Amtrak Travel

Holy crap, we might have passed each other.

 

I've taken the train from Banff, Alberta to Vancouver--through the Rockies.

Moddy mentioned the time between air versus train.

Train from downtown Toronto to downtown Montreal is about four and a half hours.

If you fly and take into account the travel to and from both airports, time spent for security checks, etc, it's not much--if any--faster to fly. And flying is such a fabulous experience.

I did a fair bit of travel by train in Europe back in the day. It's still my favourite way.

 

Acela is by far the best way to get from Boston to New York.

 

Would I be crazy go nuts if I thought about making the trip to Seattle from the EC in an Amtrak?

 

It will take awhile, but my parents have gone from Seattle to Boston on the train and absolutely loved it. They read a lot of books and hung out with each other and basically didn't worry about work or family or anything else for a solid week.

 

Hmmmm ...

And did I seriously type "EC" for East Coast? I honestly don't have any memory of doing that. WTF (I always remember typing that one).

 

That explains a lot about the venom

 

Does someone here have a problem with Oregonians?

 

The train from Chicago to Seattle, the Empire Builder, is regarded as one of Amtrak's best trains. The service is excellent and the scenery is supposed to be breathtaking. I'd like to take it sometime, but since I live near neither end of the route, it's kind of hard to justify.

 

No, but almost all of my ancestors died of dysentary on the way there

 

I took amtrak a few times when I lived in North Carolina to go home and loved it. I'm still actually trying to find an excuse to take the train.

The fantastic thing was the nearest station's southbound train stopped about 90 minutes after our deadline, so I could get the paper out, go to the station and sleep on the train instead of trying to drive fighting to not fall asleep at the wheel.

On some lines, at least the Silver Meteor when I rode it, there tended to be about 1-1.5 hours worth of a delay, but the relaxing view kind of made up for it. Few things beat riding down the GA/SC coastline in the train near the marshlands watching a sunrise.

 

amtrak is awesome if it's 1957.