On trains, and America

[ceb]

Operation Do More Stuff is seriously considering a trip to the US this autumn, including crossing from New York to San Francisco by train. Besides the ever-useful Seat61 US train guide here: http://www.seat61.com/UnitedStates.htm I also found a handy list of all the intercity

Comments

[rysmiel]

New York is only most of a day on the train from Montreal, and Montreal is very nice.

[ceb]

I will add it to the list of places to consider :-)

[bellinghman]

I'd strongly concur on the Montreal recommendation.

[bellinghman]

North American rail is for freight.

Seriously.

We did the Toronto - Vancouver journey back in 2009, and most of the route is single track with passing loops a mile in length (which limits train lengths to that mile). Every time we met a freight coming the other way, it was us that pulled over and let the freight through

[ceb]

The trip out to Strasbourg is quite nice. We also did Strasbourg->Basel, but via a scenic Black Forest route (this request confused the station staff a bit).

You must must must visit the Tinguely Museum in Basel, it is fantastic: http://www.tinguely.ch/en.html

[bellinghman]

Oh, we've done the Tinguely. Just the once, but wow, what a place.

We'll probably do the French side rather than the German side, since we're actually staying just over the border from Basel in St Loius, so the line that goes down past Colmar to Basel SBB stopping at St Louis is more sensible than the one down through Freiburg to Basel Badischer. But we've done a decent chunk of the German side route, playing mobile phone bingo.

(Mobile phone bingo: take a compartment full of people, each with a phone, each registered to a provider from outside the region. In our case, two each of UK and Irish.

Now note the local providers that the phones pick up as the train moves. On the Rhine route, this may be French or German.

The first person to collect all known providers wins.

If no winner has been declared before the approach into Basel, Swiss providers get added to the mix.)

[shermarama]

One of the states with nothing there was Wyoming, though; as I recall it's only got a population of half a million in total. The question then becomes similar to the question of how people get around the Highlands of Scotland - i.e., not by train either because there's too many small places spread over a big area for a train to make sense. The services are rather more European between the big cities on the east coast, that is, where the population density is rather more like Europe's.

[ceb]

...but there are loads of trains in the Highlands! It's quite practical to get between lots of towns by rail:
http://www.projectmapping.co.uk/Reviews/Resources/Scotrail%20network%20FSR2008.jpg

[shermarama]

That's a preeeeeetty stylised map, for a start. (Perth, Aberdeen, Dundee and Inverness do not form a square, and the line it's showing from Inverness to Ullapool is a bus.) It shows that there are connections between the cities and the larger towns, sure, and between the smaller towns where they're on sensible lines between them, but it doesn't really show how much of the area of Scotland is not even vaguely reachable by train. That line that goes from Inverness to Thurso is a rattly little Sprinter that takes nigh on four hours to cover a hundred and ten miles, and the route hugs the east coast in a way that means that somewhere on the west coast up there could be easily seventy miles from a train line. There's nowhere else in the UK that's seventy miles from a train line, even if you include the Isles of Scilly. And yes, hardly anyone lives there, and that's why there's no trains, but I think what I'm saying is that that's also why there's no passenger trains to Wyoming.

[mair_aw]

I tried to get from West Glacier (Montana) to LA by train, changing in Oregon. Our 8pm train from W Glacier was nearly 12 hours late, so we had a cold night on the platform. Then we got transferred to a bus in Spokane, so instead of having a double-seat to myself with leg room and the freedom to walk around, I was squashed in a coach seat. Then we'd missed the every-24-hours connection South. Although they did very generously put everybody up in a hotel for the night to put them on the next day's train, I had a plane to catch in LA, and had only given myself 16 hours or so grace for delays, not 24, so I had to get another crowded bus instead in order to be sure and make it. That was a shame.

[ceb]

Meh, that sounds a bit rubbish. I'll make sure we get some slack built in to our timetable just in case :-/

[davefish]

That sounds like a very funky holiday!

[ceb]

It's going to be cool!