After a couple of enjoyable days in Denver catching up with friends, it was time for the main event. Malvin and I were completing our journey on the California Zephyr, this leg being 33-hours from Denver to the terminus at Emeryville, just across the bay from San Francisco. Along the way, the train passes through Colorado, Utah and …

We arrived an hour or so before departure at Chicago Union Station for the first leg of our ride on the California Zephyr, a 19 hour journey from Chicago to Denver. The hall was elegant, massive and felt strangely empty. We headed to the gates, only to find a line had already formed for our train. A security guard with a thick local…

After taking the Carolinian from Durham to DC, I spent four lovely days catching up with my friends in the capital, a place I have lived at various points in my life. I finally had the chance to visit the African American museum, which was moving and spectacular. As I tend to do whenever I’m in DC, I stopped at the Lincoln Memorial.…

On the scale of train travel fandom, I’d put myself at about an eight out of ten. I was never one of those kids who built train sets, although I liked watching them whenever we were stuck at a railroad crossing as a boy. My appreciation for traveling on trains came later in life, and is specific to long-distance leisure travel. (Sub…

Amtrak offers something called the “ USA Rail Pass ”, which is what I used for almost all of my train trip. It’s a bit like the Eurail Pass , except not as good. I mean, this is Amtrak we’re talking about: a federally-owned enterprise that is incredibly slow, boasting a sad and aged fleet, and chronically financially unstable. But s…