Comment by themafia

Comment by themafia 2 days ago

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> across the United States of nothingness

This is churlish to the point of complete foolishness. Amtrak has a scenic view car for a reason. There is almost no stretch of the track outside of cities that fails to be a completely beautiful and picturesque portrait of our amazing country.

If you haven't tried it then you might not know. I feel bad that you haven't had this experience personally.

> causes you to have to stop for 3 hours at a time as you do not have right of way.

It's about 15 minutes and may happen once or twice a day. The longest delay I experienced was because the locomotive had a mechanical issue. That took one hour.

> who at Amtrak thought this was worth even mentioning?

What kind of person without the relevant experience would even endeavor to offer this comment?

booleandilemma a day ago

I took a train from nyc to chicago recently and felt like I was passing through the higher numbered districts of the hunger games. The parent is not wrong.

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  • potato3732842 a day ago

    >I took a train from nyc to chicago recently and felt like I was passing through the higher numbered districts of the hunger games.

    Oh man, oh man, the irony.

    Formerly industrial areas of the US are poor and dilapidated because the people of places specifically including but not strictly limited to NYC and Chicago (with the help of some voters elsewhere) made big bucks sending all that productivity to poorer nations. The wealth is not there specifically because decisions were made to benefit wall street at those people's expense.

    Hunger games was a more apt metaphor for the comparison than I think you thought it was.

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petesergeant 2 days ago

> There is almost no stretch of the track outside of cities that fails to be a completely beautiful and picturesque portrait of our amazing country

America has some absolutely incredible scenery, but the idea that it's almost _all_ "beautiful and picturesque" is ridiculous.

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  • themafia 2 days ago

    It really almost is. Especially on the California Zephyr[0]. We didn't put train tracks down at random. We built them early and used techniques that saw them follow terrain features that were convenient to follow. I ride quite a bit and the mountain tunnels are the only part I can think of that don't fit my description.

    [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zccf1KpdTOs

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    • ghaff a day ago

      In fairness, "amber waves of grain" can probably get old after a while. But absent time (and, to some degree, money restrictions), I'd probably get somewhat bored after a while given that I've seen a lot of that scenery from a car or hiking around.

      But to the point some people here are making, I've done some fairly long distance train travel in Europe, including sleepers, and, while I tend to prefer it to planes especially budget ones which I basically never take, I'm not sure it's an especially efficient way to travel for the most part if you want to get from point A to point B as quickly and cost effectively as possible.

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      • bombcar a day ago

        It really never wins against a plane or even car except where everything lines up perfectly and you can treat an overnight sleeper train as a rolling hotel, check in, eat, sleep, eat, walk out where you need to be.

        It’s such a good experience that building the rest of the trip around it can be worthwhile, but it is still not terribly fast.

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        • ghaff a day ago

          Yeah, if you get a sleeper and figure you're saving a night in London or Edinburgh and you don't need to deal with airports, something like the Caledonian Sleeper isn't a bad deal or really consume a lot of extra time. But if you're not in a hurry, it's still a good experience for a lot of people.

          But then I've also done a trans-Atlantic crossing but I was semi-retired at the time. Which I would do again at some point but was certainly neither cost nor time efficient.

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    • bombcar a day ago

      The worst part of any scenic train trips are the inner cities (which are interesting and different, at least, and you can learn new swears from the graffiti) and the cornfields in the plains.

      Even the latter has things to see as rail lines go through so many small towns. But it’s admittedly not as cool as the mountain or shoreline trains.

      Just don’t sit on the bottom floor or you’ll be staring at cornstalks for 30+ hours.

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