Okay, anyone travel on trains. What do you like, not like. Memorable rides or service? Anyone take a sleeper berth? How about in the USA or elsewhere? I've taken the old 20th Century limited from NYC Penn Station to Chicago. Not impressed at all. I've also ridden the Southwest Chief from Chicago to Flagstaff. Very nice train and the sleeper berths are really nice. Including a shower. I've ridden BC Rail from or near 108 mile House to near Vancouver. Nice train very scenic ride. Anyone ride the Durango to Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad or the Mount Washington Cog Train?
most memorable train ride: in greece. from patros <port where boat from italy arrived> to athens. the train was packed, i stood the entire time while my traveling companion was at the other end of the train standing. it was full of greeks and tons and tons of young backpackers who had taken the boat over from italy and were headed to athens just like us. it was rediculous but then the weirdest thing happened; some guy of indian origin came up to me after noticing me speaking english. he started talking to me and asked where i went to college; turned out he had graduated from my college <miami university> 10 years prior. we had a blast talking about 'our' college and he was asking if the house he lived in was still there...it was pretty amazing to meet a pakistani man on a train in greece who graduated from the same college i was attending back in oxford, ohio. anyway, long story short. the guy had moved back to pakistan and was an environmental engineer. he gave me his mailing address and i gave him mine. we have sent letters back and forth the past 5 years, a pretty odd way of meeting a pen pal but interesting none the less. <side note: later on in the same train trip -the ride was like 7 hours- i was talking to two girls who were backpacking around europe as well and it turned out they actually went to the same high school as one of my college roomies and knew him. the world is indeed a small place.>
I've done the Durango - Siverton one.... it was really slow but it was a nice little town. best train trip ever was OGHT and i going from London to Stockholm by train. took a total of 30 hours and we used 6 trains. (London - Brussels, to Köln, to Hamburg, to Copenhagen, to Malmö, to Stockholm) best train trip ever.
Re: Re: Favorite trains or train rides I've always been curious about train service in Europe. How does it compare to Amtrak for long train rides? What about differences from one country to the next?
Re: Re: Favorite trains or train rides I did this a few years back as well. The ride and especially the scenery were great. I thought the town was kind of lame, though. Certainly the most memorable train trip I've taken was the Trans-Siberian Railway. Started in Beijing, stopped for 5 days in Mongolia, on to Irkutsk for a 2 day stopover, and then 5+ days from there to Moscow where the longest stop was 30 minutes. I enjoyed it, but it was a little mind-numbing at times looking out the window and seeing nothing but birch trees for hours on end. I read War and Peace on the train to keep me entertained.
I rode a train from Hamilton to Wellington in New Zealand. My friend from NZ booked the tickets, so I don't know if sleeper berths were available, we just rode in regular passenger car eventhough part of the trip was at night. We saw some amazing stuff though.
Re: Re: Re: Favorite trains or train rides I also did the trans-Siberian back in '94, though I went from Moscow to Khabarovsk (7 days). I didn't speak a word of Russian at the time which was a bit of a bummer. I do speak Russian now though, and over the last few years have traveled by train throughout much of the former Soviet Union.
Re: Re: Re: Favorite trains or train rides most of the trains i rode on throughout europe were pretty nice but having never been on amtrak i cannot really compare them to each other. i can tell you that the high speed trains <tgv, eurostar, thalys, etc.> were all pretty nice with clean and comfortable environments, and padded cloth seasts. actually most of the trains in france, germany, italy and the like were pretty decent throughout the countries. some of the shorter distance trains were a little crappier with plastic seats, i would compare them to the commuter trains that run from long island in to NYC. the trains i rode in eastern germany and in to prague were a little different. there were some of the crappier ones i rode while i was in europe, oh yea, and the train in greece.
CTA Green Line Harlem/Lake to Downtown is my first pick. I always wonder when the train will fall from 'L' another favorite route is purple line express downtown to evanston linden st. nice view of chicago north and rich evanston buildings.
but the best of all i've had so far was of course the bullet trains. i love the stream of view from a 200mph train. i wanna try siberia rail from nakhodka to moscow and canadian express east coast to west coast. i wanna take french tgv too
It's interesting in the east, the Metroliners and the Acela Express are real nice trains. The other longer distance trains are generally not well maintained until you have cross over to Chicago. The Southwest Chief, the California Zephyr, the Train to Seattle, I forget the name, are great trains. They have sleeping cars. Some berths are small others are quite large. When I took the Southwest Chief our berth had a private bath with shower. It was small slightly larger than a typical airline restroom, but it had a shower head. The room had two beds that folded up during the day to create a sofa. There was plenty of room to stow an overnight bag and make-up case. The food was actually quite good. The dining car offered full meals and I had a very good rainbow trout one evening. They offer full dining service with linen tablecloths and napkins and real silverware. The observation car or cars have beautiful overhead glass domes for taking in the scenery. They also show movies in the evening and offer games on the lower level. They also have trivia contests and I won a train pin and a pair of socks. It ain't Jeopardy.
I also don't know a lot about Amtrak.... Are you allowed to smoke and drink on their trains? (i know that you can't do these things most places in the states, but has it invaded trains?) If not, then it defeats the fun in train travel. To me, distance trains are just fast moving bars that you have a great fun time with your buddies on.
amtrak is horrible. the acela express trains are nice, but very pricey. it's cheaper to fly from nyc to boston or dc than take the acela. i don't know how the hell amtrak loses so much money with the fares they charge. and amtrak's service is ridiculous. they don't let you board the train until 5 mins before it leaves. then, there is a mad rush to try and get a seat (because you can't make exact seat reservations) and it is pure chaos.
This is the case for the commuter trains. The long distance trains are different and the service is much better.
I love trains. -The new light rail in Hudson County, NJ but really -The train from Curitiba to Paranagua in Paranagua State, Brazil - beautiful ride thru rain forest, and you can get off in Moretes for a wonderful meal.
I had a bad Amtrak experience about a year ago, but some of it wasn't Amtrak, it was me. I had a reservation to take the train from Reno to San Francisco and then get a bus to the San Francisco Airport where my car was. The train arrived in Reno about four hours late due to delays on the trip from Chicago -- it seems like sometimes the freight trains have priority on the tracks, and Amtrak long-distance trains can get delayed due to freight trains -- although this is not a problem on the Northeast Corridor (Boston-Washington) since Amtrak has priority on those lines. Anyways, the train is late, and the station in Reno is really dumpy, and I was hung over and feeling like my head was going to explode so it was kind of a bad experience. Then, when the train shows up, it goes through the mountains to Truckee, and it's going parallel to Interstate 80, and going about 30 miles/hour and you're sitting there watching cars zoom by at 70. The train takes 7 hours to get from Reno to Emeryville (across the bay from San Francisco), it takes about 3 hours by car. So that was frustrating, and it felt like my head was going to explode due to being hung over, so the experience sucked. The train finally arrives in Emeryville at about 11 PM, about four hours late, and I find out that they don't have any buses going to San Francisco airport or anywhere else after 10 PM. Everyone who was making bus connections was screwed. There's this big line of people who are yelling at the counter people to try to get Amtrak to pay for their transportation to their final destinations, I didn't want to wait since my head was still hurting, so I said screw it and paid $50 for my own cab fare to SFO to get to my car. So Amtrak can suck. I like trains otherwise. Took the train from London to Luxembourg a few years ago, Eurostar to Brussels, changing trains there and meeting up with my parents who were coming from Amsterdam. Took trains all over Korea last summer, you could set your watch to the trains departing on time. I love the www.bahn.de website to see what kind of train schedules are available to get from, say, Rome to Copenhagen. You just gotta be careful with Amtrak's long distance service since they don't control the tracks and can suffer from delays which can screw up your travel -- if you can pad your schedule to account for any potential delays, then Amtrak is pretty cool too.
Use to live in Boulder. Woud go down during the summer at least 2 or 3 time cause my dad is a train enthusiast.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vsZZK9PrQU"]YouTube - Train journey from Spitz to Interlaken, Switzerland.[/ame]
Amsterdam to Hannover The trains in Holland look pretty bad inside, but the people-the people make up for it. It was my first trip to Europe, and after a really long flight with no sleep (nerves), I was doing my best to look unfazed. My train makes its final stop before crossing into Germany and in comes a group of elder ladies with several bags and large suitcases. Once they are seated, they put their suitcases on their laps and begin removing cups, forks, plates, knives, two bottles of wine, and a large chocolate cake. Once they start serving each other, the lady closest to me looks me over and offers a piece of cake and some wine. I politely decline but she won't hear it, she hands me the cup and a piece of cake. It was one heck of a pick me up.
Best train ride was from Plymouth UK to Penryn just south of Penzance. Very striking coastline. I worked as a biologist in Costa Rica and worked with a research assistant from Jersey (the UK one) in 2001 for a few months. In 2006, someone in my Masters course in the middle of nowhere Madagascar met the same assistant at a bus stop. There was also a friend I made in Costa Rica (still keep in contact) whose godfather's son I met in a conference in the Dutch Antilles. The world certainly is a small place.
I took the train from Munich to Athens. A fun, long trip. I went to the Austrian Alps via train from Munich around Christmas one year. It was beautiful winter wonder land. I've told my mom I would take a train ride with her in the US in the near future. I was thinking of going to Montreal or Toronto, but she wants to do the Empire Builder, which is the northern route from Chicago to Seattle. We're thinking we'll get off in Glacier Park.