An Amtrak Adventure
This is the adventure for library book readers!
I like trains. Having lived a lot of years in Chicago and Boston, where I could ride trains to work and to fun events - they are wonderful! The only reason people cling desperately to their car (expensive, dangerous, and terrible for the environment) is a lack of experience with trains. No insurance payments, no gas payments, no repair costs, no sitting in traffic, no parking hassle - you just relax and enjoy the ride. And of course, you get to read lots of library books!
And I have wanted to go on a long train trip for a while now. Without other big adventures planned for this summer, this was the time for an Amtrak adventure: the Empire Builder awaited! The Husband decided to go along too, so we hopped a train to Chicago, spent the night, then headed to Seattle, and back home. It was a pretty good adventure, that lasted about a week.
If you are thinking about a train adventure, here are a few photos and details to help you in your decisions!
As always, my pictures are tipped down on the right side. This was in a room in Union Station in Chicago, filled with graphics for all of the Amtrak lines. I was glowing with the excitement of being back in Chicago, and on the start of an adventure.
I have spent a lot of hours zooming around Union Station, and the nearby Ogilvie Station in downtown Chicago, but it’s been a while. The picture on the left is an overview of the station. This is the big room where people can wait for Amtrak and for Metra trains. It looks very fancy, and feels historic.
From their website: “An iconic building and a marvel of modern transportation for nearly a century, Chicago’s Union Station was originally designed by Daniel Burnham and completed by Graham, Anderson, Probst and White. A grand building worthy of the city’s status as a national railroad hub, it is a treasured part of Chicago history and a valued asset for Chicago’s future.”
If you want more information on Daniel Burnham, read Erik Larson’s book: The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America. “Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America’s rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair’s brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country’s most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his “World’s Fair Hotel” just west of the fairgrounds—a torture palace complete with dissection table, gas chamber, and 3,000-degree crematorium.”
One of the first questions everyone has asked is how the food was. It was fine. Not amazing, not terrible - fine. I got up and walked around the train a lot; I’m not great at sitting still for long periods of time. So I snapped a couple of pictures of the dining cars when they were empty.
The first picture on the top left is the mealtime coffee maker. There was coffee available all the time in our car, and refills on coffee at mealtime. For the poor tea drinkers, it was nearly impossible to get hot water. I didn’t realize asking for a second cup of hot water was a disaster in the making, but got yelled at by the first dining car attendant and was reluctantly handed a small paper cup of hot water by the second one - who was going out of his way to be helpful. I did not bring my JetBoil, because lighting fires in an enclosed space would have been dangerous. And there was probably a rule against it. I missed it very much!
We hopped on the train at 7:30 the first morning, and were immediately whisked off to the dining car for breakfast. We were in a Family Room, one of the fancy rooms. Being in one of these is very comfortable, and it also gives you three meals a day. Basically, our scheduled was: sit in our room and read library books, get up for a meal, back to the car for books, up for meals, etc. After two days of this, heading to Seattle, I was going a little bonkers from so much sitting - but it was nice!
You can see the photo of the dinner menu, and it never changed. Steak, chicken, salmon, or pasta. I never saw anyone eating the pasta. It was always three courses: salad, entree, dessert. Everything was very generously portioned. We brought snacks, but I spent most of the trip being a little too full. The next photo is of the chicken that I ordered one night. It was fine. The skin was too fatty, so I ended up pulling that off, taking most of the sauce with it. But - fine. The Husband ate steak at each meal, and also pronounced it as “fine.” I had the salmon on our last night, and it was…I’m struggling to come up with another word than fine.
Breakfasts and lunches were also the same each day, and also fine. The Husband ate omelets each day; I usually had oatmeal and fresh fruit (strawberries) and a container of Chobani yogurt. I ate the hamburger each day for lunch, and appreciated the fresh tomatoes, huge amount of lettuce (it was a little salad!), and the red onion. I tend to be about five minutes from home when I start missing fresh fruit and veggies; so this was welcome.
In the fancy rooms, you could also have your room attendant bring the food to you. We did that one evening, and it felt very fancy! When you were in the dining room, the attendants there were fussy about no one sitting alone. Everyone had to stand in the doorway until they called on you, and pointed you toward a table to share.
If asked beforehand, I think The Husband and I would both have indicated a preference for being stabbed in a non-vital body part, rather than sitting squished in at a four top table with strangers while we ate. But it actually was nice! We never sat with the same people twice, and everyone (nearly everyone) was interesting and enjoyable to chat with. One couple didn’t really want to talk with us, only with each other. No problem for me; I whipped out my phone and started reading my Kindle. One couple was…interesting. But not bad for the span of dinner. One night we ate with a couple of solo travelers. The woman we met there was great - our favorite person on the train. Weirdly, we then bumped into her in Seattle! I kind of wanted her to be my new best friend; but we didn’t exchange contact information. Train relationships are fleeting, by nature - lovely or not, they come to a close soon enough. The Husband and I both ended up being thumbs up to the forced seating!
Here are some of the train options. We watched a bunch of Amtrak videos before departing, and it they all emphasized how small things were. Of course, things have to be compact. I got that. But wow: things were smaller and more compact than I even anticipated! Most of the seats are coach, and I didn’t get any pictures of that. But: picture a train, filled with seats in rows. Yeah - that’s what it looks like. For sure, they are larger and more comfortable than first class seats on an airplane; but not necessarily a place you want to spend the night with strangers. But, the price can be affordable and it’s not terrible.
That room in the first photo is a bedroom. There is another chair, sitting facing the “sofa” area, and to the right is a toilet/shower. Yes: it’s the same space. I was not enthusiastic about sharing the limited airspace with a bathroom, when there are several available in the car and the adjoining cars. And once I saw this, I was definitely glad we skipped it - not much space at all. It’s for two adults. You can pull out the sofa at night, and pull down the upper bunk on top of the sofa back. It’s not the height of luxury, but it’s fine.
The next photo is a roomette. I was actually in one of these a few years ago, heading to Chicago. For that trip, it was perfect! Enough space to put my feet up and be comfortable - much more than a plane. If you were there overnight, you (or the car attendant) can pull the chairs together to make a lower bunk. Then an upper bunk folds down over that. We saw a lot of these filled with two people - and just thinking about it makes my claustrophobia start choking me. (Air! I need air!) Plus, someone has to travel backwards in these rooms, which does not seem ideal to me.
I walked around the train a lot, as I mentioned. And it was kind of a surprise when I stumbled onto the last car on the train! I waved to the tracks unfolding behind us. You can see the narrow hallways, with the bedrooms and the roomettes on the right side. I’m not naturally graceful, and the train did tend to bump and jerk around so standing and walking were a little challenging. I spent time banging into every wall I passed, ending up with a wide variety of bruises all over my arms and hips by the end of the trip. (I was in my doctor’s office the day after our trip. And the nurse who asks about your domestic violence fears - a very wonderful thing for them to do - calmly and politely asked me about the unusual bruises on my arms. I hastily explained about the train!)
It was so small in the train that it was hard to get a decent photo of our room. But we had The Fanciest Of Rooms! Only one per car, and I think only two (?) per train: The Family Car. This was great, because it goes all the way across the car, and you get two windows. (TWO!) That means no sharing, and also that no matter which side a cool thing is - you can see it. All the other cars only have one window. I believe the information said the room was seven feet long by five feet wide - a huge amount of space compared to everyone else. In that first photo, you can tell that we have a little “entryway” and a door that opens (and closes) to the rest of the car. We used that space to get up and walk in place, and do some stretching and strength exercises. (Sitting for two days is HARD!).
The Husband is modeling the two chairs on one end of the car, just like the roomettes. And we had plenty of pillows and blankets - another thing I had been worried about before we started. I’m sitting with my back to the wall of the car, and stretching my feet out across the sofa. Two days was a long as I could be in there, but it was actually quite comfortable! I believe I took two naps the first day, and even The Husband - famously a non-napper in nearly every situation - fell asleep nearly every day.
The beds folded out, and the netting on the top bunk was definitely a good idea. (I believe all the top bunks had that netting.) For all the romantic descriptions of the peaceful nights on the train - we both slept terribly every night. The train jerked and flew around corners. The first night, while I was sleeping I banged my head so hard into the wall that I was actually concerned about injury. (I was fine; just startled.) After several nights of this, we were both exhausted.
Make your reservations as early as possible, for the best price - because you are really going to want a Family Room if you can get it! Even alone, having the space to get up and change clothes, or move around, or just keep things pushed out from under your feet was an amazing gift. We made our reservations in early Nov, 2024 for our trip in mid-May, 2025, and managed to snag good prices.
And Amtrak also wants to keep you entertained on their trips! So there are the occasional “fresh air” breaks, where you can hop off the train. Oh, I loved these! The chance to stand on solid ground, and to walk around, was great. I’ve been to Minot, ND, and while I would not previously have described it as any type of paradise - the trains stop there for an hour! They are refueling, recharging, cleaning out the bathrooms, refilling water, and whatever else needed to happen. We were there once in the afternoon, where we could zoom outside the train station area and grab hot tea and coffee from an enterprising coffee stand person. The public library was just down the street, so I did enjoy zooming over there also, and did a quick tour. On the way home our stop was at night, so nothing was open - but it was still great to have the chance to walk up and down.
The bottom left photo is a National Park Service ranger! She left Seattle with us, and gave us information about the things we were seeing as we rolled through the Cascades. (We had a guy reading the same script on the way toward Seattle; but I missed that he was a ranger!) When she announced that she had NPS stamps for your passport book - I promise that I didn’t actually trample over small children and delicate old people in my stampede to get there! (I was a near thing though.)
There was a lot to see, and a lot of lovely mountains and other great things. The last photo, bottom right, was a ferry outside of Seattle. On my last trip to Seattle I was driving, and got to take my rental car - and me - on a ferry ride to get where I was going! It was definitely cool, and I really enjoyed it. We skipped any trains, busses, or ferries on this trip - opting strictly for the pedestrian lifestyle everywhere we went.
So if you are thinking about taking Amtrak on your own adventure: it’s fun! I was ready for all kinds of problems, but encountered essentially none. A lack of hot water was my biggest problem, and hardly anything even a dedicated hot tea drinker like me could complain about! (I was fine.) And I ended up reading a lot of library books - always the mark of a good trip! I brought all kinds of train themed books with me, so I could fully lean into the fun of the trip! My two favorite books ended up being:
Train: Riding the Rails That Created the Modern World-from the Trans-Siberian to the Southwest Chief “In his wide-ranging and entertaining new book, Tom Zoellner—coauthor of the New York Times–bestselling An Ordinary Man—travels the globe to tell the story of the sociological and economic impact of the railway technology that transformed the world—and could very well change it again. From the frigid trans-Siberian railroad to the antiquated Indian Railways to the Japanese-style bullet trains, Zoellner offers a stirring story of this most indispensable form of travel. A masterful narrative history, Train also explores the sleek elegance of railroads and their hypnotizing rhythms, and explains how locomotives became living symbols of sex, death, power, and romance.”
Night Train to Murder (Ishmael Jones Mystery #8) “When Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny are asked to escort a VIP on the late-night train to Bath, it would appear to be a routine case. The Organisation has acquired intelligence that an attempt is to be made on Sir Dennis Gregson's life as he travels to Bath to take up his new position as Head of the British Psychic Weapons Division. Ishmael's mission is to ensure that Sir Dennis arrives safely.
How could anyone orchestrate a murder in a crowded railway carriage without being noticed and with no obvious means of escape? When a body is discovered in a locked toilet cubicle, Ishmael Jones has just 56 minutes to solve a seemingly impossible crime before the train reaches its destination.”
What a fabulous trip!!