have a great time.

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 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.

Not east-west, but I’ve done north-south, ORL to NYP (24 hrs), as well as CHS-NYP, on the Silver Star and Silver Meteor. Since it’s not really in the vein of this question, I won’t go into detail, but it’s been between good and okay for me; doing coach and coach-premium-or-whatever-it’s-called. AMA I suppose?