(Right click on the image of Union Station, Los Angeles, to view full-screen)
Like many people, my mental image of travelling across America involves me powering down an empty two-lane blacktop towards the horizon, a fantasy fuelled by endless road movies. The Hollywood version looks great. The reality can often be a little more prosaic.
It is easy to forget about the dull rental cars usually on offer (no Mustangs or Dodge Challengers), the clumps of grey riders on rented Harleys clogging up what’s left of Route 66, and the sclerotic traffic around LA, New York and Chicago. I could go on, but suffice it to say that, on my recent trips to America, I have opted for riding the rails.
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The American rail network, now gathered together as Amtrak, has had a turbulent half-century, but it’s still there, with more than 500 destinations served by 21,000 miles of track. So why take the train? Well, it’s comfortable, with dining cars, lounges and sleeping compartments. It’s entertaining, and not just because of the view out of the big windows: you get movies, games and, on certain routes at certain times of the year, commentaries on the landscape and wildlife from National Park Service Rangers.
The train is also safe — no blowouts or jackknifing lorries, as a rule — and it’s often as fast as driving (certainly coast to coast), and every bit as romantic. Just think of the grand names given to some of the routes: Sunset Limited, Pacific Surfliner, Empire Builder, California Zephyr.
Also,you will meet people. On Amtrak, you are expected to share tables for meals and be companionable in the lounge car. It means you interact with all kinds of folk, riding the rails for work or pleasure.
Choose your dates carefully and the Amtrak trains are incredibly good value. They may not be able to take on the airlines in terms of time, but they punch above their weight on price. It is possible to travel coast to coast, NYC to LA, for as little as £120, and all the long-distance routes represent something of a bargain.
Take the Sunset Limited, which runs for 70 hours out of New Orleans to Los Angeles, via Texas. A reclining seat starts at just £86, one-way. True, upgrading to a roomette, which sleeps two, would cost an extra £360, but that includes all meals, and every night on board saves you a hotel room. There are no rental drop-off charges, either.
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Below are suggestions for some fantastic railroad trips, focusing on the three best city hubs. Hold that train!
Chicago
Chicago owes its pre-eminence to the railways, which once brought animals to its vast stockyards. It’s a fantastic city to spend a few days in, rich in high art and pop culture.
When you’re ready to move on, head to Union station, the soaring beaux-arts masterpiece featured in Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables. From Chicago, you can travel east to NYC/Boston on the Lake Shore Limited or to New York on the Cardinal, north to Milwaukee on the Hiawatha, southeast to Washington on the Capitol Limited or south on the City of New Orleans. If there is one essential route out of the Windy City, however, it is west on the California Zephyr.
This is the most iconic American railroad journey, because it mirrors the opening up of the West, including crossing the Rocky Mountains: you arrive in Denver in the early morning, seeing the Continental Divide in daylight. It is a 51-hour trip that passes through seven states, enabling you to experience almost the entire spectrum of topography the country has to offer.
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Once you’ve escaped the factories and suburbs of outer Chicago, you’ll be rewarded with truly spectacular American landscapes, from plains to the most rugged of mountains, down and across river valleys, up to the 7,000ft Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada mountains, a link that took the Central Pacific Railroad five years to build.
The lounge cars come with huge panoramic windows that wrap over into the roof, so you’ll be looking up at soaring peaks and hovering eagles. In season, seat demand is always high: first come, first served. There are talks by staff from the California State Railroad Museum (Reno-Sacramento section) and the National Parks Service (from Grand Junction to Denver). The train terminates at Emeryville, where shuttle buses connect with downtown San Francisco.
You can also take the equally impressive Southwest Chief, through Kansas City, Las Vegas, Flagstaff (where you can alight to travel by coach to the Grand Canyon) and on to LA. It takes 40 hours, again with National Park guides on board for the particularly historic/scenic sections. A typical fare for either trip starts at £92pp for a seat, plus £460 for a roomette sleeping two, or £630 for a family bedroom sleeping four. Sleeper tickets include all meals.
New York
Nobody, surely, needs persuading to spend a few nights in New York. For food, sports, arts, nightlife and all-round manic buzz, it can’t be beaten. It’s also home to Grand Central station, which has better connections than Don Corleone.
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To get to Miami, take the extremely civilised sun-seeking Silver Meteor via Washington. For the West Coast, catch the Cardinal or the Lake Shore Limited to Chicago, then hop onto the California Zephyr or the Empire Builder.
Alternatively, take the famously friendly Crescent: 30 hours from New York to New Orleans via Atlanta, passing through 13 states. After exploring New Orleans, you can catch the Sunset Limited to LA. That’s a brilliant way to cut a swathe through the USA.
Not every Amtrak journey has to be quite so epic, though, and there are a number of shorter options out of New York. One is the Acela Express, a high-speed train that stops at Penn station on its runs between Boston and Washington — a brilliant way to do a two-centre break, and to avoid flying into Washington’s Dulles airport, arriving at the city’s lovely, bustling Union Station instead.
My favourite shortish trip, however, is up the Hudson Valley. Three long-distance trains run these tracks: the Adirondack Express, which terminates at Montreal, that most fascinating of Canadian cities; the Maple Leaf, which heads for Toronto; and the Lake Shore Limited, into Chicago.
There is also the Empire Service, which travels as far as Niagara Falls, a seven-hour trip, hugging the gorgeous Hudson for the first part (sit on the left of the train), past historic houses and the hills and forests of the Catskills, before making a right at Albany and following the Erie Canal, with a mix of rural, industrial and post-industrial landscapes. Finally, it arrives at Niagara Falls, a workaday station. From there, it’s a £6 cab ride to the Rainbow Bridge. The falls are best on the Canadian side. A return from Penn starts at £72.
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If the falls are of no interest, the best bet is to take the Adirondack Express, which carries on north of Albany without turning west, through the charming horse country of Saratoga Springs, past lovely Lake Champlain and on into the stunning forests and lakes of the Adirondacks themselves. The trip to Montreal takes about 10 hours, so, although there is a lounge car (with talks from rangers between Croton-Harmon and Plattsburgh), there is no sleeping accommodation. A one-way ticket to Montreal starts at £38.
Los Angeles
California might be the home range of the automobile, but it is also the starting point for one of America’s great rail journeys. The Coast Starlight runs from LA’s lovely Union station, opened in 1939, and travels north through the bulk of California, up through Oregon and into Washington State, terminating at Seattle. It takes 35 hours, and tickets cost £60-£100 in coach in low season.
Passengers in the sleeper car — add about £135 for a roomette or £370 for a family bedroom — get access to the posh Pacific Parlor Car, which offers big-screen movies and candlelit evening drinks.
The train skirts the coast for much of the early section, in some cases almost touching the surf. It passes through Santa Barbara, threatening to dip into the ocean up as far as San Luis Obispo (site of Hearst Castle), where it swings inland. Aim for a seat on the left of the train for an ocean view.
If you are booking a bedroom, the rule for getting the best view is to take an even-numbered room north, and odd going south, but that’s not foolproof. Note that the larger family rooms (from about £350), on the lower deck, have windows on both sides.
After San Luis Obispo, the train enters the Horseshoe Curve, where it all but doubles back on itself — a popular time to be in the Sightseer Lounge car. Beyond that, you get vast acres of farmland, Oakland, San Francisco and, eventually, the rugged country of Oregon — although some of this will be traversed in darkness. On past the Columbia River, which is still used to transport logs on giant rafts, you’re into Washington State. Here you will see impressive scenery, with the likes of Mount St Helens, Puget Sound and the Cascade Range on dazzling display, before you reach Seattle at about nine in the evening of the day after you set out from LA.
If that is too epic, there is a shorter journey, taking about two hours from LA, on the Pacific Surfliner, which follows part of the coast in its central section, just south of San Juan Capistrano. It runs to San Diego, past Disneyland and on to hug the Pacific. San Diego itself, with several museums and a world-class zoo in Balboa Park, along with the restored Gaslamp Quarter, is well worth a few hours of your time. A return trip starts at a bargain £38.
Tickets: details of fares, routes and timetables can be found on Amtrak’s website (amtrak.com). Unfortunately, the days of the InterRail-style free-roaming, unlimited-stop passes are gone. Now, you have to book a pass that lasts a limited time and carries a fixed number of “segments”. You can cover unlimited distances, but every time you change trains, you use up a precious segment. A 15-day/eight-segment pass costs £240 for a reclining seat, 30 days/12 segments £358 and 45 days/18 segments £463. Under-16s travel half price.
You still have to reserve your seat for each trip, or upgrade to sleeper compartments, either at amtrak.com or by calling 00 1 800 872 7245. There are restrictions (passes are not valid on the Acela Express high-speed trains, or on trains in Canada); and be aware that if a train is busy, and seat prices have risen accordingly, you have to pay the difference between lowest (“bucket”) and current price, which seems rather unfair. This is likely to happen on busy routes in summer, so consider travelling in late spring or early autumn.
Tour operators: Great Rail Journeys (01904 521980, greatrail.com) and Page & Moy (0844 567 6625, pageandmoy.co.uk) offer escorted rail tours.
Further reading: John Pitt’s invaluable USA by Rail (Bradt £14.99); and check out American rail travel at seat61.com.
The best flights
If you are travelling by rail between two American gateway airports, an “open jaw” ticket allows you to fly into one city and out of another. These are usually no more expensive than a normal return (you’ll actually save money if you consider that you’d otherwise need an internal flight or a return train ride), and they’re far more convenient.
These prices are for May travel, from Heathrow (regional open-jaws typically cost more): into Chicago and out of LA or San Francisco, with American Airlines, British Airways or United Airlines, from £400; into New York and out of Toronto, with British Airways, from £500; into NYC and out of Miami, with Virgin Atlantic, from £550; into NYC and out of Boston, with Virgin, American, Delta, or BA, from £375; into LA and out of Seattle, with BA or American, from £636.Airline contacts: British Airways (0844 493 0787, ba.com), Virgin Atlantic (0844 874 7747, virginatlantic.com), American Airlines (0844 499 7300, americanairlines.co.uk), United Airlines (0845 844 4777, unitedairlines.co.uk), Delta (0871 221 1222, delta.com).