Across the USA by Train for Just $213

http://dereklow.co/across-the-usa-by-train-for-just-213/

by Amorymeltzer • 11 years ago

157 93 11 years ago

dereklow.co

linkydinkandyou2• 11 years ago

This woman with her feet on the window bothers me. How rude!

http://dereklow.co/content/images/2015/09/18-resized-1.jpg

JoeAltmaier5• 11 years ago

On the window frame. And the guy sitting next to her too.

linkydinkandyou2• 11 years ago

Whether its the frame or the glass, it's still impolite.

sschueller• 11 years ago

If you do that in Switzerland you will get yelled at by the conductor.

clamprecht• 11 years ago

I think in some cultures it's rude, in others it's not.

JoeAltmaier5• 11 years ago

Talk about meeting new people on a train:

"An hour later, at a small Nevada town, there was a scene of confusion as the train pulled into the station with police cars standing by. The police boarded the train and arrested my dinner companion on suspicion of possessing firearms."

On the other hand, its totally legal in Nevada to open carry; a permit is required only for concealed carry. So I'm wondering what the fuss was about.

ZanyProgrammer• 11 years ago

Amtrak presumably is under Federal, not Nevada, jurisdiction. Assuming it was a Federal violation.

JoeAltmaier5• 11 years ago

Unloaded in checked baggage has been legal since 2010. So he must have made a mistake, kept a handgun in personal baggage? Not worth 6 squad cars in my opinion. Maybe a kind reminder, and move it to his checked bag?

dogma11383• 11 years ago

Could be carrying arms across state lines, if they were NFA items it's a violation.

mindslight3• 11 years ago

I'd guess preexisting charges.

The time I took Amtrak cross country, my seat friend was "Ralph". He was nicely dressed, in the "import trucking" business, didn't like flying, and upgraded to a sleeper cabin with cash. The FBI got on at ABQ and started harassing people for their tickets. I was in the observation car at the time, but when I returned to my seat Ralph was still there! He had been hitting on the train attendant the whole time, and now she was giving him shit about the FBI's visit. He kept insisting they "just wanted to talk". I've no idea if he somehow successfully dodged them, or if they just wanted to scare him, or perhaps the train is a great place to do an exchange with an informant.

I'd imagine there's a lot of riff-raff (I use this word lovingly) on the train, because flying is hopelessly facist in the technical sense - eg that dance of responsibility that makes for the mandatory pervsearch. On the train you at least retain some skeleton of rights.

IMHO going West->East is the wrong way for scenery. All of the pretty geology up front, then flat nothingness for the remaining two thirds. At least this is my recollection of driving (I'm not even out of Colorado yet?!). Going East->West, there's a nice progression that keeps one entertained the whole time. But perhaps it's different to west coast native eyes as the green really starts filling in.

pavel_lishin2• 11 years ago

perhaps the train is a great place to do an exchange with an informant.

Not if all the passengers around them are aware of it.

specialp• 11 years ago

I would take this with a grain of salt as this man is known to plagiarize and make up content in his previous posts. Also given that he took a picture of everyone and everything you think he would not do anything in the world to get a picture of that scene?

hornd4• 11 years ago

This is sort of my dream, but every time I've checked prices they have been astronomical, upwards of, say, $800 to go from Emeryville to Florida (just a regular coach seat).

ipsin• 11 years ago

The $459 rail pass mentioned in the article seems like a good option (15 days, 8 stops), but you have to be in love with the idea of taking the train.

dogma11383• 11 years ago

Or be Sheldon Cooper.

hornd4• 11 years ago

Yea I didn't know this existed! Looks great.

sirtaj• 11 years ago

It's possible that it gets cheaper in winter. My wife and I did exactly this trip but around christmas-time and it was fantastic. IIRC we paid a similar price but for the little cabin instead of the chair car.

A lot of American friends were surprised we were doing this - they had this idea that it would be uncomfortable and boring. They just couldn't have been more wrong. Between the comfortable room-ette things, often very friendly and varied fellow travellers, surprisingly tasty food and absolutely amazing scenery, it's a fond memory.

Of course, we scheduled in plenty of time - if you need to be somewhere punctually, Amtrak is not really your best bet.

dogma11383• 11 years ago

Unless you buy a flexible ticket it's much closer to 300, y you can go on amtrak and check it now, I see a 321 option with 3 trains :)

hornd4• 11 years ago

I guess I stand corrected. I was just looking at this last week and I would swear the prices were in the $800 range, although it's possible I'm going crazy.

smackfu• 11 years ago

One tricky bit with a one-way train journey like this is that the train travels all night. So roughly 1/3 of the scenery you go through, you won't be able to see at all. If you have something in particular to see, like the badlands, it might only be visible going eastbound and not westbound.

JoeAltmaier5• 11 years ago

Agreed. Unless you're parked in a railroad yard for 10 hours waiting for an engine, like we were. Feels pretty vulnerable; not a place I'd choose to sleep normally.

On the plus side: I can say I've slept in an abandoned rail car on a siding now.

jobu• 11 years ago

Sadly this is very common. The freight companies own the rails, and if there's ever a route conflict their trains get priority over passenger trains. This means long delays in shitty railyards, and you have no way of making an itinerary.

VLM• 11 years ago

I've taken the chicago-NY route he mentions in the story. He has no pix because its dark both ways. The eastbound leaves around late dinner time in CHC (no point eating before boarding) and arrives before lunch in NYC, and westbound leaves NYC in mid-late afternoon right before lunch hour and arrives around rush hour in CHC. Unless they've changed schedules again. So the time "cost" of taking the train isn't 12 hours vs 3 hour flight (+ 3 hours for security and boarding + an hour each side cab ride... wait suddenly the train isn't that slow after all) The cost of taking the train is you sleep aboard and lose like a quarter of a day of awake time, its nothing. And its a REALLY good working environment.

Three points of advice regarding the "expensive" sleeper car: You pay for food unless you get an expensive sleeper, in which case meals are free. Suddenly that room is not so expensive. A hotel out in the burbs or even in a recreational area is cheap, making the sleeper car look expensive; however I'm avoiding staying in NYC or CHC for a night, and hotel rooms downtown are very expensive, suddenly the sleeper is looking like a good deal. Finally the station in CHC and NYC is right downtown. I've gone to business meetings and training in CHC literally two minutes walk from the station, suddenly not paying for a cab to/from Ohare and pay parking for my car at the airport is making the sleeper car downright cheap... As a room a sleeper car is expensive, as a total systemic cost of the overall trip from home front door and back again, its probably cheaper to take the train with a sleeper cabin than to fly.

falsestprophet• 11 years ago

Chicago is abbreviated CHI, not CHC

You may have seen CHC in baseball

CHC is the Chicago Cubs

CHW is the Chicago White Sox

CHC is also Christchurch, New Zealand which looks lovely

codingdave• 11 years ago

That is one of the nice parts about the schedule of the California Zephyr - both directions give you the mountains of Colorado during daylight. In the winter you might miss some of Utah's desert because of the shorter days, but you get at least a taste of it. And you end up sleeping through most of Nebraska in both directions as well. Nothing against Nebraska, but it looks much the same as Iowa, so a half day of looking at farms in Iowa is enough - no need for 8 more hours of it in Nebraska.

I've lived in various locations on that route for most of my adult life, and take the train often enough that the conductors are starting to remember me.

ck2• 11 years ago

This looks fun.

However given how congress is trying to defund everything, the infrastructure this runs over is probably dangerous as hell.

PLenz• 11 years ago

For the most part Amtrak runs on rails owned and maintained by private companies. Plenty of exceptions - especially the Northeast Corridor - but the vast majority of track is outside government control.

AnimalMuppet2• 11 years ago

I would say very few exceptions, other than the the Northeast Corridor. There are some tracks in a few other places (LA and Chicago, mainly) owned by commuter rail authorities, but so far as I know, the Northeast Corridor is the only real intercity line not owned by a private company.

bmiranda• 11 years ago

Railroads in the US are privately owned, for the most part.

austenallred3• 11 years ago

When I lived as a poor vagabond couch-surfer in China, I did almost 100% of my traveling by train.

I'm convinced there's no better way to travel.

When you travel by airplane, you're pretty much rapidly moving from huge city to huge city. You miss everything in-between, from the terrain to seeing how people outside of the cities live.

Even driving from one place to another, you're confined to the freeways. You see a little bit more, but you're still in this weird world which was built around the freeway.

When you travel by train, however, you follow the lay of the land. That takes you into some interesting, fascinating places. Combine that with the fact that you can get a sleeper car and food, and it's an entire experience, not just a rush to get from point A to point B. I spent most of my time reading and looking out the window. It's bliss.

ksk• 11 years ago

How is a train better than a car in this regard? You don't have to take the freeway if you don't want to.

tkinom• 11 years ago

You don't have to drive?

If just yourself, driving 3000 miles cost more time, $, mental energy.

enraged_camel• 11 years ago

It's several orders of magnitude safer, for one thing.

drzaiusapelord• 11 years ago

Even driving from one place to another, you're confined to the freeways.

Plane to train is also the same as train to car.

The US has all sorts of non-expressway routes that are fun to drive and you see so much culture, culture you can actually stop and interact with trivially. For example, the classic Route 66, which you can still drive today. Or make your own routes with all this fancy GPS stuff we have today.

There's something wonderful about cars that I think we're going to miss as we continue to urbanize and move into self-driving taxi's or other exotic tech. The few long drives I've take out of the city have been very pleasurable.

CWuestefeld2• 11 years ago

My wife and I always do this with pleasure trips. For a premium of 10%-20% time versus the Interstate, you can see and experience so much more.

One of my favorite things is to stop and photograph the crumbling remains of past glory. I've got a vague idea of collecting the works together into a show or book, trying to illustrate the fleeting nature of our dreams.

wcummings• 11 years ago

You also get to see a lot of freight trains.

deskamess• 11 years ago

Best paragraph starts with "An hour later, at a small Nevada town, there was a scene of confusion".

Wonderful write up.

nkrisc2• 11 years ago

The photo captioned as a view from the Willis Tower is actually from the John Hancock, you can see the Willis Tower on the right side of the photo.

However, very cool, and has perhaps inspired me to make the same trip one day.

lotharbot• 11 years ago

the photo of downtown Denver was taken from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, looking across Ferril Lake. I have a 60x40 print of a photo my brother took from the same spot [0] hanging on my living room wall.

I was a little surprised he spent 2 days in and around Denver, but didn't post any photos of Red Rocks [1].

[0] https://instagram.com/p/3Rvfxvo6Ye/?taken-by=gerry_darrow is a slightly-cropped version.

[1] http://redrocksonline.com/about/photos

agox• 11 years ago

I had the exact same thought when I saw that.

prezjordan4• 11 years ago

I wanted to enjoy this post, but I couldn't help but wonder what was plagiarized[0] this time around. Perhaps it was a stupid mistake back then, but tough to look past it.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/2huw34/what_its_...

EDIT: Looks like a lot of it. Sigh.

jzwinck• 11 years ago

Strangely the article about trains had a big ad for the article about Singapore Airlines at the bottom. I had a hard time remembering if this was the guy who originated that content or ripped it off. Thanks for the refresher...it's surprising this guy seems to be proud of the content he stole, even now.

gk101• 11 years ago

Yup it's the same dude that ripped it off

united893• 11 years ago

Doing a reverse google image search seems like he googled for lots of train trips and combined photos from various sources. He's a great marketer, but bad photographer.

* http://landscapevoice.com/the-california-zephyr-trip-recap/

* http://wheresmybackpack.com/2012/08/16/i-survived-the-lake-s...

A number of the images are direct copies from the first link (ie: sleeper car pictures)

The Lakeshore limited image was awkwardly cropped (to remove watermark) from the second link. Side by side: https://i.imgur.com/hu9viqf.png

The dining car photo came from: http://www.baune.info/train.html

Another dining car photo came from: https://akronrrclub.wordpress.com/tag/cleveland-amtrak-stati...

The Emeryville station came from: http://subwaynut.com/california/amtrak/emeryville/emeryville...

sanderjd• 11 years ago

Ha, I wanted to say something like, "what a shame that this guy can't escape this infamy", but sure enough, 5 or 6 of those images are the same. Pretty confusing to me, because it seems like he did the trip and presumably could have used his own images – what's the point of this?

prezjordan4• 11 years ago

He also posted this to Medium, so hopefully they can do something about it. https://blog.growth.supply/across-the-usa-by-train-for-just-...

I went ahead and wrote to the author of the post you linked, and also reported the post on Medium.

EDIT: The author of the post you linked above got back to me. These photos were used without her permission.

prezjordan4• 11 years ago

It's gone :)

https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/11230907

Simulacra2• 11 years ago

If you're interested in reporting him to UC Berkeley for plagiarism and generally conduct unbecoming of a Berkeley student, here is the link:

http://sa.berkeley.edu/conduct/report

frodopwns• 11 years ago

It will only take 8 days with all the delays and derailments. Oh and you can't bring your dog.

seltzered• 11 years ago

I've done the pacific starlight from SF to Portland/Seattle a couple times over the years, and while I love the scenic-ness of the train, I felt like the author painted a bit too rosy of a picture of the amtrak.

Here's my anecdotal list of downsides of amtrak train riding:

- People will talk on their cell phones in the cabin despite the rules. You wouldn't think this a big annoyance, but it gets annoying after several hours.

- Amtrak cars can have issues - I spent 12 hours in one with a door that kept opening and closing making a huge 'clunk' noise every 30 seconds. A passenger finally figured out a way to make it stuck open.

- Watch your stuff, Things can and will get stolen - particularly in areas where there's multiple close stops (e.g. the stops near seattle) - last time the person in the seat in front had their smartphone stolen while they took a brief break in the snack car.

- The co2 savings compared to flying depends on the actual route and timing - I have to point this out because amtrak does market themselves a bit on co2 savings - I calculated this once between flying and taking the train from seattle to spokane, and after factoring in the need to stay at a hotel an extra night for the train along with it's non-direct route, the co2 difference was negligible. Here's my math for those curious: https://i.imgur.com/zTHfSB8.png

- Certain trains are historically, tragically slow - amtrak has a website logging the timeliness of trains, typically 70% on time for a long train is on the good side.

This said, I do want trains to be more of a thing here - I've had great experiences with the ones in europe, wish the pioneer train ( http://pioneertrain.org ) and ski train ( http://www.skitrain.com/ ) make a comeback, and prefer taking the business class amtrak trains for shorter trips over flying or driving. Plus you can pack a folding bike like a brompton on amtrak just by tossing it into the overhead compartment.

More: here's a blog of someone traveling the us by railpass: http://railpass.tumblr.com/

coldtea4• 11 years ago

If you want to see tourist America, rent a Cadillac, get on Route 66 and stop off at a few cutesy diners and motels. If you want to see the real America in all its spectacular, crazy, kooky glory, get on the train.

I call BS, and am wondering if he has indeed taken Route 66, or just telling some vague impression he has of what it would be to do so.

I've travelled Route 66 several times (and highway 1, Highway 61 -Louisiana to Canada-, Route 50, coast-to-coast several times, and several other long road trips for decades).

There's nothing "touristy" about Route 66, with the exception of a few small towns along the way with shops living off of the Route 66 travellers.

Considering the whole 2.500+ miles journey, those are a negligible part of the way. And even those few places are not touristy in the Las Vegas or Miami sense, but more of a decadent, quiet "that's what we've got from our past, and we preserve it and tout it to help make some bucks" sense.

And there's nothing (unlike on a train) that stops you from talking small roads and alternate routes to explore nearby smalltowns and counties.

panglott• 11 years ago

America isn't America without the occasional interlude of kitschy Americana.

lanaius• 11 years ago

My wife and I did Route 66 from Chicago to St. Louis; that's enough for me. When I lived in LA for a time we meant to hit the end of 66 in San Bernardino but never did.

coldtea4• 11 years ago

I think the best parts of the Route are those going through TX, NM and AZ.

Though I say that as somebody for whom those "western"/rocky/deserty looking places were extra enchanting and unfamiliar. So, if you're from the midwest in the first place, I guess it's not the same experience.

When I lived in LA for a time we meant to hit the end of 66 in San Bernardino but never did.

The "official" end is in Santa Monica (right before the pier), with a memorial plate for the guy they named the highway after etc.

sandworm1013• 11 years ago

I couldn't help but compare this to my experiences of driving coast-to-coast. Note that about half of the article and far more of the words are dedicated to the first day. The second gets some space, but the third and fourth are barely there. What little there is is all about things other than the view. That very much mirrors my memories of my drive (vancouver-seattle-boston x6, mostly all i090/94).

In short: The coastal and rocky mountains are interesting. But after that the US is flat flat flatter and more flat. That first Midwestern wheat field is cool, but numbers 2 through 15239 are not. At least during the nights I'd see some deer. I remember driving for five hours without even touching the clutch. Then you hit the hills of the east coast. Wow. A tiny gravel river. A rusty old mill. If I run through my memories of the drive, the west is filled with images of places and people. The east is filled with traffic, gray concrete and rusty bridges. If I were doing this for fun I'd have turned around and repeated day one.

The west: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:I-90IDWallace.jpg (note the bend in the road)

The middle bit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LaCrosseCountySignI90.jpg (note the pickup truck)

The east: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:I-90_west_in_West_Seneca_... (note the traffic)

DanielBMarkham• 11 years ago

You should have went East to West. Probably similar impressions, only the other way around. :)

I've found that each vertical slice of the country has it's best parts. I love the hill country in Texas, the painted desert in NM, the Great Lakes, the Louisiana bayous, New England meadows, the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The real problem here is that it is very difficult to take one trip and hit all of these points while traveling.

sandworm1013• 11 years ago

I did. I was driving to and from school on the east coast. (Doing this meant I didn't need to transfer my car to the US.) The biggest difference in driving direction was the sun. I don't know why, but sunrises always seem shorter than sunsets. Heading east is therefore easier than west because you spend less time with the sun in your eyes. The change in timezones also made heading west 6hours faster, partially explaining the longer sunsets.

pessimizer• 11 years ago

I've taken this trip before; round trip between Chicago and SF for an Erlang course. It's so beautiful (at almost every point along the SF to Salt Lake leg described here) that sometimes after coming around turns, you'll hear the entire carriage audibly gasp in awe about the new scenery. Strangers talk to each other a lot - it feels as much like a ride as a trip.

sandworm1013• 11 years ago

Worth noting re US train travel: "Based on data spanning the period 2004-12, for example, to expect one transit-related injury, a passenger would need to ride the French railroad for 4.9 million miles or the German railroad for 4.1 million miles. Yet he would need to ride America's railroads for only 84,300 miles, on average, to sustain one injury."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32694447

84k miles isn't very far. This was a 3400mile journey. So you are likely hurt/dead after doing this 25 times in the US, or 1500 times in Germany.

The numbers are a bit of an exaggeration as many US train deaths involve non-passengers (ie at train crossings) but I think my point stands. Train travel, US trains in particular, is not as safe as it may seem.

jacalata• 11 years ago

I think it's kind of nonsensical to conflate injuries of people not on a train with the likelihood of injury while riding on a train, sorry.

dalke2• 11 years ago

The statistics are at http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub... .

Eyeballing, it looks like 10 fatalities per 100 million passenger train-miles and about 1,300 injuries per 100 million passenger train-miles.

That's indeed ~1 injury per 100,000 passenger miles. And "Passenger fatalities and Injured persons include passengers on trains only"

Looking at http://safetydata.fra.dot.gov/OfficeofSafety/publicsite/Prel... , for 'Annual Report 2012 – Preliminary', Table 1-3, and picking 2010 as representative:

       41 non-fatal conditions for Train Accidents
          Excluding Highway-Rail Crossing (HRC) Incidents
      112 non-fatal conditions for Highway-Rail Crossing (HRC) Incidents
    1,213 non-fatal conditions for Other Incidents, Excluding HRC

I can find that "Other Incidents" means "not train accidents or crossing incidents" ... but I don't know what that means. Knife fights in the observation lounge? A high incidence of getting drunk, falling, and knocking oneself on the head? Do the European numbers use the same categories?

If we leave out that large but unknown category, it looks about 10x safer than the numbers sandworm101 gave. Still worse than Germany by a factor of 5.

arethuza• 11 years ago

My father was in the UK RAF in WW2 and for some reason had to cross the US by train from Florida to Hollywood - he always spoke very fondly of that trip.

[NB He was always rather vague as to why he had to cross the US by train, but in between stints in North Africa, Arctic Canada and the Bahamas he seemed to have an interesting war]

goodcanadian2• 11 years ago

I've done the much shorter 12 hour trip from Prince George to Prince Rupert, British Columbia followed by the similar length ferry trip through the inside passage to Port Hardy on Vancouver Island. The scenery on both are absolutely incredible, but I still got bored. Twelve plus hours of good scenery is just too much no matter how beautiful it is. That said, I still hope to one day take the railway clear across Canada and/or the trip across the U.S. and/or the trans-Siberian railroad. However, I will make certain to have substantial stopovers to break up the journey. I will also make certain I have plenty to read or write or code; I do think it would be an ideal place to work. Hack across America, anyone?

Simulacra2• 11 years ago

Interesting but one big question: Showers?

tlianza• 11 years ago

I did something similar, but on a few legs spent the extra money for a sleeper.

For those who are interested: http://lianza.org/blog/2015/05/15/on-traveling-cross-country...

Across the USA by Train for Just $213

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