Riding the Rails

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Amtrak is quite an experience.

It seems that although trains leave their first point of departure on time, they rarely stick to the timetable thereafter. This is partly compensated for by the helpful cheerful attitude of the Amtrak staff, and being sure to allow some slack in your connections. At Buffalo we had several hours between connecting trains. Our conductor, Marty, suggested we take a taxi to the mall, go to the cinema and use the wifi in a cafe there.

Freight trains take precedence over passenger, and there are a lot of freight trains in North America. Thus, when we expected to board the sleeper train from Buffalo at 11.50pm, nobody seemed to thing it unreasonable that it was delayed until after 2am! It had been stuck behind a slow fright train. The train continued to travel more slowly than planned all the way to Chicago, often being held up by freight, so that we finally arrived 4 -5 hrs late. Although there had been wifi at the buffet on our train from Niagra to Buffalo, this train had none. Fortunately we were able to phone and text our host in Chicago to warn of the delay, and when we finally arrived our Airbnb was only 5 minutes walk from the station.

This sleeper train had a very funny layout. The roomette had seats which turned into bunk beds, and our own toilet with fold down washbasin above it. There was a seperate shared 'rest room' dining car and shower on the train.

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