Comment by johnyzee

...and the Murderbots that have disabled their governor modules.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Murderbot_Diaries

The Puget Sound ferries often have a partially-done jigsaw puzzle on one of the tables. You can't finish it in 30m, so people come and do their part and move on. Eventually someone will put in the last piece, I guess, I've never seen it happen.

Then stop for 56 hours to allow freight to go by.

That's 4 days traveling. Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday. Arriving in the evening doesn't mean you didn't spend that day traveling.

I did this once from Seattle. It was a good experience, but the internet connection was nonexistent along large parts of the route.

Also one way cost like $1,200.

If you're not traveling between those specific destinations it can take far, far longer. Amtrak is a joke.

Let’s be realistic. I love long distance train journeys, but mainly for recreation. Being on a train for 3-5 days is pretty exhausting no matter how comfortable. I’ve done the 30 day Amtrak pass before and it was fantastic but I wouldn’t be looking forward to that if it was a work trip where I want to fly in and then get back to my family as fast as possible. There’s no way that can compare to a 5-6 hour flight+2 hours at the airport.

I was rather disappointed by the internet connection on the Cascades line (going Seattle --> Portland and back). As far as I could tell, they use T-Mobile for backhaul. Who are headquartered in Seattle. Yet the connection barely seemed to work for about half of the journey

- the internet connection is excellent

I mean, maybe you had a different experience. In my experience in the northeast , the internet service is about as reliable and consistent as the trains themselves (ie not consistent, garbage fire)