Seeing America by Train

Nobody tells you which direction to book. That one decision changes everything.

The southbound Coast Starlight passes the foot of Mount Shasta at about a quarter to one in the morning. Going the other way, the same train is in the same country at five, with the mountain coming up out of the dark while you eat breakfast.

Same railroad. Same fare. Same seven-hundred-dollar room. One radio button on a booking page that gives you no reason to think it matters.

That is the problem with almost everything written about American train travel. You can find a thousand photographs of a roomette and almost nothing that answers the questions you actually have: what does it really cost, where is the bathroom at two in the morning, which side of the train should I be on, how late will it be, and can two grown adults share a compartment the size of a closet for two days and still be married at the end.

Seeing America by Train answers those questions in the units you think in - left, right, o'clock, dollars, and stairs.
Written by a traveler with nothing to sell you at the far end, this is a complete, current, plain-English guide to Amtrak long-distance travel for people who are not railfans. You will learn how to choose a direction so the canyon happens in daylight instead of at two in the morning; how to name the side of the train you want in a way that stays true in both directions; what a roomette actually is, where the toilet is not, and when the Bedroom is worth the difference; why the fare moved four hundred dollars between Tuesday and Thursday and what to do about it; how much slack an itinerary needs on a route that delivered fifteen percent of its passengers on time last June; and exactly what to say to a conductor four hours before a connection you are going to miss.

Inside you will find:

• Five reusable tools - the Doorless Question, the Two-Night Test, the Daylight Audit, the Compass Rule and the Slack Budget - that work on the California Zephyr and on a night train out of Vienna
• Route-by-route guides to the California Zephyr, Empire Builder, Southwest Chief, Coast Starlight, Sunset Limited, Texas Eagle, Lake Shore Limited, Crescent, Cardinal, Silver Meteor, Floridian and Auto Train - with direction verdicts, compass sides, daylight windows and the one thing a first-timer would not know
• A three-bag packing system built for a room with nowhere to put a suitcase
• A frank chapter on traveling with a body that has opinions - stairs, berths, the two a.m. walk, medication, CPAP and oxygen rules, and the four questions to ask Amtrak by telephone, word for word
• Scripts you can read out loud for the dining car table, the conductor, the station agent and the change-and-cancel phone call
• The Delay Playbook for the four kinds of trouble, and what Amtrak actually commits to
• A one-day dress rehearsal that tells you, for about one percent of the cost, whether a transcontinental is for you