Posted on 06/16/2018 5:23:30 PM PDT by US Navy Vet
I totally disagree.
Tour buses, definitely yes.
TGV type trains? Not so much. At the speed those trains travel, calling them "sightseeing trips" is an oxymoron.
Grand Rapids to St Louis.
Pros:
Great adventure for my train-loving nephew.
Cost less with less hassle than flying.
Cons:
Waiting hours in Chicago for the train to St. Louis.
Waiting longer for the train to Grand Rapids on the way back.
The return trip wait was long enough to take Short Stuff to see Millenium Park.
Great way to travel if you don’t have to be at the destination at any particular time. Was on a trip that was supposed to take 6 hours and it took 13. Another trip I was stuck outside NYC for four hours with no explanation so that trip only took ten hours. Too many people were overserved on that trip too.
I’ve had good luck on Amtrak although I generally travel the Atlantic corridor. The cars are clean and well maintained and threats comfortable. If you are not going to get a compartment I suggest you go business class. Less crowded than coach.
My experiences were many years ago and I have no idea what conditions have changed.
Two or three times I took a particular train that went from New York City (departed 2:PM), through Philadelphia and then, overnight, on a “milk run” (many stops) through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and up to Chicago (arriving about 8:AM). I went on South from Chicago to Champaign, Illinois, after about a six hour layover changing trains in Chicago. If I remember right, my schedule back from Champaign through Chicago required me to stay over night in Chicago as I could not, by train, arrive early enough in on the same day Chicago to get the train back to New York.
Conditions were just O.K. The cars were old but clean. The seats were more comfortable than airplane seats, but I am not a good sleeper in any mode of transportation, and over the hours in little discomfort seems worse over time. I tried the sleeper compartment, once. It was so bad I spent the night in the club car. I’d call the dining room food, just O.K, but on the cheap side. Same for the food offerings in the club car.
I’ve also taken the AMTRAK round trip between Washington, D.C. and NYC. It’s O.K., but there are now much more comfortable and less expensive big tour bus companies with good direct NYC-Washington D.C. runs. My GOd daughter has taken them a number of times and likes them.
Keep in mind, your trip will be long, lazy hours through lots of countryside. It is not hard to get bored if you do not plan on things to keep busy with. I always took a lot of reading. In the club car I played card games with others who had brought cards with them.
As I said, most of my AMTRAK experiences are at least 20 years old, not current.
Plenty of youtube vids available of the seats/cars/sleeping cars on Amtrak. Check those out. Gotta say, after seeing some of those, I’ve lost all interest in trying Antrak. Now if someone ever gets a private passenger train service going, I’ll check it out. I refuse to fly anymore.
My Amtrak adventure was more than 30 years ago. Broke down in St. Louis for 4 hours (brakes). No heat in late December. Lousy food. Surly workers. Arrived 8 hours late. Never rode one again.
Taking the California Zephyr from Omaha to Chicago should be an interesting daylight trip. I have ridden Iowa-Chicago several times and always enjoyed it. The eastbound Zephyr can be delayed so check recent timeliness. There are two trains Chicago-DC, the Capitol Limited, and Cardinal. It is a much longer trip. I would only recommend it in a sleeper, not in coach, where sleep would be difficult. Check fares at:
http://www.biketrain.net/amsnag/amSnag.php
I have taken Amtrak long distance trains at least once per year for the past 30 years or so. I happen to really enjoy train travel, so I look at the experience as sort of a mini- cruise. I would spend the extra money and get a sleeping accommodation (if you are alone or traveling with one other person, the economy roomette is all you need; the bedroom can sleep two adults and two children). The roomette has two bunk beds.
The cars are double decked, with most seats upstairs, and toilets and showers being downstairs. A typical Amtrak east-west train conveys three sleeping cars (1/2 of one of the cars is reserved for train staff), a dining car, a “sightseer” observation car with all glass windows upstairs and a snack/drink bar downstairs, and three coach cars, each of which seating approximately 80 people in a 2 x 2 configuration, the seats have a very generous recline and have basically unlimited legroom (the NYC-Florida trains do not use Superliner cars as they do not fit through the Hudson River and Baltimore tunnels).
The food is hit or miss; breakfast is the most consistent meal on the train; their premium dinner item is a flatiron steak, unless they’ve got some daily special like crab cakes. The snack bar prices have increased dramatically; if you like an adult beverage, bring your own supply.
If you buy a sleeping accommodation, you get access to lounges in stations such as Penn Station in New York, Union Station in Washington, DC and Union Station in Chicago. These don’t serve complimentary alcohol (unlike, say, the Delta SkyClub system), but they do check you in for the train, have unlimited soft drinks and pretzels/snacks, and there is priority boarding (in DC, the lounge has its own doors leading to the platform). If you have trouble walking, they’ll put you in a golf cart and drive you out to your car.
As far as the ride, unless you are going between DC and NYC or Detroit-Chicago, where Amtrak actually owns the railway, you will be at the mercy of the large freight railroads that own the tracks. For example, on the DC-Chicago “Capitol Limited”, you leave DC around 4:05 pm ET and are scheduled to arrive in Chicago around 10:30 am CT.
For the first part of the trip, you are on the CSX network, mainly the historic Baltimore & Ohio route via Cumberland, MD to Pittsburgh. In east Pittsburgh, your train will shunt onto a short route running between the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie-Mellon University to a point where it joins the historic Pennsylvania RR mainline. It has been my experience that the trains run close to schedule on this part of the trip, although it takes over 7 hours to go just 280 miles through the mountains.
The former Pennsylvania RR tracks are now owned by the other giant eastern railroad enterprise, Norfolk Southern. West of Pittsburgh, there seem to be significant bottlenecks, including over the Allegheny River just west of the Pittsburgh station, just east of the Maumee River at Toledo, Ohio, in and around a large marshalling yard west of the station at Elkhart, Indiana, and within Chicago. Your route runs along the north side of the Ohio River, then up the Beaver River, crossing into Ohio at East Palestine, passing through Salem, stopping at Alliance, switching there to the old Pennsy line running to Cleveland, then joining the former New York Central line just east of Cleveland station (which is in front of the Browns football stadium and Rock N Roll Hall of Fame), then through Sandusky and into Toledo, then through Bryan, Ohio, running along US 6 into Indiana, then northwest through Goshen, stopping in Elkhart and South Bend, and then covering the final 90 or so miles into Chicago.
Even Amtrak can’t ruin a great train trip. If you like to travel, try it once and see what you think.
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