NY to Atlanta on a visit from the UK - about 1995:
* Train hits a tree on the line and grinds to a halt near Philadelphia. After about 30 minutes, the conductor announces that they have tried plugging some of the holes in an air tank (brakes, presumably) with wood, but it hasn't worked (!!!) so we'll have to wait for the following train and change on to it - we have broken down on a section of double track so the next train pulls alongside.
* Made it to Washington on a really packed train. We are due to have the dining car hitched up to us here, but it has an electrical fault so nope - no cooked food for the journey! Delays while faulty car unhitched.
* Drunk woman staggers through train shouting 'Goddamn it, has anyone got a Budweiser and a Cigarette!'
* (Still in Washington) Drunk woman and a man she met are hauled off the train by police for getting a bit too..er..'romantic' in a corridor!
* Outskirts of Atlanta - running slow for some reason - we hit a man walking to work down the track. Train stops and we can see police, fire and ambulance out the window. Man is hauled off to hospital by police and paramedics with nothing more than badly cut arm. Conductor announces that the man didn't hear us coming and has apologized for the delay he has caused.
* Made it to Atlanta station - receive phone call from the people picking us up...they have never used the train and don't know where the station is. We give directions.
I did a D.C. to Miami (and back) voyage many years ago that sounds vaguely similar. It was scheduled as a "mere" 24 hour trip and ended up taking over 30 (flying takes less than 3 and costs about the same and driving takes about 15 hours).
At one point our section of the train was disconnected and transferred to another train, except that train was 2 hours late. All told we waited 4 hours with no electricity or lights and nowhere to get off in the meanwhile.
We weren't in cabins and it was virtually impossible to sleep because of all the kids and drunk people opening and closing the doors to the cars all night.
We had a working dining car for approximately 1 meal going down and 2 meals coming up.
It was an excruciating enough that I've sworn off ever riding trains in the U.S. again. I did briefly consider taking the Accela recently on a D.C. to NYC trip (in theory it takes just about the same amount of time), but decided it's just easier to fly.
I've taken trains in Italy, France, England and South Korea and they're glorious experiences by comparison.
It's a shame too, because the U.S. is a beautiful country to see travelling by land...except at least on the routes I've been on which run mostly through hard neighborhoods or industrial wastelands.
If you get a chance to visit the US again on the west coast, take the Coast Starlight, especially if you can take it northbound out of Los Angeles. It's one of Amtrak's long-haul routes, so, especially going southbound, plan in a few hours of delay in getting to your destination, but it's one of the most beautiful trips you can make. You'll see the ocean, wind through the mountains, see farmland, see deltas, see a lot of the country for what it really is.
One of the things to keep in mind about rail in the US is that, unfortunately, freight rules, and passenger rail is kept a distant second. So any scheduling problems, and the passenger trains get bumped back farther and farther, leading to the problems you described. If you're on one of the corridors that are handled mostly by passenger consortiums -- the Northeast Corridor, or Southern California -- you tend to get much better quality of service, but when you're out of those areas, it does get pretty craptastic, unfortunately. It's better than the dark days of the late seventies to early nineties, but it's still not nearly as good as it should be.
If you're going from NW DC to Manhattan the Accela is usually faster door to door from DC, because you're going from Union Station to Penn, as opposed to going to National, going through security, and then arriving at the outskirts of NYC and taking a cab into the city.
It's also much more comfortable, and both the Accela and the regionals have a pretty good on-time percentage in on that route.
It's the only decent Amtrak route, but well recommended.
I live in Philadelphia and use Amtrak to go up to New York on the weekends, where I used to live. The train ride is actually faster than the most-distant points on the NYC subway, so in a way I feel like I'm actually in a distant part of the same city.
Anyway...the Northeast Corridor is great. Especially in the middle of the night when its cheap, and theres no traffic on the rails.
Yeah, and from Penn you can jump on the Subway and get most places in the city without too much fuss (though it might be hard to get luggage through the turnstiles with you).
Let's just say that it's appealing enough to be on my options list for travel whenever I go the NYC.
It meets airline carry-on requirements, but can be easily be slipped on and off in urban environments as needed. It probably won't work so well if you need to wear a suit jacket, but is otherwise great.
DC<->NYC/Boston is actually not bad (Acela or not). A lot more businessfolk so it's kept up more nicely. If you get there early enough you can get on the "Quiet" car. People are serious as shit about the "Quiet" car. Business class is pretty nice too (and surprisingly affordable).
Second it for the NEC (North East Corridor) from DC as far up as Boston. The train saved me on several occasions during this and past winters when snow storms snarled up the airways and airports. Although trains will also stop running at some point, it takes way more to do so.
In the case of travel between DC-NYC, it's even better since Union and Penn Stations are right in the hearts of the cities.
For example, flights were snarled for days and cancelled all day this last winter and I ended up getting a ride on empty, snow covered streets only plows were running on to the train that was still running with only slight delays.
Part-way through a trip from D.C. to Boston I ordered a sandwich and a can of ginger ale on the train. I did not specify a brand of ginger ale, but the clerk told me that they were out of Schweppes, and that he didn't want to bother charging me for Canada Dry, so he gave it to me for free.
I know that they have better systems for trains in general, but all of those countries also have a much smaller area to cover by train than America. It's no surprise that the quality of trip with a train there would be much higher.
US actually has (arguably) the worlds best freight rail system in large part because the size makes long distance trucking less appealing. The real issue is cars and air traffic is heavily subsidized and freight has priority on most lines.
PS: For comparison the entire EU moved less than 1/10th a much freight miles (Mass * distance) as the US dispite having a similar sized economy.
To be fair, the EU has more ports and a shorter distance from ports to the final destination, and ships are more fuel efficient than rail, so there's less need for long distance rail transport in the EU.
In researching that, I came across http://www.trforum.org/journal/downloads/2013v52n2_04_Freigh... , which argues that (in 2000) 83% of the differences in ton-miles can be explained by increased use of sea/non-surface mode transport, reduced distances, and a commodity mix, specifically coal transport. (Something like 40% of US rail tonnage-miles from coal, while it's about 15% of the EU's.)
I'd be curious as to what the growth of rail freight is like in the US — I know it's been increasing year-after-year in the EU, ever since the rail freight market was opened up to competition.
> Made it to Atlanta station - receive phone call from the people picking us up...they have never used the train and don't know where the station is. We give directions.
I lived in Atlanta for 7 years and didn't even know it had a train station.
I took my dad on a trip from Atlanta to Charlotte to see a college football bowl game. The train ride wasn't bad, but it definitely required a lot of flexibility to get to and from the stations in both cities. Taxis in the middle of the night in Charlotte, buses and walking in Atlanta. Neither city is really designed for rail to be integrated into their regional transport system, but I think both are trying to change that.
I've done Amtrak twice. Central NY to Chicago was actually no problem as far as Amtrak goes, just a couple hours of delays each way.
Central NY to Columbus in November, nightmare. Maybe an hour in, notice a) the car is getting pretty cold b) the car is not very full. Turns out the door to the car is broken, either recently or was the whole time. There are no seats I can find on other cars. Amtrak guy says nothing he can do about it. Make the rest of the trip in the freezing cold, good thing I had warm clothes.
On the way back, get to the train station (in Cleveland, I think - no service to Columbus so they bus you - bus was 100% timely) to find out that the train isn't there and the train is not going to be there. That train is completely cancelled. Get to spend the night on a bench in the shut down, freezing Cleveland station until another train arrives going the same way ~12 hours later. Amtrak refuses to compensate me in any way for either issue. Should have just bussed it the whole way, if I was going to experiment with not flying.
End up a week after with the worst cold in my life, probably difficult to blame on Amtrak but I still do.
A few years ago, I took Amtrak round trip from Tacoma, WA to Beaumont, TX and back. This trip involves taking the Coast Starlight to Los Angeles, and then the Sunset Limited from Los Angeles to Texas.
The train was supposed to leave Tacoma before lunch, and I had not ate breakfast that day. I was going to have lunch on the train. The train didn't get to Tacoma until well after lunch time, so by the time I got on, lunch was no longer being served.
Somewhere between Tacoma and California, and well before dinner time, we pulled onto a siding to let a freight train pass. As we started to move again to get back on the track, the engine derailed, because the rails on the siding ahead had pulled apart.
We sat there for a few hours while they sent out two engines, one to come up behind us to pull us back onto the main track, and one to hook up in front so we could resume the journey.
After we got going again, they said that because we were without power for much of the time we waited they had lost refrigeration in the kitchen and so out of food safety concerns dinner would be not served.
The snack car was still open, so we could at least get snacks. I was pretty pissed off that I had to pay for my snack. My ticket (which was something like $2000 each way...) included three meals a day. I would have expected that if they could not provide a meal that a passenger has already paid for, they could at least provide a complimentary snack from the snack car.
With the lateness leaving Tacoma, the delay form the engine derailment, and other delays to let freight trains pass, I was actually starting to worry that I might miss the connection for the Sunset Limited. That only ran three days a week, and so if I missed it, it would really throw my schedule into disarray. We were supposed to get to Los Angeles at something like 9PM, and we actually got in at around 5AM. I seriously considered just napping in the station instead of walking the two blocks to the hotel that had been reserved for me, since I wasn't going to have time for a good sleep anyway.
There were no more major incidents on the trip to Texas, just some annoyances. There was supposed to be a free newspaper everyday delivered to my room, but that only happened once. Some fittings and fixtures in my room were loose or missing.
The Beaumont train station was a bit of a surprise. It is just a big concrete slab in a field [1]. I found out that at one time there was a building there, but it was torn down after being damaged in Hurricane Rita. (They have since built a new station).
The return trip was largely uneventful. Still didn't get my newspapers. It was a bit scary waiting to leave Beaumont, since there was a lightning storm in the area. I really would have preferred waiting for the train inside a building instead of out in the open getting rained on and hoping the lighting didn't get too close. I should have had the cab wait with me until the train came, so I could have stayed in the cab where it was dry [2].
Everything was late on the return trip, which I gather is pretty much expected, but nothing that endangered the connection in Los Angeles.
I wonder how much more annoying this was back in the days before cell phones? With my cell phone, I was able to send text messages to the friend who was going to pick me up in Tacoma, updating him on our progress so he could do a good job of figuring out when he actually needed to be there.
[2] I was in Texas because I was a witness in a patent lawsuit. The lawyers were paying my expenses, and so it wouldn't have cost me anything to keep the cab there. It just didn't occur to me.
> I wonder how much more annoying this was back in the days before cell phones? With my cell phone, I was able to send text messages to the friend who was going to pick me up in Tacoma, updating him on our progress so he could do a good job of figuring out when he actually needed to be there.
In the days before cell phones, trains still stopped frequently enough, and for long enough, at stations with public phones that you could let people know, and, in addition, the frequence of late arrivals of trains (and the same is true of aircraft) was such that it was fairly common practice to call the destination station (airport) and inquire about the expected arrival time of an incoming train (flight) if you wanted to mitigate the risk of hanging around and waiting.
If anything, the age of near-ubiquitous instant communication in your pocket has made things like this more annoying, because its shifted people's expectation of control and knowledge.
* Train hits a tree on the line and grinds to a halt near Philadelphia. After about 30 minutes, the conductor announces that they have tried plugging some of the holes in an air tank (brakes, presumably) with wood, but it hasn't worked (!!!) so we'll have to wait for the following train and change on to it - we have broken down on a section of double track so the next train pulls alongside.
* Made it to Washington on a really packed train. We are due to have the dining car hitched up to us here, but it has an electrical fault so nope - no cooked food for the journey! Delays while faulty car unhitched.
* Drunk woman staggers through train shouting 'Goddamn it, has anyone got a Budweiser and a Cigarette!'
* (Still in Washington) Drunk woman and a man she met are hauled off the train by police for getting a bit too..er..'romantic' in a corridor!
* Outskirts of Atlanta - running slow for some reason - we hit a man walking to work down the track. Train stops and we can see police, fire and ambulance out the window. Man is hauled off to hospital by police and paramedics with nothing more than badly cut arm. Conductor announces that the man didn't hear us coming and has apologized for the delay he has caused.
* Made it to Atlanta station - receive phone call from the people picking us up...they have never used the train and don't know where the station is. We give directions.