While I love to travel by rail in Europe, my last experience until this weekend on a train in the United States happened when I was five or six years old when my entire elementary school got to ride the Amtrak from Shelby to Cut Bank, Montana and back for a field trip.
That trip was a big deal. The local newspaper covered it, and I believe a photo of my sister even made the front page of the local paper.
With a somewhat bizarre travel schedule and a desire to see Portland, I decided over the holiday weekend to experience Amtrak one more time, and it’s fair to say that I’d give the experience a mixed review.
What Amtrak got right
- For a short trip like the one between Seattle and Portland, travel by train likely takes as long as travel by plane when you consider the time you’ll spend in security and waiting in lines at the airport. Each leg of the trip was just around three years once we started moving.
- The price was excellent, less than $100 round trip on a weekend when the trains were 90% or more full.
- The staff was uniformly pleasant and eager to assist, even though they were clearly burdened by staffing challenges and some technical issues.
- The seats were reasonably comfortable, though certainly not luxurious. Plugins and a lap desk at each seat made it easy to get some work done, although the fold-down lap desks are just a bit too low for comfortable computer work.
- The scenery between Portland and Seattle is varied and interesting, with some real beauty in a few areas, especially when crossing the Columbia at the border.
- Both train stations were surprisingly nice, with echoes in their architecture of a time when rail travel was more common in the US. The Seattle station was less active and security kept people without tickets from entering, while Portland’s Union Station was a bit more bustling.
What didn’t work as well
- The train cars are certainly showing their age. While the utilitarian blue and grey color scheme hides some of the wear, seats, and luggage racks are smudged, dented, and even a bit dirty.
- Both arrivals were late, even though the Portland train left two minutes after schedule. Each leg of the journey arrived at its destination just over an hour later than scheduled.
- While bordering was efficient and we only left Portland two minutes late, the boarding experience in Seattle–on an equally full train–was entirely chaotic and delayed our departure by almost 30 minutes before the mechanical problem delayed us again for another thirty minutes.
- Amtrak, at least on this route, does not assign seating as is the norm in Europe. While that didn’t delay us from leaving Portland, it created a mess in Seattle, where passengers queued up 40 minutes before departure only to be sorted from that line multiple times by the destination city, by ticket class, and by the size of their traveling group. The resulting chaos, no doubt amplified by the lack of a PA system, frustrated and confused those of us in line.
But how was the ride?
The ride was fine, though, at times, the train was incredibly wobbly and loud. Whether you find the dull roar and turbulence of a jet or the screeching and rattling of metal on wobbly train cars more disturbing may depend on personal preference, though.
Would I ride again?
In the past, I have considered the idea of a long train trip across the US to write and explore the country, and I’d have to say that this experience has diminished my interest a bit. While certainly roomier than a plane, the train offered only adequate leg room and I think a long trip would get quite uncomfortable, with much sleep unlikely.
That said, I’d absolutely take short hops like the SEA-PDX route again. The price, convenience of avoiding airports, and relative comfort of Amtrak make it a bargain worth pursuing and if the US is ever going to get over its climate-busting reliance on small commuter jets, we need to revitalize rail.
