Did you enjoy it? Was it worth it? How were you able to pull it off?

  • Fondots@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Not quite what you’re looking for, but I recently did NYC to Montreal on Amtrak, about a 12 hour ride (officially it’s somewhat shorter, but delays can happen at the border crossing, and as others have noted Amtrak doesn’t have right of way over freight trains so you may get delayed over that, I’d plan on about 12 hours on this particular route)

    Overall I enjoyed my experience. It would have been faster to drive or fly, but that comes with its own hassles, and since it was snowing for a good part of our ride, I definitely appreciated not having to drive through that.

    The seats (all coach class on this train) were pretty roomy, plenty of leg room, and comfortable enough for my tastes. There’s power outlets at every seat, the wifi is basically useless so plan on having any movies or ebooks or whatever you want to watch downloaded before you go.

    The cafe car onboard doesn’t have an amazing selection, hot food is pretty much all microwave stuff, but I found it adequate to hold me over, I wasn’t looking for a gourmet meal, just some snacks and drinks, and it was pretty nice being able to enjoy a beer or two on the train ride.

    On the ride back, it seemed like the train’s air conditioning wasn’t working well and it got a little warm, not ridiculously hot, but enough that you might want to take off an extra layer or roll up your sleeves. They also mentioned that since their train fleet is aging a bit, some of them can start to leak a little in the rain, we didn’t experience any of that even though it was raining a bit, but that’s something to keep in mind.

    We didn’t have any issues with the bathrooms, but at least on that route they won’t get cleaned during the trip, so if they get too gross they do sometimes apparently have to put some of them out of service.