* * * * *
                                        
                                Taking the train
                                        
> The Coast Starlight would take us from Los Angeles to Seattle in 35 hours,
> at $763 for a Superliner Roomette. Food and entertainment were included.
> Free wine and cheese, I kept noting, as if the promise of a few glasses of
> wine would be enough to offset the cost of the trip.
> 
> Not that the cost was really the deciding factor. After all, $763 total is
> really $381.50 per head, about the same as it would cost to either fly or
> to take a long weekend and drive the Pacific Coast Highway. It was more the
> thing of the thing, a vague phrase that in this case meant: This trip isn’t
> about moving. It’s about something else.
> 
> We both figured out what it was really about at the same time, and Mike was
> already dumping our names and birthdates into Amtrak’s interface by the
> time I sent over the words “XXXX IT BOOK TRAIN.”
> 
> “We are going to have an adventure,” I wrote. Then I sent Mike a Facebook
> sticker of a sailor and a mermaid sharing a bottle of Champagne.
> 

Via Instapundit [1], “What it's like to take a 36-hour sleeper train from LA
to Seattle / Boing Boing [2]”

While it's not in the same class as a private railcar [3], it is way cheaper
and doesn't appear to be that bad. And unlike modern airtravel, you actually
get real food.

Too bad the destinations are limited.

[1] http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/218082/
[2] http://boingboing.net/2014/06/15/36-hours-to-seattle-
[3] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2015/08/05.4

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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