My Amtrak trip to Key West. You won't believe.

Eddie,

Jet Blue  5 hours Portland to Fort Lautertail $282. 00 round trip

Gunny

Eddie, glad I was able to read about your trip.  As much as I like the NYC-Washington section of the NE corridor and would like to "consider" using Amtrak on such a trip to FLA, your experience and the fact that Amtrak generally must wait behind class 1 freight on many routes makes it an easier decision to fly or drive.  Stay safe and rest up for York.

Glad to hear you made it there safely. Snow? Yup, I heard about that. Certainly trees across the tracks are outside of Amtrak's control. Running a crossing and getting whacked? Again outside of Amtrak's control.

The food part sounds miserable. Note to self, pack extra food next time "just in case". I could be wrong, but I would assume they load on only the prepared food to be served based upon the people on board. Amtrak likely didn't have extra food to give out.

I like being on the train, watching the scenery and railroad infrastructure, and eating in the cafe car. As long as I'm not on a tight schedule the delays don't bother me, although nine hours is a bit much. In many years of riding trains in the Northeast Corridor, I have rarely encountered significant delays. And, in my opinion, any objections to a typical train trip pale in comparison to driving between Boston, New York City and Washington on I-95.

MELGAR

So 7/9 hours delay were not Amtrak's fault; beats spending a night in the airport.......

mwb posted:

So 7/9 hours delay were not Amtrak's fault; beats spending a night in the airport.......

Except he didn't get food for fifteen hours... Did they at least have drinks or snacks?

Sounds like business as usual with amtrak. If you want to be to your destination at even a remotely reasonable time. Don't take amtrak.

RickO posted:

Sounds like business as usual with amtrak. If you want to be to your destination at even a remotely reasonable time. Don't take amtrak.

That isn't always true, I have ridden the northeast corridor trains and have generally been on time. Flying the same route the flights are often delayed, spent a lot of time on runways and taxiways or at the gate. The long distance trains I won't argue, they are subject to a lot more room for delay, thanks to trains ahead of them, weather, etc. 

Eddie, consider yourself kind of lucky. I'll probably never take Amtrak again after my trip. If for just trading stories,  I'll catch you some time. The worst part was myself and 3 other large men ( I am not) had to pin down and physically restrain an idiot screaming while on some kind of drugs....my little kids saw it all....at 3am+/- !

When Dad and I did the Chicago - Emeryville 20 years ago, we arrived into Emeryville one day and 9 hours late. By bus.

Train made it into the mountains, then we sat for almost a day as a helicopter flew what I think was a bearing set to us after a failure of some sort. 

Got to the valley in California, then some problem reappeared and we waited another half day on a stopped train, until we saw a bunch of Taxis pull up and passengers started disembarking.

We first thought those Taxis were called by impatient passengers, but it turns out Amtrak taxied the whole train the last 60 miles or so to Emeryville.

At least OP got to finish the trip on an actual train.

Enjoy the Keys and the delays will fade into a dim memory! There are multiple tropical fruit drinks laced with various types of rum that when worked well in a blender, soon ithey will render a frozen concoction that will help you hang on.  Paraphrasing Jimmy Buffet here...   :-)

Except for the trees on the track, most of this could have happened to an air flight - delayed by weather and crime, running out of food.  

My problem with most people is they just don't know how to turn the unexpected into part of the adventure.

redjimmy1955 posted:

Eddie, consider yourself kind of lucky. I'll probably never take Amtrak again after my trip. If for just trading stories,  I'll catch you some time. The worst part was myself and 3 other large men ( I am not) had to pin down and physically restrain an idiot screaming while on some kind of drugs....my little kids saw it all....at 3am+/- !

Better that it happened on a train than on an airplane, I'd say.  

eddie g posted:

Also we went from lunch on the train to 3 am in the morning without getting any dinner . . .

Eddie, were you in a chair car or a sleeping car?  I don't completely understand the lack of dinner.  did they not have a "flex-meal" for you, or did the snack car run out of food, or did the Amtrak employee shut down the cafe car and disappear?

Eddie, your experience is exactly why I would never consider Amtrak for any long-distance travel to anywhere. And I like riding trains!

Byrdie posted:

Except for the trees on the track, most of this could have happened to an air flight - delayed by weather and crime, running out of food.  

My problem with most people is they just don't know how to turn the unexpected into part of the adventure.

Last summer my wife and I were booked to fly Dallas to Chicago for a wedding. Very long story short, there was bad weather in Chicago, nothing was getting through, and picking options and on advice of a ticket agent we decided to go through Rapid City, South Dakota, and then on to Chicago that evening. Got to Rapid City, but then had to wait several hours for the plane to arrive. When it finally did, about 7:30 pm, the pilot announced they were at the end of their crew day, and wouldn't be able to leave for Chicago until the next morning. (By the way, while we were waiting, I was talking to a gentleman who was trying to get to somewhere in South Carolina - his flight had been messed up, and he'd sitting at the airport since 7 am that morning!)  So we had to get an Uber and go into town, find a hotel and a place to eat, etc etc., then back to the airport early the next morning, and finally arrived in Chicago the next day, about 18 hours late. It was indeed an adventure.

We had 2 roomettes.

Eddie, I'm glad you arrived at the Keys safely!  Enjoy your time there and bring some warm weather back north with you!

The great sci-fi writer, Isaac Asimov would never fly - he only did long distances by train. He once observed “if you are going to travel by train, the first thing you must do is disabuse yourself of the notion of time”