My experience aboard an Amtrak train

Late August of 2021 my father and I decided to take a ride aboard the Amtrak train. The idea came about after a late-night deep dive on YouTube, and after seeing countless travel videos we were inspired to take a ride of our own.

Amtrak was established 1971 and served in 43 states with a total of 21 routes. Today they have stations in 46 states and has grown to 33 routes across America. They offer coach and business seating as well as sleeper rooms for those traveling overnight. The train is equipped with a dinning cart which offers breakfast, lunch, dinner, and alcoholic beverages to passengers throughout the day.

Since both my father and I are less than willing to fly, we were excited to discover a new way of traveling cross country. Airplane travel, although it is fast, can experience extreme turbulence which gives us both anxiety. We live up in New England and when winters get harsh, it is nice to be able to escape to warmer climate. The three-day long road trip to get there is… less nice.

We booked our trip, Boston to Chicago then Chicago to San Antonio, packed our bags and waited until September 26th to board our train. We woke that Sunday morning, checked our tickets and that is when we saw the news. Saturday, September 25th an Amtrak train traveling from Chicago to Montana had derailed early in the morning. The derailment caused the death of three and injured many other aboard the train.

This is a tragic loss, and our hearts go out to those aboard the train as well as all their friends, family members, and everyone else impacted. It is not my intention to cheapen or lessen the extent of this tragedy by anything that is said next.

After hearing about the derailment, our excitement about boarding the train lessened greatly. Still, we made our way to the station and started to get checked in. We went inside Boston’s Back Bay station and after being told that there was no Amtrak assistance, we carried our four bags down two flights of stairs and waited on the dark and dank subway platform for our train. Since our ticket said to be an hour early to check out bags, even though our station apparently did not offer that service, we had plenty of time to befriend the pigeons and rats that kept us company while waiting to board.

Once the train arrived, we got in line to hand over our tickets. Unfortunately, the Amtrak employee had no record of us having a ticket to board and had to confirm our travel while we waited in between the train cars. Thankfully, they confirmed our booking, made up our room and brought us over to settle in.

Let me just run through a quick checklist on everything that went wrong before we even left the station:

• Amtrak detailed in the last 24 hours
• They did not check our bags meaning we had to keep all four bags that we brought with us in a 20 square foot room for 21 hours
• They could not find record of our booking. (But they certainly already charged my credit card the $900)
• No elevator available to carry our four bags down 2 flights of subway stairs.
• No security checked our person
• No security checked our bags
• No security checked our ID to prove that the ticket was truly ours.

After the train started moving it was steadily bumpy, but not overtly so. We grabbed some food, took our seats, and watched the trees as we rode past. It was a few hours of travel before we hit Albany and got a chance to walk around. As we took photos in front of the train, we met a very nice man who was heading to Chicago. He proceeded to tell us that he was in a plane crash that we saw on the news a few weeks back. After spending a few weeks in the hospital, he was proved the train ticket to make his way back home.

We boarded the train once more and headed to the dinning cart. As we ate, the man we had just met called over to us and said, “Hey! Did you guys hear about the derailment yesterday?” He then proceeded to say something that I will never forget.

“I sure hope lightening doesn’t strike twice…”

Not an hour later, the train ramped up speed to 80 miles and hour and it started getting rocky. At one point we hit a bump that actually sent me out of my seat. With high anxiety, we made our way to the food cart that had around 5 Amtrak congregating in. Our idea was to see if the employees seemed worried, that way we could gage our safety. When we brought up how rocky the train was the employee said, “Aw honey. It only gets worse form here.”

It is amazing the things you can accomplish when you think you are fighting for your life. Not 20 minutes later, we had booked an Uber, a hotel, and a rent a car at the next stop. We got off the train 18 hours prematurely and stayed in Syracuse, NY.

Many people have enjoyed the Amtrak train. I am not one of those people.