Challiman

So far, in the last 20 plus years, our family has had no good luck with Amtrak.
Our cousins rode Amtrak from Alabama to California to visit, and on the return were in the terrible crash in Alabama that had many fatalities. They escaped but spent time in the water, a bad experience for people in their 70's.
Our son rode Amtrak for several years between Indiana and Colorado, and occasionally between Colorado and Los Angeles. Not one single trip was without serious problems, including overnight delays, being charged for a bus portion of the trip despite having already paid for it, having to walk miles to a hotel in the dead of winter, etc.
I really wish it was a different experience. We love the trains in Europe. I like riding trains. But who wants to take the chance on being TWO DAYS late for a holiday, or spend 48 hours sitting up when delays occur? A few years ago we compared prices to fly or train, and it was by far cheaper to fly. So, even that incentive was gone.
Good luck if you decide to do it, but be sure you're not in a hurry.

Daniel_Williams

Just for your own curiosity, Amtrak offers their on-time performances for each of the various routes on their site, which I include as a link bellow. Do note that according to the Amtrak glossary, for routes of over 550 miles, within 30 minutes of expected arrival time is counted as on-time. Some routes (even some long-distance like the Empire Builder, Auto Train) you'll notice perform significantly better than others. Unfortunate incidents do happen with all means of travel transportation, but 48 hours late is an extreme case and not the norm... in my experience on the long-distance routes (and I've taken many), I tend to get (and as a pessimist, I tend to expect) somewhere between 1-4 hours late. (Although I could see how living through the exceptional experiences would turn people off Amtrak altogether.)

The Capitol Limited seems to be having some issues with tardiness more than others of late... on the two occasions I took it, it was 2 hours late and 4 hours late into Chicago respectively.

http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/Conten...=1202243059386

Have fun deciding,

Daniel

jcasale

As pointed out - Amtrak is not always the cheaper option. But we have always looked at it as part of the vacation and maybe that's a key to having a good time. We bring a deck of cards and a cribbage board and play cribbage across the country while we look out at the scenery. And granted there are parts that are not exactly beautiful, but it is still interesting to see the rest of the country and not have to be doing the driving.

The food is not necessarily "fine dining" but I have always found it tasty and well prepared. In fact, for desert there is a "volcano cake" type of thing that is a chocolate cake with hot fudge inside - absolutely decadent! The only downside of the food comes on long trips since they seem to have the same menu for a month. When we did a month long trip out wets that involved several legs of train travel we found that we were getting the same five options. But fortunately there were ones that we didn't mind having twice.

I'm always sad to hear when people have bad experiences on the train since I would really like to see train travel expanded in this country. But it also seems that generally (not always certainly) the bad experience came about because of the expectations the person had of the trip - they expected it to be punctual and cheaper than flying among others.

Often the delays come because Amtrak does not own the rails on which they travel and they have to give way to freight trains. There were many times that we sat on a siding while we waited for a huge freight train to come along and go past us the other direction. Since those trains are not always running exactly on time, that can delay the Amtrak train that has to wait for them.

I hope you decide to try the train and I hope you have a great experience that you can then report on here.

Challiman

We, too, would love to see trains come back, but after the experiences I posted earlier, I'm not sure that will happen. I know there are extenuating circumstances in every mode of transportation, don't expect perfection at all, could certainly endure delays that were infrequent and handled with concern for the passenger.
Another big concern is the stations, or lack thereof. We've been on trains in DC and Chicago, those are fine, but where we would catch the train, Waterloo, Indiana, there is no station, no facilities, no actual parking lot. There is a three sided plexi-glass shed, very small, and one pay phone, and the nearest restroom is several blocks away in a service station that is not open 24 hours. So, if you are catching a train that is very late,or waiting on someone to get off, the only way to know that is if you call the 800 number and hope the information is up to date.
I don't know what happened first, a decline in passengers due to air travel or a decline in service that prompted the increase in air travel, but unless some serious efforts are made to improve routes, services, and reliability, I doubt trains outside a few areas will survive.