[Note: this is a long and sordid tale posted a long long time ago to the long-lost site of Epinions.com. I'm reposting here just to have a linkable copy to refer people to rather than waste neurons and sanity trying to recount it all fresh every time the topic comes up. No need to pick at scabs.
[Originally posted by: AggieBrett (Tue Jun 20 '00)
I stumbled across an Epinion of Amtrak travel and then was stunned – stunned -- to see more than a few positive reviews of Amtrak.
You see, I foolishly chose Amtrak once.
Once.
Back around 1992 some friends and I all decided to travel to LA so we could watch the Aggies (Texas A&M) play Stanford in the Disney Pigskin Classic Football Thing Bowl (Aggies won, whooooop!). We saw an ad for Amtrak and how favorably it compared to air travel in terms of pricing. We looked through the snazzy Amtrak brochures. Saw lots of smiling people resting in comfort on big reclining seats. People sleeping peacefully (again -- smiling) in nice big berths in sleeper rooms. Families smiling through large windows at breathtaking scenery. Couples smiling at one another as they enjoyed a good-looking meal ("prepared by chefs trained at the Culinary Institute of America" as the brochure described it).
Sure, it was going to take 2 days to go from Houston to LA, but what the heck -- it would be an adventure.
Surprise #1-- The snazzy Amtrak brochures showed people (smiling, of course) resting and reading and riding comfortably on the big reclining seats, and these seats could be had for roughly the same cost as airline tickets for the same route. When we asked about the sleeper rooms, we discovered that sleeping accommodations on Amtrak cost approximately as much as a well-used sedan. THOUSANDS of dollars.
Surprise #2-- the train arrived three hours late for departure, meaning we were sitting around the downtown train station (imagine a bus-stop with slightly less warmth and charm) until near 11 PM. Little did we know at the time, but this delay would be the high-water mark for Amtrak punctuality on our trip.
Surprise #3-- all the smiling people in the brochure had apparently elected to take other conveyances, 'cuz there were NO smiling faces on the train we boarded. The A/C seemed to either be not working or not turned on. There were people dragging FEEDSACKS full of belongings down the aisles, including one large shirtless man who had an ancient Hoover upright tossed over one shoulder and an Igloo Playmate cooler in the other hand. I kept expecting to see someone stuffing a wooden cage filled with chickens into an overhead bin.
Surprise #4-- the conductor gave us the Amtrak welcome by explaining over the microphone that (and this is as close to an actual quote as I can recall) "I ain't here to pick up after you people. The pockets on the back of the seat are NOT for trash, and if you stop up one of the toilets, I'm NOT fixing it, so be careful about how much paper you toss in there. The snack car closes in ten minutes, so if you want something you better move now or be ready to wait until breakfast." And then he left the car without further comment.
Surprise #5-- the comfy looking recliners from the brochures had apparently been replaced with extension ladders covered in old carpet. I am not an overly large man -- six feet tall -- yet my feet would wedge under the seat in front of me, meaning I was unable to recline on the seat without turning sideways into a fetal position with my back twisted up at a 30 degree angle. Try sleeping that way for two days in 80 degree heat.
Surprise #6-- the train pulled over on a siding in San Antonio in the middle of the night (3 am?), ALL power was turned off (including the ventilation fans) and then we just sat there with no explanation for 90 minutes or so, sweating in the silence.
Surprise #7-- those "CIA-trained" chefs apparently concentrated their training on how to over-microwave vending machine sandwiches. Six dollars and a twenty minute wait for a gray rubber chicken sandwich that was literally still inside the plastic bag when served. We all agreed that cold pork&beans from the can would have been more appetizing than anything we were served on the train.
Surprise #8-- the observation car is basically useless for observing since it looks like a refugee train due to all the people (obviously repeat Amtrak victims) who have turned the floor of that car into a huge campground, complete with sleeping bags, bags of groceries, and piles of games and books. It was almost impossible to walk to the snack car without hopping carefully over at least a few snoring lumps.
Surprise #9-- the snack car is the only smoking car on the train. I'm not a smoker, but in order to get a soda or a two-dollar bag of smokehouse almonds I had to hold my breathe and dive into a room choked with gray smoke. The snack bar, by the way, is ALSO where the TV-VCR is, so if you travel Amtrak with kids and hope to let them kill an hour or so with a movie, you have to leave them hanging in the smokehouse like bacon to be cured.
Surprise #10-- somewhere outside Tucson one of our fellow travelers suffered a stroke. He was obviously dying before our very eyes, yet the only response from the Amtrak employees was stop the train and to tell people to stand back and leave him alone. My wife, an ICU nurse, immediately jumped in to assist the man, and my party ended up administering CPR and mouth-to-mouth for 20 minutes until paramedics arrived. They had to strap the man to a board and then drag him down the narrow spiral staircase that is the only access to the upstairs seating area. As soon as the man and his wife were removed, the train resumed its journey westward. No Amtrak representative ever said a word to anyone in my party -- no "thanks for trying to save our passenger" or "would you like a towel to wipe off the vomit from that poor convulsing man" or even "man -- that was scary, huh?" Nothing.
Surprise #11-- we arrived at LA some TEN hours late, meaning that our first day in LA was already shot, and the other friends (who had wisely FLOWN in) had wasted half their day waiting for a train that wasn't coming. Again, no comment or apology from Amtrak.
Surprise #12-- after spending several days in SoCal, it was time to get BACK on the train for the trip home. We were literally IN TEARS at the thought of repeating that experience, but we found that Amtrak would only refund 40 dollars of the 220-dollar fare if we canceled, and that plane travel would cost us 200 dollars each on such short notice. SO we trudged back to the train, this time making sure to stock up on groceries and sleeping pills so as to be better prepared for the rolling shipwreck before us.
Again, the train was late in arriving, and this time we sat in the motionless train in the LA switchyards for four hours with no explanation. When we finally got an Amtrak employee to explain what was going on, we were told that we'd be waiting for a few MORE hours to hook up with a train coming down from Seattle. It was 2 am and we snapped. We demanded our luggage. The Amtrak people tried to talk us down, but we were past the point of listening. We got off the train (amidst a car full of cheers from folks who sympathized with the agony), ran back to the station and demanded our damned 40 dollars. When the clerk asked if we wanted that refund "in cash or in vouchers for future Amtrak travel," I thought one of my traveling companions was about to crash through that bulletproof window and throttle the poor woman.
We loaded what luggage we had collected into a cab, drove to LAX, slept on the floor of the terminal and grabbed the first available flight to Houston. When we heard the airline captain apologize for running three minutes behind schedule (THREE MINUTES!), we laughed at our earlier folly.
We later learned that the train BACK to Houston had been delayed until past dawn, and that it arrived in Houston some 18 hours late.
Despite numerous letters and complaints to every Amtrak office and official that I could track down over the course of the next year or so, we never did get anything more than the 40 dollar refund. We did find out that that poor man had in fact died later that night in Tucson. The trip has become somewhat legendary among our friends, and we still get requests to tell the horrific story of our Amtrak Trip From Hell.
That Amtrak trip ranks as the absolute WORST travel experience I have ever had the gross misfortune to experience. I would rather be dragged behind a low-flying blimp than to ever travel by Amtrak. I'd rather be repeatedly fired from a cannon to travel. Amtrak makes bus travel seem luxurious. Given a choice of Amtrak or not traveling at all, my recommendation would be to stay home.
As we actually told a man who was complaining about a missed flight at LAX: "Dude, it's better to miss a plane than to take the train."
just another online spittoon
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