(edited a second time) The day I uploaded this there was a derailment on the Empire Builder. I had a comment up here about how awkward that was, but now it seems weird without the context so... replies under this are probably all kinds of weird!
Hey come on, if we don't make fun of it all the time every time there won't be incentivisation for Joe Biden to hedge funding into an infrastructure bill
Sir, I am living vicariously through you in this video as I also have had the yearning to take a cross country train trip. It would scratch that itch. I’m here for the scenery !
Did a two dayish trip on train and with waaayyy in advance booking it was at least not obnoxious (cheaper than business class but not as cheap as coach on a plane). Standard fare, no sleeper (which was more than adequate). The sense of relief compared to the franticness of airports was certainly worth the extra cash.
Apparently a large part of it has to do with how popular freight trains are on the given infrastructure. Lots easier to haul tons of steel and other raw materials. Reducing coal powerplants might weirdly have the effect of increasing profitability of rail transport by reducing demand, or it'll just get replaced with nuclear/renewable transport on trains, who knows.
The US had a train system which was the envy of the world. It was cheap, fast, ran on time. It was the best and largest train system in the world. There was not a place in America you couldn't get to from any other place in America with only a minimal of transfers and at a low fare. But then we built the interstate highway system and it just could not compete with over the road truckers. It was freight that made the widespread passenger train system possible. Freight is what made it good business to keep all the tracks and keep them maintained and secured. Trains have a lot of downsides. Mostly because it doesn't go door to door unless you are on the route with train service. This severely limits where businesses could be. Trucks allow you to move away from expensive RE with train service and put in a cheap area and get your deliveries via truck. The train system collapsed in the 60s and 70s.
This was really interesting; thanks for sharing. I've taken a lot of sleeper trains, but I've never seen one that's a double-decker. But I guess those couldn't exist in Europe because of the height clearance. I think what a lot of people don't understand is that the sleeper train isn't exactly like an airplane: it's not _just_ the transportation, taking the sleeper train _is_ the vacation (or at least, part of the vacation). It's a great way to relax and watch the scenery go by, while saving on the cost of a hotel. I remember when my wife and I took the train from Moscow to Beijing, even after 5½ days on the train we were disappointed to get to our destination, because it was so enjoyable! Unfortunately with Amtrak costs, delays, and a lack of frequency, it's really hard to get Americans (who are already culturally negative about "public transit") to appreciate taking the train.
Amtrak is great if you live within walking distance of a station. Otherwise it’s damned inconvenient versus taking a car for short/medium trips (or airplane for long trips)
Double-deckers do exist in europe, even in Russia, they are just too rare at the moment, cause not every popular route is popular enough to justify their use.
Yes! So much of it is just the cultural resistance to, like, the IMPLICATION of what public transit means. So many americans would rather be miserable than the possibility that someone might think they're poor.
@@Scoopalook As you say, double-deckers do exist in Europe, but the loading gauge means they aren't two full-decks. Something like the TGV Duplex carriages has two decks, but at the expense of reduced headroom (especially at the sides on the top deck, as it curves over). It's fine when you're sitting down but you wouldn't be able to put bunk beds in a top-deck cabin, for example. The Shuttle that runs between England and France has a massive loading gauge, even bigger than these double-deck Amtrak trains. Sometimes when I take my car on the (le) Shuttle I end up in the single-deck cars that can take double-decker coaches, it's cavernous. But that's at the expense of being able to run on a very limited piece of track between two stations in Kent and Calais.
One of the biggest reasons for how slow trains are in the US is due to the tracks themselves. A lot of different groups own the tracks along the way, and those different sections of tracks are graded for different speeds. Some as low as 35 mph. Some as high as high as 165 mph. And everything in between. Upgrading any section of track is a political nightmare as well. It's a mess. But it's a scenic mess.
Don't cargo trains have priority over passengers for some sections too? That kinda boggles the mind lol. The only case it makes sense is with time sensitive cargo like live animals or something
The freight companies affirmatively don't want their lines upgraded to enable faster passenger service. There's cases where Amtrak and/or local governments have actually offered to pay for improvements and the freight companies have rejected the money. Though the legislation that created Amtrak specified that passenger trains were supposed to have priority and that the railroads were supposed to keep their tracks to a high standard, the various rail lines never really kept up their end of the bargain. They very quickly started finding excuses to prioritizing their own traffic, despite the law. They also cut back on maintenance, arguing that they had no obligation to keep tracks up to the level needed to run passenger trains at 80-100 mph anymore because they didn't run passenger trains anymore. Basically Amtrak was a bailout of the rail industry that came with conditions, but the rail industry never really lived up to those conditions.
The roomette is only "small" when you think of it as a room. It's huge compared to a typical airline seat. I like to always have the bed down and just lounge in bed. It also helps when you have two people, especially if you bring extra pillows with you. The full bedrooms can actually sleep three people, but only if you book by phone -- they don't want people to book them without talking to a rep because there are only two beds, but in the full bedrooms the bottom bed is big enough for two non-fat people to sleep in if they are okay with it (e.g. a married couple). Tip your car attendant. They *WILL* bring your meals to your room if you ask, but make sure you tip them so they feel good about it. I've had great times meeting new people in the dining car, but sometimes I just want to hole up in my room. An interesting note about the temperature control. The ceiling vent is centrally controlled HVAC, but the dial in your room controls a supplemental electric baseboard heater. There is no labeling explaining how this works and it confuses lots of people because they twist the dial and feel the air from the vent above and it doesn't change at all (because that's the central air, the heater is in the wall, and it takes time to heat up). I know heaters/air conditioning is your thing, so figured I'd point that out. The Pacific Surfliner is neat if you like space travel, because the tracks go right next to the SpaceX and ULA launch facilities at Vandenberg, you can see the assembly buildings clearly and if you're lucky you get to see a rocket. The trains are delayed during launch windows for safety, but if you go early you can get off at the Vandenberg (Surf/Lompoc) station. Sometimes you can view a launch from the station and sometimes they make you move to another location (bring a bike or arrange for a ride, the Surf station is in the middle of nowhere on the opposite side of the base from Lompoc).
I agree, but why isn't it as *nice* as an international airline seat in terms of fit, finish, quality, seat type, and entertainment? If I'm going to take the slow route, why not at least outfit the cabin with a finish that justifies its price. This is where additional investment by the taxpayer would be gladly received.
I loved the roomette as a travel option. Spent 3 days traveling in one. Best cross country trip I've ever made, not counting my time as a long haul truck driver (which basically equates to having a studio apartment built into my vehicle, less a shower, which is what truck stops are for...)
@@HelloNotMe9999 Yeah being able to travel with your lodging is great. I still argue that the train is superior though as it's like having the truck stop build into your vehicle -- you can get up and shower or eat at the restaurant but you keep moving. The same when you sleep, the vehicle keeps moving.
@@Phoenix88203 They were considered nice when they were originally built. Some of these sleepers date back to 1979, the newer ones in 1993/1995. Amtrak just had an order of Viewliner II cars built in 2015, but those are all on the East Coast.
"Let's be proud of the things we've built and nurture them - not destroy them." These are motivating, wise words. Not only do I love trains -- I've been across the country twice with the Capitol Limited, Southwest Chief and California Zephyr -- but they are good for the environment and provide a useful alternative to aircraft. The trip is a vacation in and of itself.
Airplanes use to be a vacation in and of itself too, not so much anymore. I remember the day (I am 79) one would tell a friend you are going on a plane trip and they were envious, now they feel sorry for you.
@@Norm475 That is very true, air travel has become cheaper and more normal, which is wonderful, but it has also become mundane and crowded and frustrating. We have lost some of the magic of flying through the air.
TRAINS ARE OBSOLETE 1800s TECH. Just like horse-drawn carriages & gaslamps are gone, so too should passenger trains disappear except for high density areas (cities). We have new inventions called cars & airplanes for medium/long distance travel.
Something I like about long-distance train travel is how you get a real sense of the distance in a country. A few years ago I travelled from Melbourne to Sydney and back by train. That's about an 11 hour trip each way by train, and an hour flight. But the flight is so disconnected from the terrain that you can easily forget just what a long journey it is, and how many different geographical regions you pass through.
The night train takes an hour longer because the tracks have been allowed to degrade over time. Trains were faster in the 1930s than now. It gets worse once you leave the mainline. Edit for clarity: at night visibility is far less, and so drivers maintain a slower speed.
"I've yet to see the interstate highway system turn a profit, but people seem insistent that Amtrak has to." Thanks for the video and tour! I support pretty much anything that promotes train travel and improvement in the U.S. I'm not sold on spending a trillion on bullet trains, but I definitely support building up the trains and track necessary for trains that are merely fast ;).
All those trillions should be used in making intracity transit actually functional, because the intercity transit doesn't matter if I have to use a car regardless. Then you can make whatever other silly plan you want to make. As in, the transit people, not you specifically.
A trillion isn't much for things you will use for decades. I don't know if I would take trips unless flights just stopped, as they probably should. There's a sweet spot for sustainability with trains and that's probably what we should aim for.
Here's the difference. Per passenger mile traveled, the subsidy for interstate highways is almost a rounding error. Were it not for government's inherent tendency to eff things up and pay double the cost for half the quality, excise taxes on fuel at their current rates would in fact result in a profit for the government. As it is, the interstates require less than 1 cent per passenger mile subsidy, to say nothing of all the freight being moved along them. Amtrak typically requires a 50-100% subsidy per passenger, depending on the line. Basically if your Amtrak ticket costs you say $400, taxpayers are picking up an additional $200-400 to run that train. A couple lines the subsidy is even more than that. They are so awful at operating trains that Amtrak's dining cars, despite a captive customer base, lose buttloads of money. Amtrak easily needs 25 cents or more of subsidy for every mile they transport a passenger. This is the very definition of government boondoggle.
@@dorvinion Factor emissions into it, then check those numbers again. And we all agree amtrack is badly run but that's less because government is broken and more because it's both not a social priority and because corporate and special interests, which are no more efficient, endlessly sabotage these things. If governments in europe can pull of a train system then clearly we can as well. Also a train system is all one package while you're comparing it to just the highways themselves and not the cars or any of the other infrastructure.
It's a shame that track conditions are so poor outside of the Northeast Corridor and a few other parts of the country. A few years ago I took Amtrak from NJ to Atlanta and once I got beyond Washington, DC I could feel the tracks getting worse and worse the farther we went south.
Blame the freight companies. They own those lines. From what I understand is that outside of a few lines Amtrak-owned like the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak rent the lines out of freight companies to run their trains on, so maintenance falls on those companies.
@Zaydan Naufal I don't even think amtrack has a stop in Las Vegas (where I live). It's the only way I would consider going cross country after a bout with blood clots a few years ago. I'm afraid of getting blood clots again and won't fly.
Atlanta was a rail hub before it was ever a city... And why not, its geographic location is perfect for it... (As evidenced by the importance of the airport) If the U.S. ever builds a truly national hsr system, Atlanta is predestined to become a southeastern hub...
Main line track's from what I have seen are very poor you see some quite nice trains crawling along on dodgy track . Yards in UK have better track than some main line in the US , good track is most important as we have 40 + year old trains running safely at 125mph
If Amtrak can get some dedicated passenger lines (even just by widening freight corridors) between key regional cities, they can run a fast, frequent daytime service between them, while also providing a faster line for the sleepers to go on. The counter-intuitive thing with trains is that the slower they are, the more expensive they are to run (this is because rolling stock can't do as many trips, staff need to be paid for time, etc). I think for the US, full HSR is probably too big a leap in many areas, but 125mph upgraded lines seems like a much more achieveable goal. If you can achieve that speed consistently, you'd be surprised just how fast you can get to places! In the UK we upgraded a lot of our network in a more piecemeal fashion and we have something that is pretty damn competitive and attracts very good ridership, despite a pretty consistent high level of neglect by government. We're now starting to hit the limits of this, hence the construction of a proper high speed rail backbone, which is proving very politically contensious (especially as the UK environmental movement seems to hate it, contrary to basically all other environmentalists in the world), but having that actual high level of ridership at least helps to build a better political case for it happening. Absolutely agree on economies of scale, Amtrak is really stuck in a bind until it gets a decent base of infrastructure where it can run a lot of service from day one.
This is exactly what Amtrak is starting/trying to do. They have a “kind of” high speed line servicing the northeast. I’d imagine they’ll expand it if it’s successful.
There's been a controversial plan to drop most of the long distance sleeper services in favour of improving regional connectivity between large cities. And I can see where it's coming from. Realistically, Chicago to LA doesn't attract that many riders, and arguably never will. There would probably be a lot more benefit to increasing frequency and decreasing journey time between LA and San Diego, or Dallas and Houston, which could pull thousands or even tens of thousands off congested highways every day, rather than take a few dozen off a plane.
@@Croz89 I agree it would be a better use of resources, but the sleepers enable Amtrak to cover quite a lot of states, so therefore are useful as a political tool! I totally agree any extra investment should go to shorter routes, similar to the Surfliner, NEC, Cascades. I think the Midwest could absolutely benefit from a more frequent Amtrak service connecting those cities.
The US is far too in love with automobiles for this to happen. One reason why rail travel is such a mess in the US is because let's face it, if you wanted to get somewhere over land you'd drive your car there. Then big auto lobbies make sure it stays this way so interstates gets clogged due to all the driving. Even China has a huge network of proper high speed rails between major cities... If anything the US needs more rail travel because railroads can carry far more than a 6 lane highway ever will. It's a shame as the US used to be the world leader in rail travel.
@@taiwanluthiers I mean really the problem isn't just "the rail network is bad" but rather the problem is that public transportation as a whole is bad, and GM and friends want to make sure it stays that way. Traveling by car has the obvious advantage, that when you arrive, you have a car. From what I see as an outsider even when you don't have car in the US (cause you might have traveled by plane) you still "hire" a car in one way or another (taxi, uber, rental). Where I live you travel by train, then at the station you instantly hop on a bus that takes you to within 500m of your destination. Until public transport in the US gets to that level, traveling by car will always be the superior option, no matter how good the railway is. Planes are just so much faster than cars, that people easily make the sacrifice of "no car", but trains can't really hope to achieve that, within reasonable expectations from the US.
I love Amtrak, but one criticism I've always had is that they're decorated/styled like a Post Office lobby. I get it, it's a government operation that is constrained by budget, but simple design choices would make the space onboard feel much more luxurious.
Amshacks are pretty good considering their design criteria: a standardized station building that's cheaper to operate and can be upgraded as traffic increases.
@@fredtaylor9792 The government has a lot to offer. That same government built the world’s largest highway system, landed people on the moon, etc. I’ve visited federal buildings, parks, and monuments that are absolutely gorgeous and styled well, so they can manage Amtrak in a way that makes it a more attractive option for travelers. Like a lot of things with Amtrak, I just think it’s reflective of a lack of prioritization by politicians.
Honestly this multi night train ride sounds like a lovely experience for me. I generally dont like traveling, but being "in transit" is a very relaxing experience for me bc there is no pressure to do anything. I love riding streetcars and this seems like a bigger version of that.
I agree so much, I enjoy riding a quiet bus with my bf, early, leaning on his shoulder, bar the mass of people possibly too close. This seems positively romantic and relaxing. It's like a road trip as a kid; nothing to worry about save packing your bag. I would probably pack a sewing project, laptop, and absolutely my kindle and have a blast. As a migrsineur, travel can cause migraines or discomfort from anything from cramped quarters (I also have a bladder condition so that gets carsick as well), inconsistent mealtimes, lack of rest, so a traditional roadtrip is very hard on me (though taking the RV and a nap was always welcome). Hot meals and a place to sleep, access to exercise and sitting positions ither than L? Count me in! I am assuming there is a conducter making sure the experience is enjoyable so the bus anxiety aspect could hardly apply.
@@WyvernYT cruise ship is the proper analogy but a very tight wobbly one. In this example trip if you took this train, got off and immediately boarded the return train....you have spend 8 days on the rails. If you have a real job, that's 89% your entire year's accrued vacation. You, the chair, the window, the lady advertising the concession car....occasionally broken up by a tight bumpy walk to said car to sit on McDonald's seats and eat hotdog stand food or drink from a plastic cup. If it was luxurious like 1920s trains....but those days are long passed and the plebes didn't get that luxury even then.
I wonder if people remember how toll roads were only supposed to charge tolls until they paid for their construction, and then they were supposed to become free? How'd that work out for us?
It worked out for Kentucky. They freed the last of their extensive toll road system about 10 years ago. But your point is taken that this is not the norm.
@@brixan... Pay for the maintenance WHEN A MAINTENANCE EXISTS. Hereabout, Italy, there are roads, even high-speed ones, for which you pay... to play "avoid the hole" for all your travel, and if you win, you won't have a need to control the state of your car's suspensions afterwards. If you lose... well...
The ocean being gray is pretty normal. It’s haze. That’s why Navy ships are painted that gray color. It’s called Haze Gray and it camouflages the ship with the haze making it harder to see. Back in the days before radar, when spotting a ship was entirely visual, it meant that gray ships were harder to see at long range and thus much harder to hit in a battle.
Travelling long distances at ground level is like moving through a giant art gallery. Especially in the western United States and Canada. I've done a couple of trips of several thousand miles around these places, as well as in various directions across my own country, Australia, but I've always driven rather than taken the train. Your experience makes me want to go back to the USA and take a cross continent rail journey! Unfortunately, if you think rail is expensive in the USA, these days in Australia it's marketed more as a luxury experience and costs way more. It's simply unaffordable for most people on a bang-for-buck basis.
The reason he's not a train person real train persons don't own a car they travel absolutely everywhere with trains and live in a train friendly country \ region
@@Banditxam4 Saying you can't be a train person because you live in the US is like saying you can't be a person who appreciates wide open spaces because you live in Europe. Thats just silly.
I should point out a little bit about the pricing. While getting a room IS expensive, all meals are included with the room. So that's 5 meals included each way for the Chief. Possibly more if you get delayed.
Sadly, it costs 3x as much and takes 4x as long compared to flying coach when I need to travel long distance to visit family. I even have a fairly direct route (Longview, TX to Pittsburgh, PA via Chicago). I might try it over a summer trip someday because I'll have time available for it and the experience itself sounds neat. But for a shorter Christmas trip or something, its so expensive in both time and monetary cost. It is nice that the food is included, though. A good thing to keep in mind.
@@RockMongler amusingly, airlines are as cheap as they are due to a combination of government subsidy and the slightly weird economics of making a plane flight pay for itself meaning that first class (or was it first + business class?) basically has to pay for the entire flight for it to be viable, so those tickets are priced so that it Does, Which in practice means that Economy class is almost pure profit for the airlines. Basically, the plain needs all the same, well, basically Everything but fuel and cheap food with and without economy class passengers, and economy class passengers cause a negligible increase in either of those things. The economics of Trains, on the other hand, don't work quite like that. Trains are an almost pure throughput calculation. The more people in a carriage, the more carriages to a train, the faster the train goes, the better in all cases. Fuel costs (ideally Electricity to minimize them) go up with mass, capacity goes up with volume, etc. But trains are Stupidly Efficient, so the more passengers can be jammed into a single train, the more the ticket price drops. On the other hand, every added luxury in a given carriage is not just something you have to pay for, it's also less people in that carriage, and thus that train... Also, a train's speed is capped by track conditions. High speed rail requires suitable track. the goods lines Amtrack mostly runs on? they're Really, Really not.
@@laurencefraser Problem is Amtrak can't possibly put that many people on a train... lots of people rather fly if they have to go long distance or drive their own cars. So they have to somehow charge more due to the much smaller market, and the result is high prices with poor service. That and the lack of government subsidies.
@@RockMongler On the other hand, it takes only slightly longer and (after you factor in gas, hotels, and meals) is somewhat cheaper than driving. Which is honestly what the real competition is.
What I love about long-distance trains is that you can take as much luggage as you want. You also can sleep in a bed an eat in a dining car - the luxury not available in air travel. About ten years ago I travelled by train all across Russia from north to south. Watching how different nature of your country is from tundra to palms is magnificient!
Dmitri, I've never visited Russia but I've read that the track gauge is a good deal wider than Europe or the U.S. and the trains consequently more comfortable even when they're older. Is that your experience?
@@DGaryGrady gauge here is not *that* wider, it's just 42 mm difference. I had no chance to compare our and us/european trains, but I definetely like when the train is more modern. Like when there are USB chargers, bio toilets and so on.
@@DGaryGrady I don't think the track gauge has much to do with it - Russian gauge is 5 foot, European/US gauge is 4' 8.5", Spanish gauge is 5'6". The steadiness of the ride has more to do with the quality of the track alignment. But I think comfort has more to do with space than ride quality. The Russian loading gauge (that is, the size that train cars are allowed to be) is enormous compared with European standards (and so is much of the US I believe). This means that Russian passenger carriages are huge and have vast headroom - very spacious. (My experience was sharing a 4-berth second-class sleeping compartment on the 'Rossiya' from Vladivostok to Moscow i.e. the Trans-Siberian. Extremely comfortable and smooth ride. Note that this was a single-deck carriage (not double-deck like the Amtrak shown) so our compartment had full headroom and was the full width of the carriage (minus the corridor). So much headroom that we didn't even bother to fold up the top bunks during the day, you could sit on the bottom bunk and stand up with no risk of banging your head on the top bunk). But then German/French/British main lines tend to be very smooth also, though not as spacious as the 'Rossiya'. I'd guess that in all countries you can find uncomfortable crammed carriages (suburban rush hour) and comfortable main line trains.
Another great feature of trains: Very little limitation on luggage. Your fare includes a ton of luggage, and you can transport really big stuff like bicycles and such. Also, no security screening, or weird rules. Want a full sized bottle of shampoo? Go for it. Like to carry a pocket knife? Nobody cares.
I love that you posted a video about your train trip! One of the things that I enjoy about train travel is that you get to see not only the open vistas, but also the more industrial and "backyard" perspectives of rural and urban environments that I think most people never see. I always end up spending more time looking out the window than I think I will ... it's mesmerizing and allows me to slow down and indulge all the thought tangents and musings that arise. I've also met some really interesting and wonderful people on my train journeys. I agree with you that we should invest more into the US rail system, and make it a more viable means of transit.
18:25 Superliners are run on the east coast, just not north of DC. the autotrain, which goes between Lorton, VA and Sanford, FL uses superliners. Also, the same cars are used on return trips. they just take a couple hours to do housekeeping.
I did Philly to Seattle, then Seattle to San Diego and then back to Philly via Amtrak in a roomette. It was a life changing trip.. Except the $3,000 price tag to do it..
seriously i wanted to go from chicago to LA in coach and they wanted $1200 per person. they want to charge per person for the roomettes as well so for my wife and i to travel with the roomette it was around $4500. plane ticket was $180 per person. it's hard to want to travel on a train when the price is so high.
@@Varangian_af_Scaniae that’s a bit of an unfair comparison, the eurail pass doesn’t let you travel on sleepers. Amtrak’s prices for seats are fairly comparable with EU, and much much cheaper than the UK. Of course, the actual service you get for that price is not as good, but in terms of moneys per distance it’s not too dissimilar.
This is a problem in Europe as well. While not NEARLY as ridiculous, you quickly pay 100% more in price for the same distance compared to flying and... well... the additional time spent isn't nothing either. I HATE flying with a passion, from the limited luggage rules, the anxiety of timing, the liminal space that is the airport... and not to mention the SHEER TERROR of going through security check as a trans person... :| Doesn't help that I am simply put uncomfortable with leaving the ground. But if I need to travel I gotta budget... and budget tells me to fly, alas... :/
@@NIRDIAN1 yes, which is unfortunate given the environmental impacts of flying. Want to be less wasteful by taking a train, but if you have to save up twice as long to take the vacation, allowing for increased vacation time as well, it doesn't really make sense sadly
Hey, I spent too days in a train once, too! It was _supposed_ to be a 16 hour trip, but then Amtrak wound up parking on the tracks in the middle of nowhere for almost an entire day, straight, so I got allll that bonus train time, missed out on seeing my friend in Chicago, and had to sprint up to the gate to catch my plane out of O'Hare. Oh, and they never really explained to any of us _why_ we were locked in a capsule for an entire day, either, but afterwards I found out that this apparently happens all the time because they don't own the tracks and the freight rail companies they rent them from can basically just reschedule them at any time they want and force them out of the way with absolutely no repurcussions (even in cases where it _is_ actually illegal, those laws are never enforced by the feds and Amtrak can't afford to piss off the freight rail companies by reporting them or suing because then they might retaliate by just cancelling their track sharing agreements outright.) Well, at least I had time to play through the entirety of Psychonauts... almost twice. Wasn't planning on the trip being that long, didn't have a very powerful laptop, and of course I thought that I wouldn't even have time to finish it once. Other than that it was kinda fun. 7/10 so long as time is meaningless to you.
@@Kriss_L Because freight often has things like, say, food, being delivered to feed thousands of people, while passenger trains just have like 20 privileged people on vacations
@@far2ez539 its actually because the freight companines own the rails. Thus the passenger must yield, this only happened because the US criminally underfunds infrastructure.
Cargo: $250 billion revenue. Amtrak: $1 billion. Government isn’t going to delay crucial shipments of goods & incur financial losses due to delivery delays. No it will delay the ~200 people on the scenic sleeper car instead
I wish there were more specifically overnight scheduled trains on like 16 to 20 hour routes. When you can get on a train in the evening, go to sleep, and wake up at or near your destination 1000 miles away, especially if you're traveling with one other person, it's competitive with plane tickets and a night in a hotel.
This is what me and my girlfriend do in Romania... We take a sleeper train in the evening from the capital city of Bucharest, and then in the morning we're in one of the cities where our parents live... It's the best way to travel for us, despite the fact that the distance of about 325 miles is done in about 9 hours, it doesn't bother us since we sleep... But keep in mind that there are also coaches (seat-only cars) in the train, for people that travel shorter in-between journeys, and this slows down the overall speed... There are however much more efficient night-trains in Europe, for instance "Nightjet" from the Austrian national railways...
In the UK we have a set of services called the Caledonian Sleeper. The first departure of the night from Euston fits this concept pretty well considering the UK's smaller size and faster rail network. It starts as an electric locomotive hauling 12 brand new "Mark 5a" coaches split into groups of 4- each contains a seated coach, a lounge/diner, and 2 sleepers. This train runs up the mainline through the night stopping at select major junctions until it reaches Edinburgh in the early morning. Here, the train is taken over by 3 diesel locomotives- one for each of the 4-coach groups. These then go to Aberdeen, Inverness, and Fort William, up in the Scottish Highlands, where they arrive at around 10am.
I think there are talks about expanding overnight services, the issue is lack of equipment. Amtrak just introduced an overnight train from DC to Boston.
NYC TO CALI: 6 hours $200 by plane. Three days $800 by train. TRAINS ARE OBSOLETE 1800s TECH. Just like horse-drawn carriages & gaslamps are gone, so too should passenger trains disappear except for high density areas (cities). We have new inventions called cars & airplanes for medium/long distance travel.
I used to think the US long distance rail system was universally rubbish, but I've realised it works pretty well for what it's designed for, and that is not for passengers, but freight. The US moves more goods by rail than anywhere else on earth, but that's come at the cost of terrible passenger service. In places like Europe and the Far East, the rail system is built around passengers, while there is some freight it's always a lesser priority, and as such more cargo does end up going by road, or in cases where there are navigable rivers, by boat. The ideal solution is to have space for both fast passenger services and slow freight, but that of course means essentially building two rail networks that need to be kept as separate as possible. That's expensive and difficult though.
@@Hugobros3 For the connectivity that interstates provide, probably not. Plus rail has far more stringent design requirements in terms of curvature and slope.
Yes, and my understanding is that the vast majority of rail networks in the US are owned by PDX, which is a freight hauler, and Amtrak essentially pays them for the use of the tracks. They lease the tracks, if you will. This is supposedly one of the major reasons for Amtrak's service and route inefficiencies; basically they don't have full control over when and where they can move their traffic. And often, if a freight liner needs the track, Amtrak will be delayed in favor of the freight traffic. Passenger's are essentially second class citizens when it comes to US railways.
@@Mi5terMarc PDX? That's the Portland, Oregon airport. Are you thinking of CSX? That owns a lot of track along the east coast along with Norfolk Southern. Union Pacific and BNSF own most west of the Mississippi, with Kansas City Southern, Canadian National, and Canadian Pacific filling out the middle of the country.
Thank you for this video Alec. I wanted to take a sleeper train from Florida to Chicago when I visited the US in 2010. But at $950 per person for 2.5 days, vs $99 for a 5h flight... hence thanks for taking the financial hit instead!
In Sweden going from the south to the north is almost 'faster' by rail, instead of two 1h flights with a change in the middle plus buss rides and airport hassles, you could just take a sleeper cart at 8 pm from the city centre and arrive at 8 am at another city centre. You basically waste no effort or valuable time and it costs about the same as a flight.
I used to travel from the US to Kiruna, Sweden for work. The first time I thought that I would take the sleeper from Stockholm to Kiruna just for the adventure of it. Turns out that was the smart thing. By the time I flew to Stockholm from Philadelphia I was basically the walking dead. Instead of taking yet another flight to Kiruna to jump into a rental car to drive out to Esrange (which would have probably been suicidal), I got a good night's sleep on the train and was fresh and awake for the car drive.
Taking the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto was an eye-opening experience as an American. Not to mention the fantastic light rail systems there. I'd never drive or fly commercially if the US had rail like Japan!
I really enjoy going by train over here in Europe. The longest trip I ever took was from north-west Germany to Croatia. I was using a sleeping train from Munich to Rijeka and it was great. Probably the most comfortable I ever got there.
I have a question about this, actually: Do you think train travel is preferable over flying for a lot of trips in Europe? I'm planning on someday taking a trip to Germany, and while I would love to take the ICE across the country, I don't really know how practical it is for someone with not much money or time. I just wondered the opinion of a typical person who's taken a train.
@@ArchmageNydia If you're staying in Central and Western Europe, France, Germany, Low Countries, and Italy, Spain and the UK to some extent, you can get to most big cities by rail fairly easily. Further than that, it's a bit more tricky.
This was great getting your perspective as a generally non train enthusiast person. You have interesting perceptions and valid points. I enjoyed your words on the state of public transportation and Amtrak. Glad you made this video!
I've been on so many Amtrak trains over the years that I can smell this video. To be clear, I mean that persistent, rubber/plastic smell of the air circulating through the HVAC system. It's not bad, just familiar.
One thing I don't understand with rail travel is why isn't there a cruise style rail trip offered by anyone especially in the USA. It wouldn't be that hard to add an extra entertainment car, and to stop off in key cities for a while. Rail cruise vacations should be a thing.
I have lived in Japan for 10 years and we need HIGH SPEED RAIL. Connecting downtowns seamlessly is SO IMPORTANT. Imagine walking into a terminal in downtown Phoenix and being in Los Angeles in 90 minutes. The ease of access and free flow of commerce is WORTH IT. Dedicated tracks. Hitachi Trains. This should be what building back better looks like.
Even as an European I've never felt any mode of transportation as smooth as those Shinkansen trains. Even with 2 stops in between I moved 400km in 2 hours!
The US is BIG. Constructing that many miles of high speed rail would be ridiculously expensive. Amtrak mostly runs on already existing freight lines because it cannot afford to run dedicated lines. I don't think we will have high speed rail unless air travel stops existing.
@@user2C47 The distance from Phoenix to LA or LA to San Francisco makes it worth it. Start with intercity linkages. The value produced by allowing the free flow of people, ideas and capital is worth it. Going to the airport is different than seamlessly stepping onto a moving platform, using wifi for a few minutes and being in another state’s urban core. It reduces vehicle congestion and in the case of the nuclear-powered southwest, is 100% Carbon neutral. And for stops in between, it creates new urban centers around those train stations, outside those downtown areas.
@@futsuu Pheonix to LA is about 370 miles straight-line distance, and about 416 miles on existing tracks. To do that in 90 minutes would require an average speed of 277 mph, which is simply far too high an expectation of any rail project really. A more reasonable expectation would be average speeds closer to 135 mph, which would result in travel times closer to 3 hours, and even still that would require surveying, engineering, and constructing brand new rights-of-way across some very challenging terrain. Current timetabling on the Sunset Limited between LA and the Phoenix area on existing tracks is about 6 hours. This is not meant to be an argument against HSR, but that I think people have unrealistic expectations about how HSR should be deployed in the US. Where HSR shines is in corridors and between city pairs that have a high volume of travel between them (e.g. NY-DC, Chicago-Minneapolis, Dallas-Houston, Atlanta-Charlotte-Raleigh, Miami-Tampa, LA-SD), and I'm simply unsure if LAX-PHX meets that criteria. Where I think Amtrak really ought to be focusing their efforts is on city-pairings of less than 8 hours during the day, and no more than 12 hours through the night. Day trains would cover as much ground as they can in as little time as possible, with average speeds in the 90-100 mph range (note that I'm not mentioning top speed). Night trains should be nearly-all-sleeper, and timed to depart after the typical work day (7-9 pm) and arrive right around the start of the next work day (7-9:30 AM). They can run a bit slower, as the idea instead is to offer a night's sleep on-the-go.
Yeah I think the whole dedicated lines thing is just like a mindset difference in the USA. In Europe, they assume that new trains mean new rails, it takes years of construction, negotiation over routes, etc but they don't hobble their new trains with using freight tracks that have been beat to heck for years.
It’s kind of strange, it’s more of a quasi-public company. Basically it gets government funding from the national, state, and local governments but is operated like a for-profit organization instead of a government service.
Amtrak was created because passenger rail companies were going out of business left and right, and Nixon didn't want to be the President who let the choo-choo die.
"The experience is so great" *closet agrees* Seriously though I do like traveling by train, cell service alone (also isn't the WiFi free too?) makes me prefer train for anything short distance. I used the Carolinian to get from home (Richmond) to my University (Charlotte) a couple times and that was always really enjoyable and honestly not even that much longer than flying at that distance.
Amtrak service is pretty okay along the eastern seaboard. Ive used the Piedmont to go from my parents house in Raleigh to school also in Charlotte (uncc) and it's pretty good. My only qualms are ground transit at destination is kind of lacking (both in Raleigh and Charlotte) and the car interiors could use an update, but even thats a personal preference
I spent a lot of time on trains as a kid, and absolutely loved it! (Thanks divorced parents, living in different states ;) Being able to watch the landscape changed was great!
@@justinbealo1620 When I was there they had a bus route that went basically from Grigg/Duke Centennial straight down US29 to the Amtrak station, only took about 40 mins, but that was back before the light rail got extended up to the University.
Really, really liked this video. Reminded me of when I was in college in New Haven, CT. I would to take Amtrak's "Vermonter" back and forth between New Haven and my home in northern VT several times a year for breaks and summer vacation. Muuuch shorter trip, obviously--just 8-9 hours. But it was so relaxing. Amazing views, and I would watched Boy Meets World DVDs or listen to music, just taking in the scenery, enjoying the rumble. The train was usually full until we got through Mass, and then it was often less than half full for the final 4-5 hours. Once per trip, I always got a hot dog, nachos, and a Dr. Pepper from the cafe car. I added a scotch and ginger ale when I turned 21 and pretended I was a business man. But I was still just a dumb kid. Still am in many respects. Take me back to those days, please! Mostly carefree, and seemed like a little 8-hour vacation. I could have driven in 3-4 hours. But I much preferred the train. Thanks so much for uploading such a detailed video. Brought back some nostalgia, and I like hearing you talk about things. Side note: Now I live next to an Amtrak train station and I hate them hahaha.
As a European, I've taken four "significant" train journeys. One was Geneva to Munich, one was Memphis to New Orleans, and the last was Boston to Baltimore return. None were overnight but all were a good few hours. I'd like to try the full City of New Orleans route sometime, and the full east and west coast lines. From Memphis to New Orleans I had an upper floor roomette. It was a great experience, but a very early start. The food was good and the roomette was fine. I shared the roomette with my dad and neither of us needed to sleep but weren't super convinced of the beds, but would agree with you that it's fine for one. We shared our table at lunch with some other people who were friendly and we had a good time. Was a really good experience seeing so much of America that I hadn't seen. Also the attendant played The Train They Call The City of New Orleans on the way into the station, and explained that he liked to play different versions of the song each day. We could to step outside a few times to mark a few more states off the list. Geneva to Munich was sort of analogous to Memphis to New Orleans. We didn't have a room but we did eat on the train. Frankly the dining experience was far superior because they seemed to be targeting a higher level of service. The food was good and a reasonably varied menu. But also the train and furnishings were newer and better maintained. Amtrak is very Amtrak in all their furnishings and just isn't as clean. Finally, the Boston to Baltimore trip was just in coach seating by myself. The trip was delayed by a day due to a snow storm, but they were very helpful in contacting me to rearrange though I did have to pay the price difference for the drips which was less nice. When we did get going the train was busy due to the previous train being cancelled, but I did get a seat without much hassle. It was busy the whole way down to NYC where I was able to move to a 4 seat booth with more leg room. All good left Boston around 9 or 10 and got to Baltimore well within daylight. Unfortunately the other way I had booked a midday train and it was also very busy up to NYC. I got seated at the car end 4 seat booth, just. After a few stops some Amtrak employees got on and sat with me who were interesting to talk to; they were going the whole way to Boston too. My main problem with this trip was that after the stop in NYC I changed seats to move closer to the middle of the car, but it was now nighttime in March and every stop it got very cold as the doors opened. I don't know if that was because the train was empty or because I needed to be more in the middle of the car. There was a cafe car which had ok food. Got some hot dogs and crisps (chips) which was fine, but not the same experience as a dining car. Overall I really enjoy train journeys and Amtrak journeys. It'd be nice if it was a bit cheaper and better maintained overall but I'm going to do more journeys when I next get the chance, and recommend it to anyone. Though it does have to be a feature of your holiday, not just how you get to your holiday destination. I could have flown all of these journeys, and it would have made way more sense to fly the Amtrak trips than the European one, but that wouldn't be as fun or comfortable for the time it saves. I don't like very short haul flights if I can avoid them because of the time in airports, compared with turning up to the train platform and boarding a few minutes before departure.
City of New Orleans might be a fantastic song, but it’s easily the least impressive long-distance route in the Amtrak network. Any of the five major western routes are vastly better in terms of both scenery and service. (Trust me, I’ve done them all!)
>Though it does have to be a feature of your holiday, not just how you get to your holiday destination. Definitely true for the American trips, but it doesn't have to be that way, and if you want train travel to be popular, it must not be that way. In places with well built high speed rail (aka Japan, China and parts of Europe), there are many routes where in terms of travel experience, taking the train for 300-600km trips just makes sense as an option. Given the hassle of air travel, getting to and from an airport, security checks, luggage restrictions, any train route up to about 4 hours is plenty competitive with air travel as long as the price is competitive. In fact for those trip durations, I would mostly prefer trains from a pure convenience perspective. No stupid check procedures, you depart and arrive in the city center. As long as the train ride is only 1-2 hours more than the plane ride, it'll be pretty much the same after you account for airport time wasting. Making train travel popular is all about getting the trains fast enough to compress popular 300-800km routes into a short enough time window by building decent infrastructure.
Last thing I thought I’d see when I clicked on this video was my home town in Southern California! That beach shot started out in Dana Point and the pier is in San Clemente. That grey sky you saw usually shows up in the morning, goes away in the afternoon, and then rolls back in near sunset. I don’t know exactly why that happens but we call it the marine layer. It’s not there every day though. Great video btw! Love your stuff :)
I used to take the Amtrak between Boston, MA and Syracuse, NY a lot and loved it. Much less stressful than driving and took only a couple hours longer.
When I was backpacking in the US I picked up the Amtrak rail pass. So many long train trips at a pretty reasonable cost due to the pass. A great way to do it if you have time on your hands
I did California to Oregon in a roomette a few years ago and had a blast. During meals I with someone on a rail pass, and it’s now a bucket list vacation.
Hi! Actual railfan here. I live in michgan and regularly visit chicago by train. Its quite convenient, comfortable and fast- a lot of the tracks here allow for 110mph travel, and it takes about the same amount of time as driving. There are a few routes based out of chicago like this. If you ever look to visit Detroit, Lqnsing, Minneapolis, or St. Louis, I'd reccomend taking the train
Amtrak is great if you live within walking distance of a station. Otherwise it’s damned inconvenient versus taking a car for short/medium trips (or airplane for long trips)
I used to take the overnight train from Flagstaff to LA like every Friday. About 10 hours, comfy enough to nap on the way there. I love taking trains whenever I can :)
I have been considering deliberately setting some time aside strictly for the purposes of riding a train to and from a distant destination, simply because I have never been on a train. Your information about Superliners was what I needed to look up Amtrak's routes and see my options (or lack thereof) between Dallas and the west coast. I still plan on doing this someday, but your honest review (and pointed but still thought-provoking cost rant) have given me more information than I had. Thank you!
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If you have enough time and money, I'd suggest taking the TransSib instead.
On the Cali coast, I was told that when they built the rail line the cheapest land was right along the beach and that is why it is there. Times change. Great video!
Checking "take a shower on a train" off the list reminded me: the first time I took a cruise, I insisted on riding the tram at the airport just to say I was on a boat, a plane, a train, and a car in one day.
"The government is not a profit seeking organization". Jesus it's painful that people don't understand the separation between the public and private sectors.
I think that idea is truly a double edged sword, we complain that the government is quite wasteful because there is no incentive to become efficient. Why work towards doing things that "save" money in the long run (very similar to the stoplight video) when the incoming money supply is "near infinite" (28 trillion in debt sure lets add another 5 trillion in spending this year). American infrastructure spending bills have across the aisle support and they produce physical projects and longer term employment (everything needs a level of maintenance). I first rode a train in my 20s, yes it was a short ride into Chicago's McCormick Place, much cheaper and easier then driving into Chicago and paying/finding parking. Could I see a longer train ride, maybe, but I would view the train ride as the vacation.
Profit is not the issue. The issue is whether you are forcing people who don't personally use a service to help pay for it. That is immoral. Trains are okay as long as they are funded exclusively by ticket sales. Highways are okay as long as they are funded exclusively by fuel taxes or tolls paid by drivers. The post office is okay as long as it is funded exclusively by sales of postage. None of those things should receive subsidies from general taxation.
@@caulkins69 It's not immoral to pay for things that help others but not yourself. A majority of people will live their entire lives without the direct need of the fire department. Many people don't live long enough to collect social security. Many of us has never gone to college. The fact is there are plenty of reasons beyond direct benifit to pay for things that make a society function and I hope at some point you can realise that. You obfuscate your greed as a moral failing of others and that in itself is immoral.
There's so many awesome places to see in North America, but taking the scenic routes takes so many bus transfers. Considering how people take luxury cruises just for the cruise itself, could you imagine a series of luxury train routes with super spacious cabins, all for like 5-10 day scenic trips, some going up and down the coast, others going coast to coast. And I'm not just saying this because The Excess Express was my favorite Chapter in Paper Mario and I still haven't gotten over it.
@@lsrx101 it was, I would recommend it to anyone, but if you’re on the edge of a stress heat attack as I was, it’s like a miracle, better than any medicine
16:42 "The biggest thing that we don't have in the US because we all are...we don't get vacation time, ya know?" Damn, that hit me in the soul. I agree completely. There are a TON of things I want to experience, but my damn job keeps me tied down and gives me a measly three weeks of vacation a year (of which I have to compete with coworkers if I want certain weeks off). Not to mention, that's after 5 years of loyal service to the company. I only got 2 weeks when I started.
You're lucky and you must have a fairly decent, relatively, job if you get paid time off work like that. A lot of Americans get zero time off, especially not paid.
@@fwir711u2 Thanks for your contribution that nobody asked for. Feel better about yourself by kicking others? You sound like one of those guys that sit at home all day and collect welfare checks.
A bucket list item for everyone, while you can still do it, is to ride the Amtrak Coast Starlight. It goes from Los Angeles to pretty much the Canadian border. You get to see things like the launch pads and the vehicle assembly building at Vandenberg, which aren't accessible by any other touristy means. It sometimes runs along the beach, it passes Mt. Shasta just after sunrise, it's awesome.
My wife and I took Amtrack a few years ago, sleeping in one of those little roomettes. I had the top bunk, and I'll tell you - returning to LA as we headed across the desert at night, I really appreciated that webbing keeping you in. On the other hand, I did not appreciate the hard walls on the opposite side. Apparently we were an hour or so behind schedule, so to make the time up the train accelerated to what had to be something close to 100MPH... which, you think 50 - 70MPH is bumpy, you ain't lived until the drivers open up full bore. And yeah; it's miles and miles of straight line with no crossing roads, but it was a bit... disconcerting... wondering what else might be out there that we might hit at night. But I was bouncing in that bunk like a piece of popcorn in an air fryer...
@@chbuki True enough. It's important to note that those are on much more modern, purpose-built track lines, running purpose-built trains for much shorter distances in most cases. Running on century-old freight rails for 400 miles balls-out on an engine/carriage system designed for 30 - 40 MPH slower maximum travel is terrifying - particularly at night. 😛
@@MrJest2 Yeah of course. I called them more developed for a reason. If we wanted high speed rail we’d have to lay down newer, straighter tracks with way more clearing around them, and build barriers around them to keep the tracks clear of debris and other obstacles. Yikes. 😅
@@chbuki I'm sure the richest nation on the planet can afford that. Not that money has ever really been the issue. It's entirely political. Nobody in power ever seems to want to actually do something about it. This is why so much of the infrastructure in the US is literally crumbling. It just isn't interesting to the political elite or their donors.
I’ve taken plenty of Amtrak trains in my lifetime. It was hit and miss but, while the majority of problems were with the train itself, every crew was outstanding and loved doing what they do. They were friendly, helpful and, went above and beyond to make passengers comfortable. Amtrak may be notorious for lots of issues but, it’ll never change my enormous fascination with trains. Awesome video!
Traveling by train is my favorite way to travel. Years ago during summer break my mother and I did the Amtrak Seattle to Chicago and returned the same way. Than the next year did the trip again with my sister as well. One of the things I remember most was in the sleeper on the bottom you get a lot more track noise, it not bad in any way it’s a very calming rhythmic sound, and on the top there is more swaying side to side just a slight rocking.
Middle European perspective: You took a train from Chicago to LA, which Google Maps tells me in the 3300km range. That is the freakin' distance from Warsaw to Lisbon. I'm an avid train user, but let me tell you it would be really far fetched for me to take a train over that distance, not least because I'd be crossing 5 countries with best case 3 different rail companies on the way. It's waaay outside of the range anyone I know here would consider normal by train. I guess I would be enjoining it too. But I'm not sure it would be actually cheaper here in Europe and you certainly will not be able to get a continuous service without changing trains over that distance. They operate a well known night service from Munich to Rome around here, which is a meager 900km and a normal chair is 120EUR, a sleeper cabin starts at 200EUR ... if you book way in advance you may get lucky and get a discounted fare, but it seems the prices you name sound somewhat reasonable compared to European train prices over long distance.
That's always something to bear in mind when comparing European rail to the US. The distances in Europe, even for sleeper services, are generally so much smaller. I don't think Americans should beat themselves up because they can't cross half the country by rail in a timely fashion, neither could the Europeans given the same distance! In the end, there's plenty of room for improvement on populous corridors, but the reality is connecting the whole country with fast, efficient, affordable rail is a very long way off, if it's ever viable. Having to fly from Chicago to LA isn't down to an inadequate rail network, having to drive between Dallas and Houston perhaps is.
@Parallax Trans-Siberian sleeper services tend to be more like "rail cruises", extremely expensive luxury tours for rich tourists. One I saw had more staff than passengers!
For Warsow to Lisbon Google says more than 10 trains and buses, despite selecting for least amount of seperate ones and no busses. Yeah, I would not do that. International travel can mean you go to the end of one countries train net, get into the next net, go to a central hub station and then to the other end of that net and repeat for every country. That's why some demand more better international lines. Even within 150km I can get really annoyed by public transit here in Germany. Not only is it more expensive than driving a car, it also takes two times as long. Sometimes I can even be faster on a bike for 50-100km or more. And Hamburg to Munich, which is nearly all across the length of Germany flying it not only faster, but much cheaper, which is ludicrous! (At least on those long travels, car is not faster. At least not much, when you have good connection to big train stations in both sides. 🙄) So yeah, we need faster, cheaper, easier and more reliable(!) train service on both continents and probably others as well.
@@Croz89 I have closed it already, but I think I saw more than one train in Germany, too. My closest theme park is 118km /1:15h away by car. 3:38h or 4:29 public transit. Yeah, with a very fast type of bicycle (velomobile) a moderatly fit person can do it in just under 3h on an 88km route, according to a special route planning service. So I can be there faster by bike than by train. No wonder, everybody uses cars.
I'm sure most of this has already been commented on downstream. 1. Passenger rail service hasn't been profitable since about 1905. 2. America has the longest and best rail system in the world. It makes money without government subsidy. It does make that money by hauling freight, not passengers. 3. I've ridden the bullet train in Japan. It is wonderful. Just don't forget that Japan is about the size of Florida. America in comparison to Japan is enormous and the population is really spread out. 4. China has 3,000 miles of high-speed rail. Chinese high-speed rail is losing about $25,000,000 a week and ridership is substantially down from initial projections. Chinese are taking less costly standard rail service or flying. They're both cheaper. 5. Without its own tracks, Amtrak will never be able to keep any kind of schedule. Freight comes first... it makes the money. 6. Most importantly, as pointed out in the video, most people don't have the money or time to take a long-distance train. A jet airliner is three times faster than a 200mph train. Even worse, that airplane can make three cross country trips fully loaded with more passengers each trip than any train can in one.
Geographically speaking America would be the perfect country for high-speed rail. It's such a shame the power that certain lobbyists have to limit people's options.
@@WarNoob755 The whole entire east coast is population dense. You're trying to tell me there's not enough chicago to new york travel to support it in that corridor either? I doubt that. There's always excuses but at the end of the day they always seem to be in favor of moneyed interests and against the public good. How convenient that it always works out that way.
@@doktormcnasty The whole east coast is not population dense. The fact that a city is population dense doesn't mean everywhere is population dense. Chicago is in the mid west.
@@WarNoob755 You don't need a dense population - you just need to connect the main cities with high speed trains. It's more economical than an airplane. The actual problem with american trains is they are slow. The Southwest Chief takes 43.5h for the 2230mi from LA to Chicago - That is an average speed of about 50mph. An electrified train like the german ICE has an average speed of 100mph and the french TGV drives at 200mph, both are faster but the possible speed depend on the landscape. If you change from conventional train tracks to something like the maglev you have an average speed of over 350mph. Just think of a track as the bird flies from Chicago to Kansas - about 400mi. Southwest Chief needs 7h, Greyhound about 13h, a TGV would need 2h - without any waiting and check in like you need for a plane. One-Stop flights are 1.5h and multistops up to 3.5h flight time and TSA wants you to arrive 2h before boarding at the airport. And add to that the capacity. A normal TGV (double) got about 250 (500) seats, same for an ICE. The planes for inland flights are most of the max. 200 passengers variant (737, A320 etc.) And if there are less or more passengers you can change the length of a train. Second is the energy consumption - there are studies about the ICE and planes in comparison for the same trip from a to b with plane and ICE. It was converted to the amount of liters of normal gas needed per passenger and average amount of passengers. In the end an ICE needed 2.9l/100km or about 81mpg an the plane needed 3.5l/100km or about 67mpg. And don't forget the advantage that in a train there is no real restriction how heavy your luggage can be. According to statista the US has 225 cities with a population bigger than 100k, 52 of them are bigger than 250k, 27 with more then 500k and 10 with more than 1Mio. Connecting these cities starting with the biggest with high speed trains would make a big improvement. The first settlers used the train to conquer America and there are some beautiful train stations. Don't understand why you the people of the USA doesn't honor that history and modernize/expand the system.
Their double deckers are absolute giants. The regular double decker commuters in the Netherlands (as well as the ones I’ve used in France and several other places) are much smaller.
That's the superliner, they are quite large. There are single level sleeping cars on most of the routes on the Eastern side of the country, there's fewer restrictions on loading gauge in the western half of the country so the cars can be bigger. The only line that uses super liners in the Eastern half of the US is the Washington DC Chicago route.
@@JasperJanssen here in the US there are plenty of those shorter, Split-level passenger cars, they’re used on commuter trains. There’s even one commuter train in California that runs triple-level. But Amtrak Superliners are beasts
Double-decker freight trains, too. Those shipping containers that go on cargo ships get stacked 2 high when they get loaded on freight trains here. If you live near a port, you'll constantly see those "doublestack" trains taking containers from the big Pacific-crossing cargo ships and bringing them to the center of the country.
I really like the idea of a high speed heavy rail network connecting the major urban centers of the US. I personally absolutely hate flying and driving is tiring and bad for the environment. Even if it's not as fast as flying, the idea that I could take an overnight train from where I live in Baltimore and wake up in Chicago, Boston, Orlando, or Memphis and be relatively comfortable the whole time is just really appealing.
I mean high speed trains are not as fast as flying but 350kmph average speed isn't that far behind when planes do 800 or 700 kmph Max and guess what traveling in a train won't give you jet lag
A lot of people say they like the idea of trains. Their enthusiasm wains when it comes to actually paying the fares necessary to build and operate said trains, particularly when considering air travel is already both faster and cheaper.
Trains are actually worse for the environment than cars. They use more fuel per passenger and it gets even worse when you get into high speed rail applications as they’ll use more fuel than planes. The idea that cars are killing the environment is really such a myth. There are so many other and bigger sources of emissions that are just overlooked and all the focus goes on ICE cars
Connecting downtowns seamlessly is about more than transporting people. It means creating a physical corridor for ideas and commerce. Everywhere along those high speed lines will benefit.
I took the California Zephyr from Denver to Salt Lake City a few weeks ago, and going through the mountains and valleys and along the Colorado River was simply amazing. It was basically a really long day trip for us (8am-11pm) so we did coach, but we spent much of the time in the lounge car with those giant windows. Like you mentioned, I wish I had more free time to take beautiful trips like this, but when I can, I love relaxing on the rails.
Amtrak could use more and newer rolling stock for sure (some of that is in progress) but there are more sleepers out there than you think. As you mentioned the east coast doesn't use the Superliner cars due to clearance issues. The east coast sleeper routes use single level Viewliner sleepers, of which there are 75. Amtrak just finished receiving the Viewliner 2 sleepers/diners/baggage cars (years behind schedule due to the builder CAF bungling the contract), and the Viewliner roomettes have a nice perk of the upper bunk having a window
What a great video - I'm from the UK and, for obvious reasons, our rail infra is just totally different. And this was a fascinating video to watch - I'm so very very jealous of the varied scenery and just the scale of so much of it. I'd love to explore your country so much more
NYC TO CALI: 6 hours $200 by plane. Three days $800 by train. TRAINS ARE OBSOLETE 1800s TECH. Just like horse-drawn carriages & gaslamps are gone, so too should passenger trains disappear except for high density areas (cities). We have new inventions called cars & airplanes for medium/long distance travel.
Man, that last bit where you just let it run out in the flats around Grand Junction was a gift. Once you live in the desert for a while you see the open space differently and the fact that it’s wide open becomes the draw.
Yes we need more Trainology Connections! Even with all the inconveniences and the government constantly gutting it, Amtrak is definitely my favorite way to travel. We need to actually invest in our rail infrastructure and keep it nationalized.
I'm from Czechia, a railway country, and I love SŽDC (Railway Network Administration) and the national carrier ČD (Czech Railways), despite they're not always on time and not always clean. They're safe and they do have a system of compensations if you get *really* delayed. You can get almost anywhere by rail and it's really affordable. There are two commercial companies, Student Agency (RegioJet trains) and Leo Express, but they only take the profitable rooutes between big towns, not to my hometown. There's a project of building high-speed rail (finally!), so yay for that.
I hear that in many ways, US rail is kinda sucky (slow, old rolling stock) but take it from a Brit, you do NOT want your railways privatised. The UK is 'kind of re-nationalising' (but not really, honest...) our railways because prices and services got so diabolically bad...
As Ukrainian I was always interested about how trains work in US, thanks for the detailed video! In Ukraine trains are the only possible transport option to get around the country reasonably quickly. It takes around 30 hours on regular diesel train to get from almost the very east where I live (part of eastern railroad is blocked by war zone) to the very west. Our train cars are mostly soviet-made and not so comfortable, but currently is under renovation. We do have several "Intercity" trains that cost 3 times more and travel much quicker (on the max speed allowed on our tracks), but their routes only go through few bigger cities.
Trains are awesome for medium length trips, the best. Eg. hop on at 8pm, have a few beers, nap, shower, eat breakfast, arrive at 8am. That sure beats driving! But long haul ... meh. Even here in Europe it'd take me 36 hours to get to Barcelona, and that's mostly on German and French rails, which are pretty fast. Sod that, I'll fly. But from my house to Berlin, it's about 12 hours on the sleeper. Nice. Right tool for the job, like everything.
That's the problem here only it's even slower. Three full days each way to get me from Utah To South Carolina to visit family, about 2700 km, and the cost is $1600 for a sleeper car. Or I could fly round trip first class and be there in five hours for $700. The only reason to take the train is for the experience.
When i was traveling more regularly between NY state and my home in the Southeast, I preferred the train and took it at every opportunity. Even coach on Amtrak is preferable to coach on airline travel, in my book - warts and all. Great video.
I recently did a road trip out to Yellowstone, and the things I think I'd really miss on a train is local dining, stopping at attractions, and staying in towns I've never visited before.
if train service is frequent enough, you can do a fair bit of that on the train as well. get off at a stop and continue your journey the next day. but yea at the end, both cars and trains come with some sacrifice with regards to personal freedom. on a train, your route is limited. in a car, your free time is limited (since you have to drive)
Even though I just took a train trip myself, and there are dedicated amtrak channels out there, gonna share this video to those curious about what its like to travel on Amtrak since your narrative style seems genuinely curious about all the small things and what its legit like to live in a roomette for 48-72 hours rather than just an overview of the room.
Taking the train is so much better then flying. Every part is less stressful. Nobody taking Amtrak is in a hurry. It's not the cheapest.. but really it's a great experience. The Amtrak food is better then first class airplane food. The coach seat is the size & legroom of a airplane first class as well.
When I took a couple cross-country Amtrak trips back in... 2011, I got coach tickets and spent the _entire_ time in the lounge car. Kept a small bag with me and slept with it. Works great if you have the gall (and low comfort requirements) that I had at 21 years old. I think the lounge car is always empty enough in the middle of the night that the staff wasn't going to care as long as I was relatively inconspicuous. Spending 24 hours a day in the lounge car was great. Met a lot of people, learned some card games, watched the view through the huge windows. Going through the Dakotas, there was flooding, and the train stopped for a while before deciding it was safe to keep going. I had made a friend in the sleeper cars, and they brought me to the back of the train where we could see the train's WAKE we were leaving through the water. It was really cool.
back when i was a kid, my yearly family reunion had us traveling from southern California to Washington state, and we always begged our parents to let us take the train instead of flying. love rail travel, even after spending a good while in the UK and discovering how it can actually be... functional... (not that the UK is the pinnacle of rail travel but it's certainly better than the US). Always thought that if i someday manage to retire i'd love to travel a lot by train, all across the US.
NYC TO CALI: 6 hours $200 by plane. Three days $800 by train. TRAINS ARE OBSOLETE 1800s TECH. Just like horse-drawn carriages & gaslamps are gone, so too should passenger trains disappear except for high density areas (cities). We have new inventions called cars & airplanes for medium/long distance travel.
@@electrictroy2010 Sure, the rail system in the US sucks. But it's possible to take a train, the Eurostar, from London to Paris in no time flat, for a very reasonable price. We're not using 1800s steam engines anymore, much like we're not driving the same cars that have been around since, funny that, the 1800s. We've got bullet trains, going 300 mph, that can carry more people than a plane and way more people than a car. It's just that trains in the US suck. I would definitely never drive from NYC to Cali though, how long and uncomfortable would that be?
I've always wanted to take an Amtrak, just for the experience. You've inspired me, this is going to happen. Thanks for sharing your trip, now go home and make more videos!
Took the train from Ohio to Philadelphia a few years ago, and I was amazed that both the conductor and an off-duty engineer who were on board for a good part of the trip were quite young. Under 30. Extremely nice people, both men and, shall we say, easy on the eyes.
Wow. This video brought me back. My ex-fiance lived in Oceanside, and I took the train there from San Diego. Thanks to the train back being extremely late, I actually had my first kiss that evening at the station. It was the most romantic moment of my life. I rode the Surfliner home the happiest man in the world. Seeing that footage managed to bring me back to that day, where I could almost relive the memory...
My personal opinion is that, outside of the northeast corridor, Amtrak should not be considered a mode of transportation. Rather, think of those cross country trains as a destination, like a resort. On the sleepers you get your overnight lodging and all your meals included. All you need to do is sit back and relax.
If you do take another long distance train trip post-Covid, as a fellow introvert, I do recommend at least giving the communal dining a try for one meal. I wasn't looking forward to it, but I'm glad I did, and over the handful of sleeper trips I've taken I have yet to opt for the room service. You meet some interesting people, and that's mostly been a good thing.
One of the neat things about sharing a table with your fellow passengers is that you learn a lot about other people's reasons for taking the train. I rode the Zephyr pre-COVID and met people who were also doing it "for fun" like I was, but I also met a mother and her son who were using it purely as transportation (to go visit family). The mother was entirely blind, and said that taking the train was much more accessible for her than flying. I didn't want to grill her on it, so I didn't push her to explain, but I imagine it had something to do with friends/family being able to see you off right at the platform, but they can't see you off at the gate at airports anymore.
I thought I would hate being forced to sit with strangers, but it turned out to be one of my favorite aspects of train travel. Pre-COVID, there could be one other person in the diner and staff would still seat you with them. I saw one dude try to negotiate a solo table, but the attendant wouldn't budge. The diner and lounge cars create a great social atmosphere that you don't find with other means of travel.
Definitely this. As an introvert, I can get pretty lonely on long solo trips. Buses, trains, and especially trains with dining cars do a lot to make things more social - I find I meet people I'd never normally end up talking to.
The equipment being used on the train is rated for speeds in excess of 100 mph, the freight railroads don't need to operate that fast so they don't care about maintaining their rails for that speed and even if they did they wouldn't be giving Amtrak priority on their lines as the freight trains are so long they don't fit in their sidings anymore so they passenger trains get stuck in there.
@@kyleh3615 freight gets the right of way because they own the lines, when the railroads also did passenger service they would prioritize the passenger service over freight. Not to mention you can do both like Brightline and FEC do in Florida if they care to, but honestly the freight railroads see Amtrak as more of an inconvenience than anything
@@FSantoro91 5 minutes in one spot offsets the loading, unloading etc. Yes 5 minutes matters, every minute matters for smooth and efficient operation. Time is also literally capacity.
For a non-travel vlogger, or any vlogger, this was a good video. Would love to see more train travel videos from you. Appreciate your viewpoint, transparency, and honesty about what worked for you and what was disappointing. More please...
Hey Alec I really enjoyed this - please feel encouraged to do more outside of your studio! I have to poke fun at a quote from you - "Mountains and clouds, can't see that from an airplane!"
I'm so jealous! The Roomette looks perfect for the lone travelling introvert who's not in a rush! This, and first-class on an international flight, are on my bucket list before I croak. If the U.S. could get high-speed rail, and all at-grade crossings eliminated, that would be amazing. edit: you're welcome for that Kansas sunrise 🌻🌞 Kansas gets made fun of, but the sky is its canvas. The sunrises and sensets (and yes, weather) here never cease to amaze me 😍
One of the main problems is that all the large area land owners will never be willing to give up their farming and ranching land for the construction of high speed rail. They already hate it just for having wind farms.
I fell asleep watching another video and woke to see the view from a moving train and thought "nice, but what TF is this?" Then was further confused by the channel this scenic video is on. Went to back to the start and actually enjoyed it better while conscious this time.
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(edited a second time) The day I uploaded this there was a derailment on the Empire Builder. I had a comment up here about how awkward that was, but now it seems weird without the context so... replies under this are probably all kinds of weird!
It'll still be fun hearing yours!
Hey come on, if we don't make fun of it all the time every time there won't be incentivisation for Joe Biden to hedge funding into an infrastructure bill
Sir, I am living vicariously through you in this video as I also have had the yearning to take a cross country train trip. It would scratch that itch. I’m here for the scenery !
What if I think highly of Amtrak?
@@way2tired2 it means you've never left the country or if you did you took a cab & had an itinerary.
Wish train travel in U.S. was more affordable and popular
Did a two dayish trip on train and with waaayyy in advance booking it was at least not obnoxious (cheaper than business class but not as cheap as coach on a plane). Standard fare, no sleeper (which was more than adequate).
The sense of relief compared to the franticness of airports was certainly worth the extra cash.
Apparently a large part of it has to do with how popular freight trains are on the given infrastructure. Lots easier to haul tons of steel and other raw materials. Reducing coal powerplants might weirdly have the effect of increasing profitability of rail transport by reducing demand, or it'll just get replaced with nuclear/renewable transport on trains, who knows.
It really does. I hate flying, and wish trains were more prevalent
Don't we all? The reliance of cars and air travel can be rather annoying sometimes.
The US had a train system which was the envy of the world. It was cheap, fast, ran on time. It was the best and largest train system in the world. There was not a place in America you couldn't get to from any other place in America with only a minimal of transfers and at a low fare.
But then we built the interstate highway system and it just could not compete with over the road truckers. It was freight that made the widespread passenger train system possible. Freight is what made it good business to keep all the tracks and keep them maintained and secured.
Trains have a lot of downsides. Mostly because it doesn't go door to door unless you are on the route with train service. This severely limits where businesses could be. Trucks allow you to move away from expensive RE with train service and put in a cheap area and get your deliveries via truck.
The train system collapsed in the 60s and 70s.
This was really interesting; thanks for sharing. I've taken a lot of sleeper trains, but I've never seen one that's a double-decker. But I guess those couldn't exist in Europe because of the height clearance.
I think what a lot of people don't understand is that the sleeper train isn't exactly like an airplane: it's not _just_ the transportation, taking the sleeper train _is_ the vacation (or at least, part of the vacation). It's a great way to relax and watch the scenery go by, while saving on the cost of a hotel. I remember when my wife and I took the train from Moscow to Beijing, even after 5½ days on the train we were disappointed to get to our destination, because it was so enjoyable!
Unfortunately with Amtrak costs, delays, and a lack of frequency, it's really hard to get Americans (who are already culturally negative about "public transit") to appreciate taking the train.
I fucking love you channel
Amtrak is great if you live within walking distance of a station. Otherwise it’s damned inconvenient versus taking a car for short/medium trips (or airplane for long trips)
Double-deckers do exist in europe, even in Russia, they are just too rare at the moment, cause not every popular route is popular enough to justify their use.
Yes! So much of it is just the cultural resistance to, like, the IMPLICATION of what public transit means. So many americans would rather be miserable than the possibility that someone might think they're poor.
@@Scoopalook As you say, double-deckers do exist in Europe, but the loading gauge means they aren't two full-decks. Something like the TGV Duplex carriages has two decks, but at the expense of reduced headroom (especially at the sides on the top deck, as it curves over). It's fine when you're sitting down but you wouldn't be able to put bunk beds in a top-deck cabin, for example.
The Shuttle that runs between England and France has a massive loading gauge, even bigger than these double-deck Amtrak trains. Sometimes when I take my car on the (le) Shuttle I end up in the single-deck cars that can take double-decker coaches, it's cavernous. But that's at the expense of being able to run on a very limited piece of track between two stations in Kent and Calais.
One of the biggest reasons for how slow trains are in the US is due to the tracks themselves. A lot of different groups own the tracks along the way, and those different sections of tracks are graded for different speeds. Some as low as 35 mph. Some as high as high as 165 mph. And everything in between. Upgrading any section of track is a political nightmare as well.
It's a mess. But it's a scenic mess.
Don't cargo trains have priority over passengers for some sections too? That kinda boggles the mind lol. The only case it makes sense is with time sensitive cargo like live animals or something
Yeah, the tracks are also owned by the cargo companies, so they prioritize cargo over passengers, which makes things even slower.
I feel sorry for anyone forced to travel through California. Especially on those older trains.
See this is one of the reasons we need some land reform in the country.
The freight companies affirmatively don't want their lines upgraded to enable faster passenger service. There's cases where Amtrak and/or local governments have actually offered to pay for improvements and the freight companies have rejected the money. Though the legislation that created Amtrak specified that passenger trains were supposed to have priority and that the railroads were supposed to keep their tracks to a high standard, the various rail lines never really kept up their end of the bargain. They very quickly started finding excuses to prioritizing their own traffic, despite the law. They also cut back on maintenance, arguing that they had no obligation to keep tracks up to the level needed to run passenger trains at 80-100 mph anymore because they didn't run passenger trains anymore. Basically Amtrak was a bailout of the rail industry that came with conditions, but the rail industry never really lived up to those conditions.
The roomette is only "small" when you think of it as a room. It's huge compared to a typical airline seat. I like to always have the bed down and just lounge in bed. It also helps when you have two people, especially if you bring extra pillows with you. The full bedrooms can actually sleep three people, but only if you book by phone -- they don't want people to book them without talking to a rep because there are only two beds, but in the full bedrooms the bottom bed is big enough for two non-fat people to sleep in if they are okay with it (e.g. a married couple).
Tip your car attendant. They *WILL* bring your meals to your room if you ask, but make sure you tip them so they feel good about it. I've had great times meeting new people in the dining car, but sometimes I just want to hole up in my room.
An interesting note about the temperature control. The ceiling vent is centrally controlled HVAC, but the dial in your room controls a supplemental electric baseboard heater. There is no labeling explaining how this works and it confuses lots of people because they twist the dial and feel the air from the vent above and it doesn't change at all (because that's the central air, the heater is in the wall, and it takes time to heat up). I know heaters/air conditioning is your thing, so figured I'd point that out.
The Pacific Surfliner is neat if you like space travel, because the tracks go right next to the SpaceX and ULA launch facilities at Vandenberg, you can see the assembly buildings clearly and if you're lucky you get to see a rocket. The trains are delayed during launch windows for safety, but if you go early you can get off at the Vandenberg (Surf/Lompoc) station. Sometimes you can view a launch from the station and sometimes they make you move to another location (bring a bike or arrange for a ride, the Surf station is in the middle of nowhere on the opposite side of the base from Lompoc).
Also, the full bedrooms have their own toilet, shower, and sink.
I agree, but why isn't it as *nice* as an international airline seat in terms of fit, finish, quality, seat type, and entertainment? If I'm going to take the slow route, why not at least outfit the cabin with a finish that justifies its price. This is where additional investment by the taxpayer would be gladly received.
I loved the roomette as a travel option. Spent 3 days traveling in one. Best cross country trip I've ever made, not counting my time as a long haul truck driver (which basically equates to having a studio apartment built into my vehicle, less a shower, which is what truck stops are for...)
@@HelloNotMe9999 Yeah being able to travel with your lodging is great. I still argue that the train is superior though as it's like having the truck stop build into your vehicle -- you can get up and shower or eat at the restaurant but you keep moving. The same when you sleep, the vehicle keeps moving.
@@Phoenix88203 They were considered nice when they were originally built. Some of these sleepers date back to 1979, the newer ones in 1993/1995. Amtrak just had an order of Viewliner II cars built in 2015, but those are all on the East Coast.
"Let's be proud of the things we've built and nurture them - not destroy them." These are motivating, wise words. Not only do I love trains -- I've been across the country twice with the Capitol Limited, Southwest Chief and California Zephyr -- but they are good for the environment and provide a useful alternative to aircraft. The trip is a vacation in and of itself.
Airplanes use to be a vacation in and of itself too, not so much anymore. I remember the day (I am 79) one would tell a friend you are going on a plane trip and they were envious, now they feel sorry for you.
@@Norm475 That is very true, air travel has become cheaper and more normal, which is wonderful, but it has also become mundane and crowded and frustrating. We have lost some of the magic of flying through the air.
@@QuiteWellAdjusted - Agreed. Profit over People.
@Sean - I agree. USAmericans should be proud of what we have built, especially things which were not built for war.
TRAINS ARE OBSOLETE 1800s TECH. Just like horse-drawn carriages & gaslamps are gone, so too should passenger trains disappear except for high density areas (cities). We have new inventions called cars & airplanes for medium/long distance travel.
Something I like about long-distance train travel is how you get a real sense of the distance in a country. A few years ago I travelled from Melbourne to Sydney and back by train. That's about an 11 hour trip each way by train, and an hour flight. But the flight is so disconnected from the terrain that you can easily forget just what a long journey it is, and how many different geographical regions you pass through.
That's true but more for the slow trains. 600 km/h trains don't really take longer than plains and no airport trouble.
Sounds more like something you like about long-distance "land" travel...? This applies to cars as well, maybe even more so
The night train takes an hour longer because the tracks have been allowed to degrade over time. Trains were faster in the 1930s than now. It gets worse once you leave the mainline.
Edit for clarity: at night visibility is far less, and so drivers maintain a slower speed.
If you have flown all over the world, then you have not really traveled, flying ruins the entire experience of exploring
@@Jablicek Sounds more like crappy, outdated signalling more than the actual tracks being the issue there, though of course both are likely true lol.
"I've yet to see the interstate highway system turn a profit, but people seem insistent that Amtrak has to."
Thanks for the video and tour! I support pretty much anything that promotes train travel and improvement in the U.S. I'm not sold on spending a trillion on bullet trains, but I definitely support building up the trains and track necessary for trains that are merely fast ;).
All those trillions should be used in making intracity transit actually functional, because the intercity transit doesn't matter if I have to use a car regardless.
Then you can make whatever other silly plan you want to make. As in, the transit people, not you specifically.
They never talk that way about the military either funnily enough.
A trillion isn't much for things you will use for decades. I don't know if I would take trips unless flights just stopped, as they probably should. There's a sweet spot for sustainability with trains and that's probably what we should aim for.
Here's the difference.
Per passenger mile traveled, the subsidy for interstate highways is almost a rounding error. Were it not for government's inherent tendency to eff things up and pay double the cost for half the quality, excise taxes on fuel at their current rates would in fact result in a profit for the government. As it is, the interstates require less than 1 cent per passenger mile subsidy, to say nothing of all the freight being moved along them.
Amtrak typically requires a 50-100% subsidy per passenger, depending on the line. Basically if your Amtrak ticket costs you say $400, taxpayers are picking up an additional $200-400 to run that train. A couple lines the subsidy is even more than that. They are so awful at operating trains that Amtrak's dining cars, despite a captive customer base, lose buttloads of money. Amtrak easily needs 25 cents or more of subsidy for every mile they transport a passenger. This is the very definition of government boondoggle.
@@dorvinion Factor emissions into it, then check those numbers again. And we all agree amtrack is badly run but that's less because government is broken and more because it's both not a social priority and because corporate and special interests, which are no more efficient, endlessly sabotage these things. If governments in europe can pull of a train system then clearly we can as well. Also a train system is all one package while you're comparing it to just the highways themselves and not the cars or any of the other infrastructure.
It's a shame that track conditions are so poor outside of the Northeast Corridor and a few other parts of the country. A few years ago I took Amtrak from NJ to Atlanta and once I got beyond Washington, DC I could feel the tracks getting worse and worse the farther we went south.
Same thing St Louis to Dallas - both ways
Blame the freight companies. They own those lines.
From what I understand is that outside of a few lines Amtrak-owned like the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak rent the lines out of freight companies to run their trains on, so maintenance falls on those companies.
@Zaydan Naufal I don't even think amtrack has a stop in Las Vegas (where I live). It's the only way I would consider going cross country after a bout with blood clots a few years ago. I'm afraid of getting blood clots again and won't fly.
Atlanta was a rail hub before it was ever a city... And why not, its geographic location is perfect for it... (As evidenced by the importance of the airport)
If the U.S. ever builds a truly national hsr system, Atlanta is predestined to become a southeastern hub...
Main line track's from what I have seen are very poor you see some quite nice trains crawling along on dodgy track . Yards in UK have better track than some main line in the US , good track is most important as we have 40 + year old trains running safely at 125mph
If Amtrak can get some dedicated passenger lines (even just by widening freight corridors) between key regional cities, they can run a fast, frequent daytime service between them, while also providing a faster line for the sleepers to go on. The counter-intuitive thing with trains is that the slower they are, the more expensive they are to run (this is because rolling stock can't do as many trips, staff need to be paid for time, etc). I think for the US, full HSR is probably too big a leap in many areas, but 125mph upgraded lines seems like a much more achieveable goal. If you can achieve that speed consistently, you'd be surprised just how fast you can get to places!
In the UK we upgraded a lot of our network in a more piecemeal fashion and we have something that is pretty damn competitive and attracts very good ridership, despite a pretty consistent high level of neglect by government. We're now starting to hit the limits of this, hence the construction of a proper high speed rail backbone, which is proving very politically contensious (especially as the UK environmental movement seems to hate it, contrary to basically all other environmentalists in the world), but having that actual high level of ridership at least helps to build a better political case for it happening.
Absolutely agree on economies of scale, Amtrak is really stuck in a bind until it gets a decent base of infrastructure where it can run a lot of service from day one.
This is exactly what Amtrak is starting/trying to do.
They have a “kind of” high speed line servicing the northeast. I’d imagine they’ll expand it if it’s successful.
There's been a controversial plan to drop most of the long distance sleeper services in favour of improving regional connectivity between large cities. And I can see where it's coming from. Realistically, Chicago to LA doesn't attract that many riders, and arguably never will. There would probably be a lot more benefit to increasing frequency and decreasing journey time between LA and San Diego, or Dallas and Houston, which could pull thousands or even tens of thousands off congested highways every day, rather than take a few dozen off a plane.
@@Croz89 I agree it would be a better use of resources, but the sleepers enable Amtrak to cover quite a lot of states, so therefore are useful as a political tool!
I totally agree any extra investment should go to shorter routes, similar to the Surfliner, NEC, Cascades. I think the Midwest could absolutely benefit from a more frequent Amtrak service connecting those cities.
The US is far too in love with automobiles for this to happen. One reason why rail travel is such a mess in the US is because let's face it, if you wanted to get somewhere over land you'd drive your car there. Then big auto lobbies make sure it stays this way so interstates gets clogged due to all the driving.
Even China has a huge network of proper high speed rails between major cities...
If anything the US needs more rail travel because railroads can carry far more than a 6 lane highway ever will. It's a shame as the US used to be the world leader in rail travel.
@@taiwanluthiers I mean really the problem isn't just "the rail network is bad" but rather the problem is that public transportation as a whole is bad, and GM and friends want to make sure it stays that way. Traveling by car has the obvious advantage, that when you arrive, you have a car. From what I see as an outsider even when you don't have car in the US (cause you might have traveled by plane) you still "hire" a car in one way or another (taxi, uber, rental). Where I live you travel by train, then at the station you instantly hop on a bus that takes you to within 500m of your destination. Until public transport in the US gets to that level, traveling by car will always be the superior option, no matter how good the railway is. Planes are just so much faster than cars, that people easily make the sacrifice of "no car", but trains can't really hope to achieve that, within reasonable expectations from the US.
I love Amtrak, but one criticism I've always had is that they're decorated/styled like a Post Office lobby. I get it, it's a government operation that is constrained by budget, but simple design choices would make the space onboard feel much more luxurious.
I love the antiquated government chic look, myself.
Amshacks are pretty good considering their design criteria: a standardized station building that's cheaper to operate and can be upgraded as traffic increases.
I think it's a great way to remind us of what the government has to offer.
yeah in western europe trains look waaaay more modern, this could have been one of ours in the '70s
@@fredtaylor9792 The government has a lot to offer. That same government built the world’s largest highway system, landed people on the moon, etc. I’ve visited federal buildings, parks, and monuments that are absolutely gorgeous and styled well, so they can manage Amtrak in a way that makes it a more attractive option for travelers. Like a lot of things with Amtrak, I just think it’s reflective of a lack of prioritization by politicians.
Honestly this multi night train ride sounds like a lovely experience for me. I generally dont like traveling, but being "in transit" is a very relaxing experience for me bc there is no pressure to do anything. I love riding streetcars and this seems like a bigger version of that.
I agree so much, I enjoy riding a quiet bus with my bf, early, leaning on his shoulder, bar the mass of people possibly too close. This seems positively romantic and relaxing. It's like a road trip as a kid; nothing to worry about save packing your bag. I would probably pack a sewing project, laptop, and absolutely my kindle and have a blast.
As a migrsineur, travel can cause migraines or discomfort from anything from cramped quarters (I also have a bladder condition so that gets carsick as well), inconsistent mealtimes, lack of rest, so a traditional roadtrip is very hard on me (though taking the RV and a nap was always welcome). Hot meals and a place to sleep, access to exercise and sitting positions ither than L? Count me in!
I am assuming there is a conducter making sure the experience is enjoyable so the bus anxiety aspect could hardly apply.
I've said before that the Amtrak Superliner isn't like a giant bus, it's more like a small narrow cruise ship. You'd probably enjoy it a lot.
@@WyvernYT cruise ship is the proper analogy but a very tight wobbly one. In this example trip if you took this train, got off and immediately boarded the return train....you have spend 8 days on the rails. If you have a real job, that's 89% your entire year's accrued vacation.
You, the chair, the window, the lady advertising the concession car....occasionally broken up by a tight bumpy walk to said car to sit on McDonald's seats and eat hotdog stand food or drink from a plastic cup.
If it was luxurious like 1920s trains....but those days are long passed and the plebes didn't get that luxury even then.
I wonder if people remember how toll roads were only supposed to charge tolls until they paid for their construction, and then they were supposed to become free? How'd that work out for us?
You mean over there it's different from here, where you pay *forever?*
It worked out for Kentucky. They freed the last of their extensive toll road system about 10 years ago. But your point is taken that this is not the norm.
Works great in Washington State.
Shouldn't we be paying for the road? It's going to need maintenance with us driving these giant machines on it
@@brixan... Pay for the maintenance WHEN A MAINTENANCE EXISTS. Hereabout, Italy, there are roads, even high-speed ones, for which you pay... to play "avoid the hole" for all your travel, and if you win, you won't have a need to control the state of your car's suspensions afterwards.
If you lose... well...
The ocean being gray is pretty normal. It’s haze. That’s why Navy ships are painted that gray color. It’s called Haze Gray and it camouflages the ship with the haze making it harder to see. Back in the days before radar, when spotting a ship was entirely visual, it meant that gray ships were harder to see at long range and thus much harder to hit in a battle.
And then comes dazzle camouflage
@@HappyBeezerStudios that sounds fabulous
@@HappyBeezerStudios I know what that was, and why it existed, but it _sounds like_ Liberace got appointed Chief of Naval Operations!
This old seadog will refer you to a colour camo for ships called "Mountbatten pink"
@@bcubed72 HAHA, thanks for the chuckle, great mental Image.
Travelling long distances at ground level is like moving through a giant art gallery. Especially in the western United States and Canada.
I've done a couple of trips of several thousand miles around these places, as well as in various directions across my own country, Australia, but I've always driven rather than taken the train.
Your experience makes me want to go back to the USA and take a cross continent rail journey!
Unfortunately, if you think rail is expensive in the USA, these days in Australia it's marketed more as a luxury experience and costs way more. It's simply unaffordable for most people on a bang-for-buck basis.
"I'm not a train person", said the guy who made videos on People Movers 😂
The reason he's not a train person real train persons don't own a car they travel absolutely everywhere with trains and live in a train friendly country \ region
@@Banditxam4 Saying you can't be a train person because you live in the US is like saying you can't be a person who appreciates wide open spaces because you live in Europe. Thats just silly.
Technically People Movers aren't trains in standard meaning
I should point out a little bit about the pricing. While getting a room IS expensive, all meals are included with the room. So that's 5 meals included each way for the Chief. Possibly more if you get delayed.
Sadly, it costs 3x as much and takes 4x as long compared to flying coach when I need to travel long distance to visit family. I even have a fairly direct route (Longview, TX to Pittsburgh, PA via Chicago). I might try it over a summer trip someday because I'll have time available for it and the experience itself sounds neat. But for a shorter Christmas trip or something, its so expensive in both time and monetary cost.
It is nice that the food is included, though. A good thing to keep in mind.
@@RockMongler amusingly, airlines are as cheap as they are due to a combination of government subsidy and the slightly weird economics of making a plane flight pay for itself meaning that first class (or was it first + business class?) basically has to pay for the entire flight for it to be viable, so those tickets are priced so that it Does, Which in practice means that Economy class is almost pure profit for the airlines. Basically, the plain needs all the same, well, basically Everything but fuel and cheap food with and without economy class passengers, and economy class passengers cause a negligible increase in either of those things.
The economics of Trains, on the other hand, don't work quite like that. Trains are an almost pure throughput calculation. The more people in a carriage, the more carriages to a train, the faster the train goes, the better in all cases. Fuel costs (ideally Electricity to minimize them) go up with mass, capacity goes up with volume, etc. But trains are Stupidly Efficient, so the more passengers can be jammed into a single train, the more the ticket price drops. On the other hand, every added luxury in a given carriage is not just something you have to pay for, it's also less people in that carriage, and thus that train... Also, a train's speed is capped by track conditions. High speed rail requires suitable track. the goods lines Amtrack mostly runs on? they're Really, Really not.
@@laurencefraser Problem is Amtrak can't possibly put that many people on a train... lots of people rather fly if they have to go long distance or drive their own cars. So they have to somehow charge more due to the much smaller market, and the result is high prices with poor service. That and the lack of government subsidies.
@@RockMongler On the other hand, it takes only slightly longer and (after you factor in gas, hotels, and meals) is somewhat cheaper than driving. Which is honestly what the real competition is.
@@RockMongler Hello from Pittsburgh!
What I love about long-distance trains is that you can take as much luggage as you want. You also can sleep in a bed an eat in a dining car - the luxury not available in air travel. About ten years ago I travelled by train all across Russia from north to south. Watching how different nature of your country is from tundra to palms is magnificient!
Dmitri, I've never visited Russia but I've read that the track gauge is a good deal wider than Europe or the U.S. and the trains consequently more comfortable even when they're older. Is that your experience?
@@DGaryGrady gauge here is not *that* wider, it's just 42 mm difference. I had no chance to compare our and us/european trains, but I definetely like when the train is more modern. Like when there are USB chargers, bio toilets and so on.
@@DmitriiMaslov Thanks! I wasn't thinking about the chargers; that's getting to be vital.
@@DGaryGrady I don't think the track gauge has much to do with it - Russian gauge is 5 foot, European/US gauge is 4' 8.5", Spanish gauge is 5'6". The steadiness of the ride has more to do with the quality of the track alignment. But I think comfort has more to do with space than ride quality.
The Russian loading gauge (that is, the size that train cars are allowed to be) is enormous compared with European standards (and so is much of the US I believe). This means that Russian passenger carriages are huge and have vast headroom - very spacious. (My experience was sharing a 4-berth second-class sleeping compartment on the 'Rossiya' from Vladivostok to Moscow i.e. the Trans-Siberian. Extremely comfortable and smooth ride. Note that this was a single-deck carriage (not double-deck like the Amtrak shown) so our compartment had full headroom and was the full width of the carriage (minus the corridor). So much headroom that we didn't even bother to fold up the top bunks during the day, you could sit on the bottom bunk and stand up with no risk of banging your head on the top bunk).
But then German/French/British main lines tend to be very smooth also, though not as spacious as the 'Rossiya'. I'd guess that in all countries you can find uncomfortable crammed carriages (suburban rush hour) and comfortable main line trains.
@@cr10001 Many thanks for correcting my misapprehension and providing interesting additional information!
I’m still laughing about “dietz nuts”. Genius.
Classic!
"Bofa deez lanterns" 😆
My best friend works for Dietz and Watson so I got to see the product before it got the mass market. Those are hilarious!
At a random moment at least once or twice a month i will chuckle to myself "dietz nuts". I think that will stay with me forever. Thank you 😊
@@justahilltopguy5418
You got to see Dietz unpackaged nuts?
😱
I'll see myself out...
Another great feature of trains: Very little limitation on luggage. Your fare includes a ton of luggage, and you can transport really big stuff like bicycles and such. Also, no security screening, or weird rules. Want a full sized bottle of shampoo? Go for it. Like to carry a pocket knife? Nobody cares.
Oo buddy as it's US I think people would carry guns I don't know if that would make me get on a train 😐😐
@@Banditxam4 and so? People who conceal carry don’t wave guns around everywhere they go. If they’re concealed carrying you’d never know.
@@sonickiller360 and so.... They're presumably carrying for a reason? And once that reason becomes apparent the parents comment is vindicated.
@@benholroyd5221 I've yet to hear of an Amtrak shooting yet. Guess they stick to Greyhound
@@ElDJReturn so there's no point conceal carrying then.
I love that you posted a video about your train trip! One of the things that I enjoy about train travel is that you get to see not only the open vistas, but also the more industrial and "backyard" perspectives of rural and urban environments that I think most people never see. I always end up spending more time looking out the window than I think I will ... it's mesmerizing and allows me to slow down and indulge all the thought tangents and musings that arise. I've also met some really interesting and wonderful people on my train journeys. I agree with you that we should invest more into the US rail system, and make it a more viable means of transit.
18:25 Superliners are run on the east coast, just not north of DC. the autotrain, which goes between Lorton, VA and Sanford, FL uses superliners. Also, the same cars are used on return trips. they just take a couple hours to do housekeeping.
Yeah, I've seen them in northeast Florida.
The Capitol Limited also runs Superliners, as it doesn’t go thru either of the Penn Stations (NYC and Baltimore).
That auto train is sneakily one of the best ways to get to Florida.
I did Philly to Seattle, then Seattle to San Diego and then back to Philly via Amtrak in a roomette. It was a life changing trip.. Except the $3,000 price tag to do it..
seriously i wanted to go from chicago to LA in coach and they wanted $1200 per person. they want to charge per person for the roomettes as well so for my wife and i to travel with the roomette it was around $4500. plane ticket was $180 per person. it's hard to want to travel on a train when the price is so high.
@@Varangian_af_Scaniae Yes, unfortunately with Amtrak the only semi affordable routes are short to moderate in length.
@@Varangian_af_Scaniae that’s a bit of an unfair comparison, the eurail pass doesn’t let you travel on sleepers. Amtrak’s prices for seats are fairly comparable with EU, and much much cheaper than the UK. Of course, the actual service you get for that price is not as good, but in terms of moneys per distance it’s not too dissimilar.
This is a problem in Europe as well. While not NEARLY as ridiculous, you quickly pay 100% more in price for the same distance compared to flying and... well... the additional time spent isn't nothing either.
I HATE flying with a passion, from the limited luggage rules, the anxiety of timing, the liminal space that is the airport... and not to mention the SHEER TERROR of going through security check as a trans person... :|
Doesn't help that I am simply put uncomfortable with leaving the ground. But if I need to travel I gotta budget... and budget tells me to fly, alas... :/
@@NIRDIAN1 yes, which is unfortunate given the environmental impacts of flying. Want to be less wasteful by taking a train, but if you have to save up twice as long to take the vacation, allowing for increased vacation time as well, it doesn't really make sense sadly
Hey, I spent too days in a train once, too! It was _supposed_ to be a 16 hour trip, but then Amtrak wound up parking on the tracks in the middle of nowhere for almost an entire day, straight, so I got allll that bonus train time, missed out on seeing my friend in Chicago, and had to sprint up to the gate to catch my plane out of O'Hare. Oh, and they never really explained to any of us _why_ we were locked in a capsule for an entire day, either, but afterwards I found out that this apparently happens all the time because they don't own the tracks and the freight rail companies they rent them from can basically just reschedule them at any time they want and force them out of the way with absolutely no repurcussions (even in cases where it _is_ actually illegal, those laws are never enforced by the feds and Amtrak can't afford to piss off the freight rail companies by reporting them or suing because then they might retaliate by just cancelling their track sharing agreements outright.)
Well, at least I had time to play through the entirety of Psychonauts... almost twice. Wasn't planning on the trip being that long, didn't have a very powerful laptop, and of course I thought that I wouldn't even have time to finish it once. Other than that it was kinda fun. 7/10 so long as time is meaningless to you.
Yeah, in the US freight generally has priority over passenger trains. Other countries do not understand how that can be.
@@Kriss_L Because freight often has things like, say, food, being delivered to feed thousands of people, while passenger trains just have like 20 privileged people on vacations
@@far2ez539 jesus christ this is one of the worst takes i've seen on youtube.
@@far2ez539 its actually because the freight companines own the rails. Thus the passenger must yield, this only happened because the US criminally underfunds infrastructure.
Cargo: $250 billion revenue. Amtrak: $1 billion. Government isn’t going to delay crucial shipments of goods & incur financial losses due to delivery delays. No it will delay the ~200 people on the scenic sleeper car instead
I wish there were more specifically overnight scheduled trains on like 16 to 20 hour routes. When you can get on a train in the evening, go to sleep, and wake up at or near your destination 1000 miles away, especially if you're traveling with one other person, it's competitive with plane tickets and a night in a hotel.
This is what me and my girlfriend do in Romania... We take a sleeper train in the evening from the capital city of Bucharest, and then in the morning we're in one of the cities where our parents live... It's the best way to travel for us, despite the fact that the distance of about 325 miles is done in about 9 hours, it doesn't bother us since we sleep... But keep in mind that there are also coaches (seat-only cars) in the train, for people that travel shorter in-between journeys, and this slows down the overall speed...
There are however much more efficient night-trains in Europe, for instance "Nightjet" from the Austrian national railways...
In the UK we have a set of services called the Caledonian Sleeper. The first departure of the night from Euston fits this concept pretty well considering the UK's smaller size and faster rail network. It starts as an electric locomotive hauling 12 brand new "Mark 5a" coaches split into groups of 4- each contains a seated coach, a lounge/diner, and 2 sleepers. This train runs up the mainline through the night stopping at select major junctions until it reaches Edinburgh in the early morning. Here, the train is taken over by 3 diesel locomotives- one for each of the 4-coach groups. These then go to Aberdeen, Inverness, and Fort William, up in the Scottish Highlands, where they arrive at around 10am.
I think there are talks about expanding overnight services, the issue is lack of equipment. Amtrak just introduced an overnight train from DC to Boston.
NYC TO CALI: 6 hours $200 by plane. Three days $800 by train. TRAINS ARE OBSOLETE 1800s TECH. Just like horse-drawn carriages & gaslamps are gone, so too should passenger trains disappear except for high density areas (cities). We have new inventions called cars & airplanes for medium/long distance travel.
@@electrictroy2010 train is still the best mode for high capacity transit and can be the fastest for moderate distances.
I used to think the US long distance rail system was universally rubbish, but I've realised it works pretty well for what it's designed for, and that is not for passengers, but freight. The US moves more goods by rail than anywhere else on earth, but that's come at the cost of terrible passenger service. In places like Europe and the Far East, the rail system is built around passengers, while there is some freight it's always a lesser priority, and as such more cargo does end up going by road, or in cases where there are navigable rivers, by boat.
The ideal solution is to have space for both fast passenger services and slow freight, but that of course means essentially building two rail networks that need to be kept as separate as possible. That's expensive and difficult though.
Interesting. Then I wonder, if cargo or passengers on rails has the bigger ecological benefit. 🤔
probably still less expensive than maintaining interstates by a large factor
@@Hugobros3 For the connectivity that interstates provide, probably not. Plus rail has far more stringent design requirements in terms of curvature and slope.
Yes, and my understanding is that the vast majority of rail networks in the US are owned by PDX, which is a freight hauler, and Amtrak essentially pays them for the use of the tracks. They lease the tracks, if you will. This is supposedly one of the major reasons for Amtrak's service and route inefficiencies; basically they don't have full control over when and where they can move their traffic. And often, if a freight liner needs the track, Amtrak will be delayed in favor of the freight traffic. Passenger's are essentially second class citizens when it comes to US railways.
@@Mi5terMarc PDX? That's the Portland, Oregon airport. Are you thinking of CSX? That owns a lot of track along the east coast along with Norfolk Southern. Union Pacific and BNSF own most west of the Mississippi, with Kansas City Southern, Canadian National, and Canadian Pacific filling out the middle of the country.
Thank you for this video Alec. I wanted to take a sleeper train from Florida to Chicago when I visited the US in 2010. But at $950 per person for 2.5 days, vs $99 for a 5h flight... hence thanks for taking the financial hit instead!
In Sweden going from the south to the north is almost 'faster' by rail, instead of two 1h flights with a change in the middle plus buss rides and airport hassles, you could just take a sleeper cart at 8 pm from the city centre and arrive at 8 am at another city centre. You basically waste no effort or valuable time and it costs about the same as a flight.
I used to travel from the US to Kiruna, Sweden for work. The first time I thought that I would take the sleeper from Stockholm to Kiruna just for the adventure of it. Turns out that was the smart thing. By the time I flew to Stockholm from Philadelphia I was basically the walking dead. Instead of taking yet another flight to Kiruna to jump into a rental car to drive out to Esrange (which would have probably been suicidal), I got a good night's sleep on the train and was fresh and awake for the car drive.
The arctic circle train from Stockholm to Kiruna was amazing. As the adventure in Kiruna. Best trip in my life.
trackside defect detectors - you should definitely do a video on this topic
Agreed!
Yeah I'm sure there's a bunch of clever technology in those things
A scanner allows you to hear them announce the location and results of the defect detectors as well as the train communications.
Taking the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto was an eye-opening experience as an American. Not to mention the fantastic light rail systems there. I'd never drive or fly commercially if the US had rail like Japan!
I really enjoy going by train over here in Europe. The longest trip I ever took was from north-west Germany to Croatia. I was using a sleeping train from Munich to Rijeka and it was great. Probably the most comfortable I ever got there.
I take it the germany to Poland train really sucks..
@@CreatureOTNight the Amsterdam to Warsaw sleeper, when it was still running, was amazing.
Was it a charter train or a scheduled service?
I have a question about this, actually: Do you think train travel is preferable over flying for a lot of trips in Europe? I'm planning on someday taking a trip to Germany, and while I would love to take the ICE across the country, I don't really know how practical it is for someone with not much money or time. I just wondered the opinion of a typical person who's taken a train.
@@ArchmageNydia If you're staying in Central and Western Europe, France, Germany, Low Countries, and Italy, Spain and the UK to some extent, you can get to most big cities by rail fairly easily. Further than that, it's a bit more tricky.
The amtrak passed just behind my house just as the video ended, thought that was neat!
This was great getting your perspective as a generally non train enthusiast person. You have interesting perceptions and valid points. I enjoyed your words on the state of public transportation and Amtrak. Glad you made this video!
On the topic of public goods, there are many things that can be said, but a lot of people would do well to learn about the concept of externalities
I've been on so many Amtrak trains over the years that I can smell this video.
To be clear, I mean that persistent, rubber/plastic smell of the air circulating through the HVAC system. It's not bad, just familiar.
One thing I don't understand with rail travel is why isn't there a cruise style rail trip offered by anyone especially in the USA. It wouldn't be that hard to add an extra entertainment car, and to stop off in key cities for a while.
Rail cruise vacations should be a thing.
I have lived in Japan for 10 years and we need HIGH SPEED RAIL. Connecting downtowns seamlessly is SO IMPORTANT. Imagine walking into a terminal in downtown Phoenix and being in Los Angeles in 90 minutes. The ease of access and free flow of commerce is WORTH IT. Dedicated tracks. Hitachi Trains. This should be what building back better looks like.
Even as an European I've never felt any mode of transportation as smooth as those Shinkansen trains.
Even with 2 stops in between I moved 400km in 2 hours!
The US is BIG. Constructing that many miles of high speed rail would be ridiculously expensive. Amtrak mostly runs on already existing freight lines because it cannot afford to run dedicated lines. I don't think we will have high speed rail unless air travel stops existing.
@@user2C47 The distance from Phoenix to LA or LA to San Francisco makes it worth it. Start with intercity linkages. The value produced by allowing the free flow of people, ideas and capital is worth it. Going to the airport is different than seamlessly stepping onto a moving platform, using wifi for a few minutes and being in another state’s urban core. It reduces vehicle congestion and in the case of the nuclear-powered southwest, is 100% Carbon neutral. And for stops in between, it creates new urban centers around those train stations, outside those downtown areas.
@@futsuu Pheonix to LA is about 370 miles straight-line distance, and about 416 miles on existing tracks. To do that in 90 minutes would require an average speed of 277 mph, which is simply far too high an expectation of any rail project really. A more reasonable expectation would be average speeds closer to 135 mph, which would result in travel times closer to 3 hours, and even still that would require surveying, engineering, and constructing brand new rights-of-way across some very challenging terrain. Current timetabling on the Sunset Limited between LA and the Phoenix area on existing tracks is about 6 hours.
This is not meant to be an argument against HSR, but that I think people have unrealistic expectations about how HSR should be deployed in the US. Where HSR shines is in corridors and between city pairs that have a high volume of travel between them (e.g. NY-DC, Chicago-Minneapolis, Dallas-Houston, Atlanta-Charlotte-Raleigh, Miami-Tampa, LA-SD), and I'm simply unsure if LAX-PHX meets that criteria.
Where I think Amtrak really ought to be focusing their efforts is on city-pairings of less than 8 hours during the day, and no more than 12 hours through the night. Day trains would cover as much ground as they can in as little time as possible, with average speeds in the 90-100 mph range (note that I'm not mentioning top speed). Night trains should be nearly-all-sleeper, and timed to depart after the typical work day (7-9 pm) and arrive right around the start of the next work day (7-9:30 AM). They can run a bit slower, as the idea instead is to offer a night's sleep on-the-go.
Yeah I think the whole dedicated lines thing is just like a mindset difference in the USA. In Europe, they assume that new trains mean new rails, it takes years of construction, negotiation over routes, etc but they don't hobble their new trains with using freight tracks that have been beat to heck for years.
I never realized that Amtrak was ran by the government, it makes so much sense now. Damn I feel so uninformed. Thanks Alec!
It’s kind of strange, it’s more of a quasi-public company. Basically it gets government funding from the national, state, and local governments but is operated like a for-profit organization instead of a government service.
Smithsonian also.
That is very interesting, learn something new everyday!
The USPS is also a not-quite gov't operation. It's supposed to post an annual profit but is beholden to Congress for rates.
Amtrak was created because passenger rail companies were going out of business left and right, and Nixon didn't want to be the President who let the choo-choo die.
Today I learned that my cat enjoys watching the outside view of your train trip
"The experience is so great"
*closet agrees*
Seriously though I do like traveling by train, cell service alone (also isn't the WiFi free too?) makes me prefer train for anything short distance. I used the Carolinian to get from home (Richmond) to my University (Charlotte) a couple times and that was always really enjoyable and honestly not even that much longer than flying at that distance.
Amtrak service is pretty okay along the eastern seaboard. Ive used the Piedmont to go from my parents house in Raleigh to school also in Charlotte (uncc) and it's pretty good. My only qualms are ground transit at destination is kind of lacking (both in Raleigh and Charlotte) and the car interiors could use an update, but even thats a personal preference
I spent a lot of time on trains as a kid, and absolutely loved it! (Thanks divorced parents, living in different states ;) Being able to watch the landscape changed was great!
@@justinbealo1620 When I was there they had a bus route that went basically from Grigg/Duke Centennial straight down US29 to the Amtrak station, only took about 40 mins, but that was back before the light rail got extended up to the University.
@@justinbealo1620 Amtrak just purchased a bunch of new Viewliner cars.
Oh man I died laughing at the healthcare cough (because I couldn't afford any).
Really, really liked this video. Reminded me of when I was in college in New Haven, CT. I would to take Amtrak's "Vermonter" back and forth between New Haven and my home in northern VT several times a year for breaks and summer vacation. Muuuch shorter trip, obviously--just 8-9 hours. But it was so relaxing. Amazing views, and I would watched Boy Meets World DVDs or listen to music, just taking in the scenery, enjoying the rumble. The train was usually full until we got through Mass, and then it was often less than half full for the final 4-5 hours. Once per trip, I always got a hot dog, nachos, and a Dr. Pepper from the cafe car. I added a scotch and ginger ale when I turned 21 and pretended I was a business man. But I was still just a dumb kid. Still am in many respects. Take me back to those days, please! Mostly carefree, and seemed like a little 8-hour vacation. I could have driven in 3-4 hours. But I much preferred the train.
Thanks so much for uploading such a detailed video. Brought back some nostalgia, and I like hearing you talk about things.
Side note: Now I live next to an Amtrak train station and I hate them hahaha.
As a European, I've taken four "significant" train journeys. One was Geneva to Munich, one was Memphis to New Orleans, and the last was Boston to Baltimore return. None were overnight but all were a good few hours. I'd like to try the full City of New Orleans route sometime, and the full east and west coast lines.
From Memphis to New Orleans I had an upper floor roomette. It was a great experience, but a very early start. The food was good and the roomette was fine. I shared the roomette with my dad and neither of us needed to sleep but weren't super convinced of the beds, but would agree with you that it's fine for one. We shared our table at lunch with some other people who were friendly and we had a good time. Was a really good experience seeing so much of America that I hadn't seen. Also the attendant played The Train They Call The City of New Orleans on the way into the station, and explained that he liked to play different versions of the song each day. We could to step outside a few times to mark a few more states off the list.
Geneva to Munich was sort of analogous to Memphis to New Orleans. We didn't have a room but we did eat on the train. Frankly the dining experience was far superior because they seemed to be targeting a higher level of service. The food was good and a reasonably varied menu. But also the train and furnishings were newer and better maintained. Amtrak is very Amtrak in all their furnishings and just isn't as clean.
Finally, the Boston to Baltimore trip was just in coach seating by myself. The trip was delayed by a day due to a snow storm, but they were very helpful in contacting me to rearrange though I did have to pay the price difference for the drips which was less nice. When we did get going the train was busy due to the previous train being cancelled, but I did get a seat without much hassle. It was busy the whole way down to NYC where I was able to move to a 4 seat booth with more leg room. All good left Boston around 9 or 10 and got to Baltimore well within daylight. Unfortunately the other way I had booked a midday train and it was also very busy up to NYC. I got seated at the car end 4 seat booth, just. After a few stops some Amtrak employees got on and sat with me who were interesting to talk to; they were going the whole way to Boston too. My main problem with this trip was that after the stop in NYC I changed seats to move closer to the middle of the car, but it was now nighttime in March and every stop it got very cold as the doors opened. I don't know if that was because the train was empty or because I needed to be more in the middle of the car. There was a cafe car which had ok food. Got some hot dogs and crisps (chips) which was fine, but not the same experience as a dining car.
Overall I really enjoy train journeys and Amtrak journeys. It'd be nice if it was a bit cheaper and better maintained overall but I'm going to do more journeys when I next get the chance, and recommend it to anyone. Though it does have to be a feature of your holiday, not just how you get to your holiday destination. I could have flown all of these journeys, and it would have made way more sense to fly the Amtrak trips than the European one, but that wouldn't be as fun or comfortable for the time it saves. I don't like very short haul flights if I can avoid them because of the time in airports, compared with turning up to the train platform and boarding a few minutes before departure.
City of New Orleans is one of my favorite songs ever!
City of New Orleans might be a fantastic song, but it’s easily the least impressive long-distance route in the Amtrak network. Any of the five major western routes are vastly better in terms of both scenery and service. (Trust me, I’ve done them all!)
>Though it does have to be a feature of your holiday, not just how you get to your holiday destination.
Definitely true for the American trips, but it doesn't have to be that way, and if you want train travel to be popular, it must not be that way. In places with well built high speed rail (aka Japan, China and parts of Europe), there are many routes where in terms of travel experience, taking the train for 300-600km trips just makes sense as an option. Given the hassle of air travel, getting to and from an airport, security checks, luggage restrictions, any train route up to about 4 hours is plenty competitive with air travel as long as the price is competitive. In fact for those trip durations, I would mostly prefer trains from a pure convenience perspective. No stupid check procedures, you depart and arrive in the city center. As long as the train ride is only 1-2 hours more than the plane ride, it'll be pretty much the same after you account for airport time wasting.
Making train travel popular is all about getting the trains fast enough to compress popular 300-800km routes into a short enough time window by building decent infrastructure.
Eey, trains, and Amtrak. Need more of both in this dang country...
Last thing I thought I’d see when I clicked on this video was my home town in Southern California! That beach shot started out in Dana Point and the pier is in San Clemente. That grey sky you saw usually shows up in the morning, goes away in the afternoon, and then rolls back in near sunset. I don’t know exactly why that happens but we call it the marine layer. It’s not there every day though.
Great video btw! Love your stuff :)
"I'm *not* a rail-vangelist."
I learn more hip terminology and useful stuff here...
😝👍
I used to take the Amtrak between Boston, MA and Syracuse, NY a lot and loved it. Much less stressful than driving and took only a couple hours longer.
I could listen to you rambling aboun anything for 10 hours or more a day. It just gives me zen.
When I was backpacking in the US I picked up the Amtrak rail pass. So many long train trips at a pretty reasonable cost due to the pass. A great way to do it if you have time on your hands
I did California to Oregon in a roomette a few years ago and had a blast. During meals I with someone on a rail pass, and it’s now a bucket list vacation.
that looks like a lot of fun actually, especially if you're a single traveler
Hi! Actual railfan here. I live in michgan and regularly visit chicago by train. Its quite convenient, comfortable and fast- a lot of the tracks here allow for 110mph travel, and it takes about the same amount of time as driving. There are a few routes based out of chicago like this. If you ever look to visit Detroit, Lqnsing, Minneapolis, or St. Louis, I'd reccomend taking the train
I'm from Jackson, do you ever take the Amtrak from there? Curious about doing a trip like this.
Thank you for the USPS/Amtrak political rant. I've been having that same discussion with various people for years.
Amtrak is great if you live within walking distance of a station. Otherwise it’s damned inconvenient versus taking a car for short/medium trips (or airplane for long trips)
I used to take the overnight train from Flagstaff to LA like every Friday. About 10 hours, comfy enough to nap on the way there. I love taking trains whenever I can :)
I've never taken the train in Flagstaff before, it's always been on my to-do list. Might have to try it one of these days.
Average train enjoyer right here
Love those curved side / roof windows, what a perfect way to appreciate the view.
I have been considering deliberately setting some time aside strictly for the purposes of riding a train to and from a distant destination, simply because I have never been on a train. Your information about Superliners was what I needed to look up Amtrak's routes and see my options (or lack thereof) between Dallas and the west coast. I still plan on doing this someday, but your honest review (and pointed but still thought-provoking cost rant) have given me more information than I had. Thank you!
If you have enough time and money, I'd suggest taking the TransSib instead.
I loved trains as a kid and dreamed of traveling cross country by rail, so thank you for sharing this experience with us!
There's something about these sleeper trains that seems really relaxing to me
Thankfully rail infrastructure in Europe is very well developed, and travelling by train is by far my favorite.
You should do a video on them bone conduction headphones! I'm interested in hearing your long (and humourously rambly) thoughts
I thought those were hearing aids?
@@rileywags lol wat
Techmoan has a good rambling review of those specifically.
On the Cali coast, I was told that when they built the rail line the cheapest land was right along the beach and that is why it is there. Times change. Great video!
Checking "take a shower on a train" off the list reminded me: the first time I took a cruise, I insisted on riding the tram at the airport just to say I was on a boat, a plane, a train, and a car in one day.
"The government is not a profit seeking organization".
Jesus it's painful that people don't understand the separation between the public and private sectors.
It doesn't help that we literally have politicians who perpetuate the misunderstanding.
I think that idea is truly a double edged sword, we complain that the government is quite wasteful because there is no incentive to become efficient. Why work towards doing things that "save" money in the long run (very similar to the stoplight video) when the incoming money supply is "near infinite" (28 trillion in debt sure lets add another 5 trillion in spending this year). American infrastructure spending bills have across the aisle support and they produce physical projects and longer term employment (everything needs a level of maintenance). I first rode a train in my 20s, yes it was a short ride into Chicago's McCormick Place, much cheaper and easier then driving into Chicago and paying/finding parking. Could I see a longer train ride, maybe, but I would view the train ride as the vacation.
Profit is not the issue. The issue is whether you are forcing people who don't personally use a service to help pay for it. That is immoral. Trains are okay as long as they are funded exclusively by ticket sales. Highways are okay as long as they are funded exclusively by fuel taxes or tolls paid by drivers. The post office is okay as long as it is funded exclusively by sales of postage. None of those things should receive subsidies from general taxation.
@@caulkins69 Be very careful treating your personal morality as an objective truth.
@@caulkins69 It's not immoral to pay for things that help others but not yourself. A majority of people will live their entire lives without the direct need of the fire department. Many people don't live long enough to collect social security. Many of us has never gone to college. The fact is there are plenty of reasons beyond direct benifit to pay for things that make a society function and I hope at some point you can realise that.
You obfuscate your greed as a moral failing of others and that in itself is immoral.
There's so many awesome places to see in North America, but taking the scenic routes takes so many bus transfers. Considering how people take luxury cruises just for the cruise itself, could you imagine a series of luxury train routes with super spacious cabins, all for like 5-10 day scenic trips, some going up and down the coast, others going coast to coast. And I'm not just saying this because The Excess Express was my favorite Chapter in Paper Mario and I still haven't gotten over it.
Slow travel is amazing for stress relief, I loved crossing Australia on the Indian Pacific
That sounds like a really cool trip.
@@lsrx101 it was, I would recommend it to anyone, but if you’re on the edge of a stress heat attack as I was, it’s like a miracle, better than any medicine
16:42 "The biggest thing that we don't have in the US because we all are...we don't get vacation time, ya know?"
Damn, that hit me in the soul. I agree completely. There are a TON of things I want to experience, but my damn job keeps me tied down and gives me a measly three weeks of vacation a year (of which I have to compete with coworkers if I want certain weeks off). Not to mention, that's after 5 years of loyal service to the company. I only got 2 weeks when I started.
You're lucky and you must have a fairly decent, relatively, job if you get paid time off work like that. A lot of Americans get zero time off, especially not paid.
Cry me a river, build a bridge, and get over it
@@fwir711u2 Thanks for your contribution that nobody asked for. Feel better about yourself by kicking others?
You sound like one of those guys that sit at home all day and collect welfare checks.
@@Michael-zf1ko gonna cry some more.....
Save up and take a couple of weeks off without pay.
A bucket list item for everyone, while you can still do it, is to ride the Amtrak Coast Starlight. It goes from Los Angeles to pretty much the Canadian border. You get to see things like the launch pads and the vehicle assembly building at Vandenberg, which aren't accessible by any other touristy means. It sometimes runs along the beach, it passes Mt. Shasta just after sunrise, it's awesome.
Coastal Starlight but both directions is a bucket list item for me. Starting in the North and going South and then coming back. ❤
I'd love you to do a video about the likes of the Shinkansen, but I suspect the magic of buying one, let alone two, would blow the production budget.
Underrated comment
My wife and I took Amtrack a few years ago, sleeping in one of those little roomettes. I had the top bunk, and I'll tell you - returning to LA as we headed across the desert at night, I really appreciated that webbing keeping you in. On the other hand, I did not appreciate the hard walls on the opposite side. Apparently we were an hour or so behind schedule, so to make the time up the train accelerated to what had to be something close to 100MPH... which, you think 50 - 70MPH is bumpy, you ain't lived until the drivers open up full bore. And yeah; it's miles and miles of straight line with no crossing roads, but it was a bit... disconcerting... wondering what else might be out there that we might hit at night. But I was bouncing in that bunk like a piece of popcorn in an air fryer...
It’s unfortunate, because really 100mph is SLOW when you’re comparing to some of the more developed rail systems in other countries. 😕
@@chbuki True enough. It's important to note that those are on much more modern, purpose-built track lines, running purpose-built trains for much shorter distances in most cases.
Running on century-old freight rails for 400 miles balls-out on an engine/carriage system designed for 30 - 40 MPH slower maximum travel is terrifying - particularly at night. 😛
@@MrJest2
Yeah of course.
I called them more developed for a reason.
If we wanted high speed rail we’d have to lay down newer, straighter tracks with way more clearing around them, and build barriers around them to keep the tracks clear of debris and other obstacles. Yikes. 😅
@@chbuki I'm sure the richest nation on the planet can afford that. Not that money has ever really been the issue. It's entirely political. Nobody in power ever seems to want to actually do something about it. This is why so much of the infrastructure in the US is literally crumbling. It just isn't interesting to the political elite or their donors.
@@TalesOfWar
I never said we couldn’t afford it. 😒
I’ve taken plenty of Amtrak trains in my lifetime. It was hit and miss but, while the majority of problems were with the train itself, every crew was outstanding and loved doing what they do. They were friendly, helpful and, went above and beyond to make passengers comfortable.
Amtrak may be notorious for lots of issues but, it’ll never change my enormous fascination with trains.
Awesome video!
Traveling by train is my favorite way to travel. Years ago during summer break my mother and I did the Amtrak Seattle to Chicago and returned the same way. Than the next year did the trip again with my sister as well. One of the things I remember most was in the sleeper on the bottom you get a lot more track noise, it not bad in any way it’s a very calming rhythmic sound, and on the top there is more swaying side to side just a slight rocking.
Middle European perspective: You took a train from Chicago to LA, which Google Maps tells me in the 3300km range. That is the freakin' distance from Warsaw to Lisbon. I'm an avid train user, but let me tell you it would be really far fetched for me to take a train over that distance, not least because I'd be crossing 5 countries with best case 3 different rail companies on the way. It's waaay outside of the range anyone I know here would consider normal by train. I guess I would be enjoining it too. But I'm not sure it would be actually cheaper here in Europe and you certainly will not be able to get a continuous service without changing trains over that distance.
They operate a well known night service from Munich to Rome around here, which is a meager 900km and a normal chair is 120EUR, a sleeper cabin starts at 200EUR ... if you book way in advance you may get lucky and get a discounted fare, but it seems the prices you name sound somewhat reasonable compared to European train prices over long distance.
That's always something to bear in mind when comparing European rail to the US. The distances in Europe, even for sleeper services, are generally so much smaller. I don't think Americans should beat themselves up because they can't cross half the country by rail in a timely fashion, neither could the Europeans given the same distance! In the end, there's plenty of room for improvement on populous corridors, but the reality is connecting the whole country with fast, efficient, affordable rail is a very long way off, if it's ever viable. Having to fly from Chicago to LA isn't down to an inadequate rail network, having to drive between Dallas and Houston perhaps is.
@Parallax Trans-Siberian sleeper services tend to be more like "rail cruises", extremely expensive luxury tours for rich tourists. One I saw had more staff than passengers!
For Warsow to Lisbon Google says more than 10 trains and buses, despite selecting for least amount of seperate ones and no busses. Yeah, I would not do that. International travel can mean you go to the end of one countries train net, get into the next net, go to a central hub station and then to the other end of that net and repeat for every country. That's why some demand more better international lines. Even within 150km I can get really annoyed by public transit here in Germany. Not only is it more expensive than driving a car, it also takes two times as long. Sometimes I can even be faster on a bike for 50-100km or more. And Hamburg to Munich, which is nearly all across the length of Germany flying it not only faster, but much cheaper, which is ludicrous! (At least on those long travels, car is not faster. At least not much, when you have good connection to big train stations in both sides. 🙄)
So yeah, we need faster, cheaper, easier and more reliable(!) train service on both continents and probably others as well.
@@PsyKeks Lisbon is a problem since the rail connections between Portugal and Spain are dreadful.
@@Croz89 I have closed it already, but I think I saw more than one train in Germany, too.
My closest theme park is 118km /1:15h away by car. 3:38h or 4:29 public transit. Yeah, with a very fast type of bicycle (velomobile) a moderatly fit person can do it in just under 3h on an 88km route, according to a special route planning service. So I can be there faster by bike than by train. No wonder, everybody uses cars.
I'm sure most of this has already been commented on downstream.
1. Passenger rail service hasn't been profitable since about 1905.
2. America has the longest and best rail system in the world. It makes money without government subsidy. It does make that money by hauling freight, not passengers.
3. I've ridden the bullet train in Japan. It is wonderful. Just don't forget that Japan is about the size of Florida. America in comparison to Japan is enormous and the population is really spread out.
4. China has 3,000 miles of high-speed rail. Chinese high-speed rail is losing about $25,000,000 a week and ridership is substantially down from initial projections. Chinese are taking less costly standard rail service or flying. They're both cheaper.
5. Without its own tracks, Amtrak will never be able to keep any kind of schedule. Freight comes first... it makes the money.
6. Most importantly, as pointed out in the video, most people don't have the money or time to take a long-distance train. A jet airliner is three times faster than a 200mph train. Even worse, that airplane can make three cross country trips fully loaded with more passengers each trip than any train can in one.
Geographically speaking America would be the perfect country for high-speed rail. It's such a shame the power that certain lobbyists have to limit people's options.
We don't have the population density for high speed rail.
@@WarNoob755 The whole entire east coast is population dense. You're trying to tell me there's not enough chicago to new york travel to support it in that corridor either? I doubt that. There's always excuses but at the end of the day they always seem to be in favor of moneyed interests and against the public good. How convenient that it always works out that way.
@@doktormcnasty The whole east coast is not population dense. The fact that a city is population dense doesn't mean everywhere is population dense. Chicago is in the mid west.
@@WarNoob755 both Europe and China are building or have built extensive high speed rail networks.
@@WarNoob755 You don't need a dense population - you just need to connect the main cities with high speed trains. It's more economical than an airplane. The actual problem with american trains is they are slow. The Southwest Chief takes 43.5h for the 2230mi from LA to Chicago - That is an average speed of about 50mph. An electrified train like the german ICE has an average speed of 100mph and the french TGV drives at 200mph, both are faster but the possible speed depend on the landscape. If you change from conventional train tracks to something like the maglev you have an average speed of over 350mph.
Just think of a track as the bird flies from Chicago to Kansas - about 400mi. Southwest Chief needs 7h, Greyhound about 13h, a TGV would need 2h - without any waiting and check in like you need for a plane. One-Stop flights are 1.5h and multistops up to 3.5h flight time and TSA wants you to arrive 2h before boarding at the airport. And add to that the capacity. A normal TGV (double) got about 250 (500) seats, same for an ICE. The planes for inland flights are most of the max. 200 passengers variant (737, A320 etc.) And if there are less or more passengers you can change the length of a train. Second is the energy consumption - there are studies about the ICE and planes in comparison for the same trip from a to b with plane and ICE. It was converted to the amount of liters of normal gas needed per passenger and average amount of passengers. In the end an ICE needed 2.9l/100km or about 81mpg an the plane needed 3.5l/100km or about 67mpg. And don't forget the advantage that in a train there is no real restriction how heavy your luggage can be.
According to statista the US has 225 cities with a population bigger than 100k, 52 of them are bigger than 250k, 27 with more then 500k and 10 with more than 1Mio. Connecting these cities starting with the biggest with high speed trains would make a big improvement.
The first settlers used the train to conquer America and there are some beautiful train stations. Don't understand why you the people of the USA doesn't honor that history and modernize/expand the system.
As a train aficionado, myself, I approve of this video.
LOVE your positioning of the points around profitability! This is a fabulous video!
Alec's like "man the lower levels blow ass you can't see shit" and I'm sat here thinking "you guys have double decker _trains?"_
Their double deckers are absolute giants. The regular double decker commuters in the Netherlands (as well as the ones I’ve used in France and several other places) are much smaller.
That's the superliner, they are quite large. There are single level sleeping cars on most of the routes on the Eastern side of the country, there's fewer restrictions on loading gauge in the western half of the country so the cars can be bigger. The only line that uses super liners in the Eastern half of the US is the Washington DC Chicago route.
@@JasperJanssen here in the US there are plenty of those shorter, Split-level passenger cars, they’re used on commuter trains. There’s even one commuter train in California that runs triple-level. But Amtrak Superliners are beasts
Everything's bigger in America
Double-decker freight trains, too. Those shipping containers that go on cargo ships get stacked 2 high when they get loaded on freight trains here. If you live near a port, you'll constantly see those "doublestack" trains taking containers from the big Pacific-crossing cargo ships and bringing them to the center of the country.
I really like the idea of a high speed heavy rail network connecting the major urban centers of the US. I personally absolutely hate flying and driving is tiring and bad for the environment. Even if it's not as fast as flying, the idea that I could take an overnight train from where I live in Baltimore and wake up in Chicago, Boston, Orlando, or Memphis and be relatively comfortable the whole time is just really appealing.
I mean high speed trains are not as fast as flying but 350kmph average speed isn't that far behind when planes do 800 or 700 kmph Max and guess what traveling in a train won't give you jet lag
A lot of people say they like the idea of trains.
Their enthusiasm wains when it comes to actually paying the fares necessary to build and operate said trains, particularly when considering air travel is already both faster and cheaper.
@@dorvinion I like the idea of trains and I also put my money where my mouth is. I travel more by Amtrak than I do flying.
Trains are actually worse for the environment than cars. They use more fuel per passenger and it gets even worse when you get into high speed rail applications as they’ll use more fuel than planes. The idea that cars are killing the environment is really such a myth. There are so many other and bigger sources of emissions that are just overlooked and all the focus goes on ICE cars
Connecting downtowns seamlessly is about more than transporting people. It means creating a physical corridor for ideas and commerce. Everywhere along those high speed lines will benefit.
I took the California Zephyr from Denver to Salt Lake City a few weeks ago, and going through the mountains and valleys and along the Colorado River was simply amazing. It was basically a really long day trip for us (8am-11pm) so we did coach, but we spent much of the time in the lounge car with those giant windows. Like you mentioned, I wish I had more free time to take beautiful trips like this, but when I can, I love relaxing on the rails.
Amtrak could use more and newer rolling stock for sure (some of that is in progress) but there are more sleepers out there than you think. As you mentioned the east coast doesn't use the Superliner cars due to clearance issues. The east coast sleeper routes use single level Viewliner sleepers, of which there are 75. Amtrak just finished receiving the Viewliner 2 sleepers/diners/baggage cars (years behind schedule due to the builder CAF bungling the contract), and the Viewliner roomettes have a nice perk of the upper bunk having a window
What a great video - I'm from the UK and, for obvious reasons, our rail infra is just totally different. And this was a fascinating video to watch - I'm so very very jealous of the varied scenery and just the scale of so much of it. I'd love to explore your country so much more
NYC TO CALI: 6 hours $200 by plane. Three days $800 by train. TRAINS ARE OBSOLETE 1800s TECH. Just like horse-drawn carriages & gaslamps are gone, so too should passenger trains disappear except for high density areas (cities). We have new inventions called cars & airplanes for medium/long distance travel.
Man, that last bit where you just let it run out in the flats around Grand Junction was a gift. Once you live in the desert for a while you see the open space differently and the fact that it’s wide open becomes the draw.
The California Zephyr is the one that goes through GJ I thought. Just started the video so maybe the route changed.
Yes we need more Trainology Connections! Even with all the inconveniences and the government constantly gutting it, Amtrak is definitely my favorite way to travel. We need to actually invest in our rail infrastructure and keep it nationalized.
I'm from Czechia, a railway country, and I love SŽDC (Railway Network Administration) and the national carrier ČD (Czech Railways), despite they're not always on time and not always clean. They're safe and they do have a system of compensations if you get *really* delayed. You can get almost anywhere by rail and it's really affordable. There are two commercial companies, Student Agency (RegioJet trains) and Leo Express, but they only take the profitable rooutes between big towns, not to my hometown. There's a project of building high-speed rail (finally!), so yay for that.
I hear that in many ways, US rail is kinda sucky (slow, old rolling stock) but take it from a Brit, you do NOT want your railways privatised.
The UK is 'kind of re-nationalising' (but not really, honest...) our railways because prices and services got so diabolically bad...
@@peterobinson3678 knowing the usa i don't doubt they may privatize rail but hopefully there's a chance that it will be nationalized
@@spootymaniacs it's currently nationalized. The key is to make sure it stays so. :)
@@peterobinson3678 The best rail system in the world is in Japan and is privatized.
To be fair, an F35 would probably make that trip a whole lot faster.
Tad more expensive, tho.
Depends if you factor in all the misstarts and maintenance before/after the flight…
Of course the SR-71 could cross the contiguous US in about an hour
As Ukrainian I was always interested about how trains work in US, thanks for the detailed video!
In Ukraine trains are the only possible transport option to get around the country reasonably quickly. It takes around 30 hours on regular diesel train to get from almost the very east where I live (part of eastern railroad is blocked by war zone) to the very west. Our train cars are mostly soviet-made and not so comfortable, but currently is under renovation. We do have several "Intercity" trains that cost 3 times more and travel much quicker (on the max speed allowed on our tracks), but their routes only go through few bigger cities.
Thx for the insight..
Your railway staff seems to be the unsung hero's during the war, which is most important..
Thanks for the info!
How are you doing in the recent events?
@@Minecraftzt176 I had to leave my hometown, which is occupied right now, and I do not know if I will ever see my home and my dog again.
@@BodomFox I am sorry, and wish you the best... Stay safe.
@@BodomFox , good luck man; we’re all hoping that things get better soon. Cheers from Washington State, USA.
Trains are awesome for medium length trips, the best. Eg. hop on at 8pm, have a few beers, nap, shower, eat breakfast, arrive at 8am. That sure beats driving! But long haul ... meh. Even here in Europe it'd take me 36 hours to get to Barcelona, and that's mostly on German and French rails, which are pretty fast. Sod that, I'll fly. But from my house to Berlin, it's about 12 hours on the sleeper. Nice. Right tool for the job, like everything.
That's the problem here only it's even slower. Three full days each way to get me from Utah To South Carolina to visit family, about 2700 km, and the cost is $1600 for a sleeper car. Or I could fly round trip first class and be there in five hours for $700. The only reason to take the train is for the experience.
European trains are awesome because you are allowed luggage!
When i was traveling more regularly between NY state and my home in the Southeast, I preferred the train and took it at every opportunity. Even coach on Amtrak is preferable to coach on airline travel, in my book - warts and all. Great video.
You must be the taller type or the airports really busy... :P
I recently did a road trip out to Yellowstone, and the things I think I'd really miss on a train is local dining, stopping at attractions, and staying in towns I've never visited before.
if train service is frequent enough, you can do a fair bit of that on the train as well. get off at a stop and continue your journey the next day. but yea at the end, both cars and trains come with some sacrifice with regards to personal freedom. on a train, your route is limited. in a car, your free time is limited (since you have to drive)
Even though I just took a train trip myself, and there are dedicated amtrak channels out there, gonna share this video to those curious about what its like to travel on Amtrak since your narrative style seems genuinely curious about all the small things and what its legit like to live in a roomette for 48-72 hours rather than just an overview of the room.
Taking the train is so much better then flying. Every part is less stressful. Nobody taking Amtrak is in a hurry.
It's not the cheapest.. but really it's a great experience.
The Amtrak food is better then first class airplane food. The coach seat is the size & legroom of a airplane first class as well.
It's life-affirming vs. the dehumanizing experience modern air travel has become.
When I took a couple cross-country Amtrak trips back in... 2011, I got coach tickets and spent the _entire_ time in the lounge car. Kept a small bag with me and slept with it. Works great if you have the gall (and low comfort requirements) that I had at 21 years old. I think the lounge car is always empty enough in the middle of the night that the staff wasn't going to care as long as I was relatively inconspicuous.
Spending 24 hours a day in the lounge car was great. Met a lot of people, learned some card games, watched the view through the huge windows.
Going through the Dakotas, there was flooding, and the train stopped for a while before deciding it was safe to keep going. I had made a friend in the sleeper cars, and they brought me to the back of the train where we could see the train's WAKE we were leaving through the water. It was really cool.
back when i was a kid, my yearly family reunion had us traveling from southern California to Washington state, and we always begged our parents to let us take the train instead of flying. love rail travel, even after spending a good while in the UK and discovering how it can actually be... functional... (not that the UK is the pinnacle of rail travel but it's certainly better than the US). Always thought that if i someday manage to retire i'd love to travel a lot by train, all across the US.
NYC TO CALI: 6 hours $200 by plane. Three days $800 by train. TRAINS ARE OBSOLETE 1800s TECH. Just like horse-drawn carriages & gaslamps are gone, so too should passenger trains disappear except for high density areas (cities). We have new inventions called cars & airplanes for medium/long distance travel.
@@electrictroy2010 Sure, the rail system in the US sucks. But it's possible to take a train, the Eurostar, from London to Paris in no time flat, for a very reasonable price. We're not using 1800s steam engines anymore, much like we're not driving the same cars that have been around since, funny that, the 1800s. We've got bullet trains, going 300 mph, that can carry more people than a plane and way more people than a car. It's just that trains in the US suck. I would definitely never drive from NYC to Cali though, how long and uncomfortable would that be?
I've always wanted to take an Amtrak, just for the experience. You've inspired me, this is going to happen. Thanks for sharing your trip, now go home and make more videos!
Took the train from Ohio to Philadelphia a few years ago, and I was amazed that both the conductor and an off-duty engineer who were on board for a good part of the trip were quite young. Under 30. Extremely nice people, both men and, shall we say, easy on the eyes.
,,🙄
This comment is fraught with TMI.
@Chill Will Nobody said it was. Literally nobody.
@@stickinthemud23 Literally.
@Chill Will cry about it.
Wow. This video brought me back. My ex-fiance lived in Oceanside, and I took the train there from San Diego. Thanks to the train back being extremely late, I actually had my first kiss that evening at the station. It was the most romantic moment of my life. I rode the Surfliner home the happiest man in the world. Seeing that footage managed to bring me back to that day, where I could almost relive the memory...
My personal opinion is that, outside of the northeast corridor, Amtrak should not be considered a mode of transportation. Rather, think of those cross country trains as a destination, like a resort. On the sleepers you get your overnight lodging and all your meals included. All you need to do is sit back and relax.
If you do take another long distance train trip post-Covid, as a fellow introvert, I do recommend at least giving the communal dining a try for one meal. I wasn't looking forward to it, but I'm glad I did, and over the handful of sleeper trips I've taken I have yet to opt for the room service. You meet some interesting people, and that's mostly been a good thing.
One of the neat things about sharing a table with your fellow passengers is that you learn a lot about other people's reasons for taking the train. I rode the Zephyr pre-COVID and met people who were also doing it "for fun" like I was, but I also met a mother and her son who were using it purely as transportation (to go visit family). The mother was entirely blind, and said that taking the train was much more accessible for her than flying. I didn't want to grill her on it, so I didn't push her to explain, but I imagine it had something to do with friends/family being able to see you off right at the platform, but they can't see you off at the gate at airports anymore.
I thought I would hate being forced to sit with strangers, but it turned out to be one of my favorite aspects of train travel. Pre-COVID, there could be one other person in the diner and staff would still seat you with them. I saw one dude try to negotiate a solo table, but the attendant wouldn't budge. The diner and lounge cars create a great social atmosphere that you don't find with other means of travel.
Definitely this. As an introvert, I can get pretty lonely on long solo trips.
Buses, trains, and especially trains with dining cars do a lot to make things more social - I find I meet people I'd never normally end up talking to.
The equipment being used on the train is rated for speeds in excess of 100 mph, the freight railroads don't need to operate that fast so they don't care about maintaining their rails for that speed and even if they did they wouldn't be giving Amtrak priority on their lines as the freight trains are so long they don't fit in their sidings anymore so they passenger trains get stuck in there.
Freight needs the right of way
Everything in our society travels by rail and by truck.
If either of them stop, we are screwed
@@kyleh3615 freight gets the right of way because they own the lines, when the railroads also did passenger service they would prioritize the passenger service over freight. Not to mention you can do both like Brightline and FEC do in Florida if they care to, but honestly the freight railroads see Amtrak as more of an inconvenience than anything
@@kyleh3615 as if making a freight train wait 5 minutes for a passenger train to pass would screw up the entire US economy… 🙄
@@FSantoro91 5 minutes in one spot offsets the loading, unloading etc. Yes 5 minutes matters, every minute matters for smooth and efficient operation.
Time is also literally capacity.
@@jonanderson5137 if it takes 5 minutes to offset loading and unloading procedures, than the process is poorly thought out from the get go. 🤷🏻♂️
For a non-travel vlogger, or any vlogger, this was a good video. Would love to see more train travel videos from you. Appreciate your viewpoint, transparency, and honesty about what worked for you and what was disappointing. More please...
Hey Alec I really enjoyed this - please feel encouraged to do more outside of your studio! I have to poke fun at a quote from you - "Mountains and clouds, can't see that from an airplane!"
I'm so jealous! The Roomette looks perfect for the lone travelling introvert who's not in a rush! This, and first-class on an international flight, are on my bucket list before I croak.
If the U.S. could get high-speed rail, and all at-grade crossings eliminated, that would be amazing.
edit: you're welcome for that Kansas sunrise 🌻🌞 Kansas gets made fun of, but the sky is its canvas. The sunrises and sensets (and yes, weather) here never cease to amaze me 😍
One of the main problems is that all the large area land owners will never be willing to give up their farming and ranching land for the construction of high speed rail. They already hate it just for having wind farms.
I fell asleep watching another video and woke to see the view from a moving train and thought "nice, but what TF is this?" Then was further confused by the channel this scenic video is on. Went to back to the start and actually enjoyed it better while conscious this time.