Amtrak memories
and how to take the train with an infant
We took Amtrak from Chicago to Memphis for our new year break, and booked a room as 2 adults and an infant (infants ride free, as you’d expect). I’ll take this opportunity to talk about some of my Amtrak trips over the years, and at the end I’ll have some thoughts on traveling with an infant on Amtrak.
I should start out by saying that Amtrak is very bad at trains by international standards, and we should demand better. You can read below about why we should have high-speed rail in the Northeastern corridor of the US (at least).
But I would say that my Amtrak trips have been a lot more enjoyable than my plane trips.
St. Louis-Memphis
When I was going to college in St. Louis and traveling to and from home in Memphis during breaks, I usually found that the flights were unreasonably expensive. I used to think that this was because Memphis was a hub for Northwest1, but now I’m not so sure. Anyway, I didn’t fly too many times between St. Louis and Memphis.
I tried Greyhound at least a couple of times. But once, there was a missed transfer that left a crowd of travelers stranded at a McDonald’s an hour away from St. Louis. I didn’t have a cell phone then, and if I didn’t have a friend who was traveling on the same bus (this was unplanned!), and if that friend didn’t have a cell phone, and if that friend didn’t have another friend who was in St. Louis with a car, I don’t know what I would’ve done. And I haven’t gotten on a Greyhound bus since2.
So I think more than half of my trips between St. Louis and Memphis were on Amtrak, which actually doesn’t have a direct service between these 2 cities. There’s a shuttle bus from St. Louis to Carbondale, Illinois, and the City of New Orleans train (which goes Chicago-Memphis-New Orleans and you’ll hear more about below) gets you to Memphis.
Usually the whole trip takes place at night, and it’s not particularly scenic or memorable, other than maybe seeing the Pyramid in downtown Memphis at dawn when we arrive3. But one time, I happened to sit next to another Japanese guy who was traveling alone. This is before I spent much time in any American city with a large number of Japanese/Japanese-American people, so this was fascinating. We talked for a while, then decided to go to sleep, which for me involved putting on my earphones and listening to music on a CD player, which led to us talking about what kinds of music we listened to4.
Seattle-Oakland
After St. Louis, I was in grad school in Seattle, and did take Amtrak to Vancouver once, but that’s a pretty short trip. What was more interesting was the train I took down to Oakland when I was transferring to UC Berkeley.
Coast Starlight takes a full day to go from Seattle to Oakland. So this was my first experience spending that much time on a train. And this was my first experience with the dining car, which I think is the best thing you could do on a mode of transportation in the US5. The food itself isn't that great, but you get to eat at an actual table, and—crucially—if you’re a party of 1 or 2, they will seat you with strangers.
If you know me in person, you know that I’m not particularly outgoing. But these dinner table conversations have been invariably nice. The reason is probably because everyone is so relaxed on those long train rides. Here’s a quote from an article on crossing the US on Amtrak:
The most unifying characteristic of my fellow passengers was not age (although, as a rule, the sleeping cars skewed retired), race (very mixed), income (while sleepers are astronomically priced, coach seats can be downright economical for shorter segments) or even fear of flying (no one I spoke to had it); it was their relaxed, easygoing, train-lulled contentment. To opt to travel long distance via Amtrak — a method deemed “on time” just 71.2 percent of the time by its own generous metric — is to say: As long as I get there eventually, I’m satisfied.
And I’m sure I spent the bulk of my time in the lounge car, which is usually the most relaxed place on the train.
Los Angeles-New Orleans
I didn’t take Amtrak for a while after this, as I got my Ph.D. and did a couple of postdocs. It was in 2017, when I was done being a postdoc and moving to Chicago, jobless and responsibility-less, that I figured it’d be a good time to do a cross-country train ride. This trip started with the US Go Congress in San Diego, flying up to the Bay Area for a wedding at a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home in Orinda, then flying down to LA to start the big train ride.
It would’ve been simpler to do a train ride to Chicago from either San Francisco or LA, but I wanted to meet up with my parents in Memphis so we could drive up to Carbondale for the total solar eclipse6. Getting my first trip to New Orleans was a big bonus. And yes, planning this trip was like solving a puzzle.
Sunset Limited takes 2 days to go from LA to New Orleans. I’m guessing it’s the least good cross-country Amtrak line in terms of the view—I remember the Sonoran Desert at dawn, and the US-Mexico border around El Paso, and that’s about it. What was again most memorable was the dining car. The train was in west Texas, and I’m having dinner with a middle-aged man. He was an Alabama farmer, which I probably haven’t even met at any other time. When he found out I was Japanese, he mentioned how all his neighbors use John Deere tractors because that’s what Alabama farmers do, but he has a Komatsu because he thinks it’s better.
These are the kinds of people who take the train.
New Orleans-Memphis
After a few nights in New Orleans, it was time to go up to Memphis. This part of the City of New Orleans route happens in daylight, and I again spent a lot of time in the lounge car.
Here comes the Memphis BBQ recommendation segment. I posted this on Facebook a few months after the train ride:
Scene
Amtrak lounge car, heading north from New Orleans. A bachelorette party of about 10 women is going home to Memphis, still drinking wine and playing games. Two sorority girls join in for a conversation.
Sorority girl 1: "So we've never been to Memphis, and we wanna try out some barbecue. Where should we go?"
*Commotion*
"Ooh, Central!"
"Payne's! Payne's!"
"What about the Commissary?"
"I think A&R is the best."
"The Commissary is good, but for MEMPHIS barbecue?"
Sorority girl 2: "I really want a good one, because I'm from Kansas City..."
*More commotion*
I actually haven’t been to Payne’s yet, but I can vouch for the rest.
Chicago-Memphis
This is about the trip we just took. We booked sleeper rooms on the City of New Orleans. This was my first time getting a room—I rode coach on all previous Amtrak trips, so at night I’d sleep on a chair, surrounded by strangers.
Our first train was delayed by 3 hours because, well, Chicago. This had 2 significant effects:
We got to spend 3 hours in the lounge. This was Christmas night and nothing was open in the station, but the lounge had snacks, which admittedly was pretty basic. This was a nice surprise as I wasn’t really aware beforehand that getting a sleeper room came with this perk. Only major stations have lounges, though.
Instead of arriving in Memphis at 6AM before breakfast, we were still in southern Illinois at sunrise. This meant we got to see some snowy landscape from the lounge car as we leisurely had our breakfast.
Now I’ll end with my thoughts on taking Amtrak with an infant.
Amtrak has 2 main kinds of sleeper rooms, Roomette and Bedroom. We ended up with a Bedroom on the way to Memphis, and a Roomette on the way back7. These both have bunk beds so they clearly work with 2 adults just fine, but the experiences with an infant were pretty different.
In addition to the beds, Bedroom has a sink, a private toilet and shower, a couch and some actual floor space. It’s still not actually big—you probably can't fit your bassinet in there—and one annoying thing was having to figure out where to put the ladder for the top bunk when you don't need it. But the bottom bed was a nice size, and sleeping with an infant there was fairly comfortable8.
Roomette with 2 adults and an infant, on the other hand, was tight. Roomette’s daytime arrangement is 2 seats facing each other, and the seats can get flattened to make the bottom bunk at night. So we’re talking about a really efficient use of space. In the nighttime setup, there’s barely enough floor space to put 3 pairs of shoes. The bottom bunk is also smaller than in the Bedroom, so we don’t really recommend taking the Roomette with 2 adults and a small human.
In either case, sleeper rooms give you privacy, which is really hard to come by on non-car trips…which is also why they come with luxury prices. If it’s a short enough trip, though, I’d say just do coach and hang out in the lounge car.
What I’m listening to now
Let’s switch it up with an instrumental album. Give the first song a bit more than 50 seconds.
This section will date myself in many ways.
To be fair to other operators, I’ve done long-distance buses with multiple companies not named Greyhound and they’ve all been fine.
People now know the Pyramid as the biggest Bass Pro Shop, but it used to be the home arena for the University of Memphis basketball team and the Memphis Grizzlies in the NBA, and it also hosted concerts and exhibitions. I remember going to a Titanic exhibit there, for example.
A lot of jazz at that point, for me.
They only have it for long-haul trains, mostly in the western side of the country, and because of COVID, they seem to be restricting it to people who have booked private rooms. I hope they bring it back for people riding coach.
Carbondale keeps coming up, and this time, it’s because Carbondale is where you can see both the July 2017 and April 2024 total solar eclipses. We’ll see if I can make it there next year.
The reason is that Amtrak runs a blind auction for upgrades to Bedroom. We originally booked Roomettes both ways, and we won the auction 1 of 2 times.