- The train is run by Amtrak (http://www.amtrak.com/) and goes from Seattle to Los Angeles (and vice versa) daily.
-It takes about 33 hours and runs pretty well on time most of the time - but not always. Freight trains have priority on the rail line and sometimes this means the Coast Starlight is delayed. (If people are picking you up, make sure they call Amtrak to find out if the train is on schedule. Or get them to check their email/text messages and keep them informed).
- There are actually FOUR Coast Starlights on the track at any given time. One at each end of the route, two in-between (one travelling north, the other travelling south). When I made the journey, we passed brother/sister Coast Starlights three times.
-There are ten complete rail crews.
- 27 stops. The route map on the Amtrak website shows them clearly. Most of the stops are only for about five minutes or less, but there are longer ones in places like Portland.
-You can make reservations on line. The Amtrak website is user-friendly. However, it will not give you the layout of the carriage so you can select from available accomodations/coach seating. For this, you need to either work through a well-informed travel agent or phone Amtrak directly. 1-800-USA-RAIL.
-Prices can vary a lot, depending on what time of year you travel and how far ahead you book.
-If you are booking a sleeper accomodation, you only pay for it once, however many people there are in the room. Two people in a roomette is only a few dollars more than one person in a roomette. (The cost of the basic fare, before the room is added).
-Your on-line reservation is not a ticket. You need to either get them to mail you your ticket, or pick up your ticket at the rail station, (There are very good automated machines that will print off your ticket if you don't want to stand in line).
- Look at the ticket to get accurate information on your reservation. For sleeper cars, car 1430 is nearest the dining room and other amenities. Followed by 1431, etcetera. If you have a bedroom accomodation, it will be identified as A, B, C, D. Roomettes are numbered 1-14, and be aware that those numbered 11-14 - while somewhat cheaper - are on the carriage's lower level. They are handy to the shower (also on that level), but they are noisier than the upper level roomettes. You can hear and feel the wheels right under you when you are sleeping. Upper level seats/bedrooms have a better view and are more private when you are passing through train stations.
- Generally, though, the train is remarkably well sound-proofed. With your door shut, you aren't bothered by the noise of people in the corridor or in the next room.
-If your luggage is big, it will either be checked through in the baggage car or put in the luggage rack in the lower floor of your carriage. Pack a small bag with everything you will need during the trip. Clothes, toothbrush, books, chargers, glasses - etcetera.
- The Coast Starlight has been in operation for nearly forty years and had several previous incarnations, when the west coast rail service was provided by different carriers (the Union Pacific, the Southern Pacific, the Burlington). One of the nice things about these passenger services being unified under Amtrak was that it enabled a continuous route. Previously you had to get off and change trains in a couple of places.
-Conductors are changed several times in the course of the journey, but not your Coach Attendant (in the old days called a "Porter"). He/She stays with you for the entire journey and soon gets to know your name, face and room number, if he is as good as mine was. (Cruz. He's been an Amtrak employee for 27 years and a Coach Attendant for twenty of them. He keeps winning good service awards).
-There are three places to get meals: the dining room, the cafe, and the Pacific Parlour Car (which is for sleeping car passengers only). The food is mostly pre-prepared in Amtrak kitchens that are not on the train, but things like omlettes and pancakes are cooked fresh in the train kitchen (right under the dining room),
- A lot of people seemed to love the train food. I found it processed and bland. (But if you have a sleeper car accomodation, all your meals are free - one breakfast, two lunches and two dinners). The menu in the Parlour Car tends to be spicier and more eclectic: For example, on the first night there was a curry dish. On the second night there was a spicy Buffalo meatloaf.
-The train has a rich history. It is worth googling Coast Starlight history and seeing what comes up.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Creative Trains
I agree with everyone who says it's a good time to begin thinking about trains - to bring them back and invent new ways of using them.
Amtrak has an auto-train option on its New York-Florida route, where you drive your car onto the train and then sit back for 900 miles. The motel and car rental industries might lobby against it, but wouldn't it be great if this was expanded? Save wear and tear on highways and on the environment. Save gas.
Trains - even high-speed trains like they have in Europe - will never be able to compete with the speed of air travel. But if trains were fully modernized, if people could use their time on the train as thinking time, writing time, away from interruptions, more people would choose them. Not necessarily just for holidays.
Some notes:
There was limited WI-FI on the Coast Starlight - only available on a limited basis, in the first-class-only Parlour Car. Things like that are simple enough and obvious enough to change. (By the way, my Blackberry worked nearly all the way from LA-Seattle. Except for a stretch through the Cascades. And - unlike being on a plane - I wasn't asked to switch it off).
There were electrical outlets in most of the coach seats, and in every sleeper room, good for keeping your laptop and your camera and your cell phone charged.
I saw some un-tapped opportunities on the train. For instance, I wanted there to be a Coast Starlight interactive radio, where I could plug in my ear phones and get well-produced information on the place we were passing through that very moment. (The National Parks volunteers in the observation car - along certain stretches - provided an informed commentary beautifully. Thank you, dear Volunteers! But there are only so many seats in the observation car. Many people didn't get to hear what they had to say. Audio accessible by ear phone, by lap top, by IPOD, would be terrific).
Culturally, historically, people who ride trains tend to want to get away from computers and gadgetry. They're more interested in meeting people in the community seating that still exists in Amtrak dining rooms. They want to enjoy the scenery. But there's room for everybody on a train. New generations of train riders want to be able to choose how much they tune in or tune out.
And in the winter, when days are shorter, there is a lot less passing scenery.(A good compensation might be a web site for each of the various train routes, with frequently asked questions, relevant links and video/ Too expensive? Get local high school students to help produce the material, drawing on their own community).
I don't want this to sound like a rant, but the more I think about it the more I realize there are so many ways train travel can become less off-beat, more relevant and current. More widely-used, to have a bigger conservation impact.
The Coast Starlight Communities Network has produced a paper looking at ways this particular train can be more, setting an example for other routes. It's called "The Coast Starlight: Improving America's Premier Long Distance Train". It's available on-line. (http://www.coaststarlight.net/)
Amtrak has an auto-train option on its New York-Florida route, where you drive your car onto the train and then sit back for 900 miles. The motel and car rental industries might lobby against it, but wouldn't it be great if this was expanded? Save wear and tear on highways and on the environment. Save gas.
Trains - even high-speed trains like they have in Europe - will never be able to compete with the speed of air travel. But if trains were fully modernized, if people could use their time on the train as thinking time, writing time, away from interruptions, more people would choose them. Not necessarily just for holidays.
Some notes:
There was limited WI-FI on the Coast Starlight - only available on a limited basis, in the first-class-only Parlour Car. Things like that are simple enough and obvious enough to change. (By the way, my Blackberry worked nearly all the way from LA-Seattle. Except for a stretch through the Cascades. And - unlike being on a plane - I wasn't asked to switch it off).
There were electrical outlets in most of the coach seats, and in every sleeper room, good for keeping your laptop and your camera and your cell phone charged.
I saw some un-tapped opportunities on the train. For instance, I wanted there to be a Coast Starlight interactive radio, where I could plug in my ear phones and get well-produced information on the place we were passing through that very moment. (The National Parks volunteers in the observation car - along certain stretches - provided an informed commentary beautifully. Thank you, dear Volunteers! But there are only so many seats in the observation car. Many people didn't get to hear what they had to say. Audio accessible by ear phone, by lap top, by IPOD, would be terrific).
Culturally, historically, people who ride trains tend to want to get away from computers and gadgetry. They're more interested in meeting people in the community seating that still exists in Amtrak dining rooms. They want to enjoy the scenery. But there's room for everybody on a train. New generations of train riders want to be able to choose how much they tune in or tune out.
And in the winter, when days are shorter, there is a lot less passing scenery.(A good compensation might be a web site for each of the various train routes, with frequently asked questions, relevant links and video/ Too expensive? Get local high school students to help produce the material, drawing on their own community).
I don't want this to sound like a rant, but the more I think about it the more I realize there are so many ways train travel can become less off-beat, more relevant and current. More widely-used, to have a bigger conservation impact.
The Coast Starlight Communities Network has produced a paper looking at ways this particular train can be more, setting an example for other routes. It's called "The Coast Starlight: Improving America's Premier Long Distance Train". It's available on-line. (http://www.coaststarlight.net/)
Monday, July 19, 2010
About Leaving and Arriving
I've been thinking about leaving and arriving. When I depart or arrive by plane, I feel like I've annihlated a place so quickly, so totally, it doesn't make sense. A sudden filing to memory.
I tried the train alternative to experience leaving and arriving in a more grounded way, so to speak, with time to create new memories and to reflect, all the features of geography slowly unspooling.
It was wonderful. Departing from the magnificent, eclectic Union Station in LA (an artifact from the 1930s), being pampered not harrassed. (If you have a sleeper booked, as I fortunately did, they treat you like a first class passenger and collect your ticket at the Traxx Bar, to the immediate right of the station entrance. They offer you juice and coffee - self-serve - gather up your luggage and whiz you through the station in a golf cart, all the way to the door of your carriage. The uniformed conductor and coach attendant standing on the platform, watching over the proceedings).
Arriving at the gracious station in Seattle, I saw my cousins' faces rushing towards me - not the impersonal wall of faces that first greets you at an airport.
I remember what it was like to leave a place or to arrive, when I was a child in the fifties. All dressed up and trotting by my mother's side. Mother striding in high heels, usually in train stations like this. A couple of times, when we'd travelled across the USA, we DID arrive in LA's Union Station. The high ceiling, the distinctive waiting-area seating, the patterns of tiles, everything exactly the same - and the original ticket counter (now sealed off and used only for movie sets) was in service then.
I live in Canada now, where the passenger rail infrastructure has largely been de-commissioned, and what's left is luxury-priced (I'm talking about sleeper service comparable to what I affordably had on the Coast Starlight).
It was a huge treat to discover that Amtrak has brought back the rail experience, preserved not exactly how it was (the meals no longer cooked fresh from scratch on the trains like they once were, for instance), but close enough to be memorable.
I tried the train alternative to experience leaving and arriving in a more grounded way, so to speak, with time to create new memories and to reflect, all the features of geography slowly unspooling.
It was wonderful. Departing from the magnificent, eclectic Union Station in LA (an artifact from the 1930s), being pampered not harrassed. (If you have a sleeper booked, as I fortunately did, they treat you like a first class passenger and collect your ticket at the Traxx Bar, to the immediate right of the station entrance. They offer you juice and coffee - self-serve - gather up your luggage and whiz you through the station in a golf cart, all the way to the door of your carriage. The uniformed conductor and coach attendant standing on the platform, watching over the proceedings).
Arriving at the gracious station in Seattle, I saw my cousins' faces rushing towards me - not the impersonal wall of faces that first greets you at an airport.
I remember what it was like to leave a place or to arrive, when I was a child in the fifties. All dressed up and trotting by my mother's side. Mother striding in high heels, usually in train stations like this. A couple of times, when we'd travelled across the USA, we DID arrive in LA's Union Station. The high ceiling, the distinctive waiting-area seating, the patterns of tiles, everything exactly the same - and the original ticket counter (now sealed off and used only for movie sets) was in service then.
I live in Canada now, where the passenger rail infrastructure has largely been de-commissioned, and what's left is luxury-priced (I'm talking about sleeper service comparable to what I affordably had on the Coast Starlight).
It was a huge treat to discover that Amtrak has brought back the rail experience, preserved not exactly how it was (the meals no longer cooked fresh from scratch on the trains like they once were, for instance), but close enough to be memorable.
A train, not a plane?
It takes a couple of minutes under three hours to fly from LA to Vancouver. Not counting having to be at the airport two to three hours before take-off, for security etcetera. Not counting the pile-up at the carousel and getting back and forth to the airport - usually far away.
It takes nearly ten times as long to make that journey by train.
Why would anyone choose to go by train?
This blog is for people who are wondering that, somehow feeling tempted.
It's about one particular journey and one particular train: The Coast Starlight. LA to Seattle (that's its entire route) July 4-5, 2010.
It takes nearly ten times as long to make that journey by train.
Why would anyone choose to go by train?
This blog is for people who are wondering that, somehow feeling tempted.
It's about one particular journey and one particular train: The Coast Starlight. LA to Seattle (that's its entire route) July 4-5, 2010.
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