Amtrak

This is not a bad Amtrak service station. While the wait was long and there were delays. That has no bearing on the location or the service. In short it was not as miserable an experience here compared to others I had during my first Amtrak trek. The service is great, the location is nice looking, and the baggage service is quick and an easy process. The only things I would have changed are that there was a better loudspeaker and more comfortable seats. I and others did not understand the instructions being given from the loudspeaker and the benches that served as seats could have been better. I didn’t have a problem with this since I arrived at the appropriate time to check in, however if there is a large delay, this could be a problem. It’s still better than Atlanta’s station, but overall it is not bad.

Go to the dining car and enjoy your ride with some wine and jimmy dean sausage biscuits for breakfast or lunch. Was pleasantly surprised that they had WiFi and decent sized bathrooms. Beware if you try to use restrooms not in your class you will get yelled at.

First trip on Amtrak and it’s a nice change from flying or driving. Going to NYC from Greensboro and I’m just tired of the hassel and nickel and dime of flying. Was going to drive, but thought we would give the train a try, and it’s a good experience. First, check in is ridiculously simple. The train was On Time! The coach accommodations are nice and roomy. Restrooms larger, too. Plenty of room to walk around. Wi-​fi on board and. AC power to charge devices if needed. You can work, surf the web, read, snooze, do whatever as you head toward your destination. Plus the scenery is interesting.
Compared to flying the cost is less. $ 530 for two of us vs $ 760 flying.
The downside is it does take longer, about the same as driving. Flying door-​to-​door would have taken six hours and the train will take 12. But if you’re thinking of driving, the train is definitely a good option. If we ever get the high speed trains they have in Europe and Japan this will be the only way to go.

I agree with Heather D. They are very rude and ready to blast your actions almost immediately! My son and I were 30 minutes early to train departure, however, my son does travel alone and this attendant was so snarky as if he were the philosophical king to judge why I was not here an hour ahead. Not professional since the ticket was already paid for. Also the guidelines were that we were to receive a call the day of the trip to remind us of when to arrive, NO SUCH CALL WAS MADE! This is on there ticketing information. So since they made a mistake by not honoring there duty, guess what, I am CALLING THEM OUT! Amtrak needs customer service training every six months, so they don’t forget! Just maybe the train experience, if wonderful, may generate more passenger dollars to hire competent personnel. Just a thought! Clean station.

Our first Amtrak experience — the Greensboro station is very nice and we thoroughly enjoyed the trip to Charlotte. The crew did their job quietly and unobtrusively and we arrived right on time. We didn’t enjoy the return trip quite as much — lots of announcements and one very hyper attendant made the trip less relaxed. The Charlotte station is an embarrassment compared to the Greensboro one and even the other stations we stopped at along the way in Kannapolis, Salisbury, etc.

i want to dress in full 1940s attire and just hang out in this train station, its that neat inside. The entire building has been restored to its original glory and that lovely 20s grandiose building style. It really made my fairly ho-​hum train trip into more of an adventure adding a great nostalgia vibe to the whole experience.

Hey. If you are a train station, it is kind of a rule to be dirty and scummy. Not the GBoro station. This station must have just been recently renovated or something. It was clean and brand new looking. It had a real nice bagel shop attached to it as well. And HUGE surprise — the window staff was extremely polite and helpful. Customer service is such a lost art.

I enjoyed traveling by train but the service we got was so awful. I am talking about you Mr. Asenfelter at the Greensboro hub. He was a rude jerk and was actually trying to pick a fight with us. The online recommendation is to arrive 30 minutes early and we were berated because we weren’t an hour early. If my child had not been with me there would have been some badness, but I wasn’t going to ruin my trip with my kid.
Even worse I wrote Amtrak to tell them of the encounter and poor treatment and I got an email promising a response within 24 hours, that was last Thursday. Customer Service FAIL.

On my first plane ride on the US Airways shuttle to DC, once we had landed at National, the guy in front of me turned to his wife and said, «See? If we had taken the Amtrak, like you insisted, we would be in Newark by now!» True that. The plane is supposed to take 45 minutes, compared to the train’s 4 hours, but 2 hours on a runway quickly takes the charm out of the jet-​setting life. After some bad experiences on what is supposed the be the «shuttle» to DC on American, I went back to taking Amtrak. Sure, it completely boggled my mind that the fare to DC from NYC is now $ 90, making round-​trip cost almost $ 200, which is more than the plane fare I usually get (go figure). But it beats the hell out of sitting on the runway.
I’m glad I made the switch. I had forgotten how nice the ride is, gluing my face to the window and watching the scenery, iPod securely fastened to head. Maryland, Delaware, Philly, and Jersey. Time to sleep, time to read, time to whip out the laptop, if you are so inclined. Bonus is that you don’t have to go through security, have strangers rifle through your things or look at you like you are a criminal because you dared to bring a bottle of water with you. No taking off your shoes and no lines, except for the cattle call at Penn Station to get on the train.
Stepping into DC’s Union Station is always so comforting to me. It’s really a beautiful building, as soon as you get out of the train station portion of it. Even when I get in at midnight or so, it still feels like it’s welcoming me home. Brings back a lot of memories of really loud dinners with friends in the food court, movies that we never really watched, walking around trying to impress the guys who were trying to impress us… The cab ride to my house from the station is nice, too. DC has a different smell in the air that puts me at ease and into vacation mode. However, the depressing part of taking the train is getting into Penn Station and then the cab ride through Times Square. As soon as I hit Times Square, I know. Party’s over.
Amtrak has only let me down twice in 10 or so years of taking it back and forth, so it is a much more reliable way to travel the Northeast Corridor. Note that $ 135 for the Acela is a rotten deal. The accommodations on the Acela are nice, and the $ 45 price difference is negligible if you got it like that. But I say it’s not worth it because it saves you about ½ an hour over the regular train. Last trip to DC, I got a deal because it was only $ 65 from NYC to DC, so I took the difference and put it towards a ride on the Acela. Again, pretty much the same experience as the regular train.
The ticket-​takers and the guys in the dining car are always so nice. A nice change from the hustly-​bustly, borderline rude crew on the «shuttle». All in all, I find the train to be a much more comforting and comfortable way to travel.

I like to think of bad experiences as opportunities to collect really great stories, the chance to find new adventure.
The summer after high school, I fell off my skateboard while speeding down a mountain. Fortunately, the ground broke my fall (ba-​dum-​bum). I landed on my face. Bloodied, and with half a front tooth hacked off, I went to the ER, and later had an emergency root canal.
(I applied for a job at Versace before my tooth was capped. I didn’t get the job.)
Embarrassed and pained and regretful, the experience made me a little more interesting.
(«He’d do anything for a good story,» someone once said.)
So, when I missed my midnight train from Greensboro to New Orleans (I read 12 pm instead of 12 am, and booked a room at the Marriott), I thought it off as an invitation to explore a new city.
Or lack thereof.
When I realized my error the next morning, I called Amtrak to reschedule, and they told me I’d have to wait for the next midnight train. That meant an extra day in Greensboro, and one less day in New Orleans. I mulled it over, and, in direct conflict with thrifty-​hostel Keane of weeks past, booked a flight down to New Orleans and canceled my Amtrak reservation entirely (with 90% refund, thank you). A couple hundred dollars can be remade, but a memory cannot. Besides, who’d want to wait another 12 hours in Greensboro for a 20 hour train ride? Not me. So I flew…
(What do you call a Chinese person with wings?)
As we reached New Orleans, there was an intense, shockingly visible, thunderstorm over the airport. The pilot circled for 30 minutes (an extended aerial tour of New Orleans, I told myself. I’m so fortunate. Yes.), but gave up and landed in Baton Rouge to refuel and wait.
We waited for three hours.
And while everyone on board was complaining about the heat or why US Airways couldn’t pay for the fuel or about «that other plane on the news (you know, Mabel, the one that was stuck on the tarmac for God-​knows-​how-​long?),» I was reading my book. My lovely, lovely book. And though I much preferred spending my time in New Orleans, I really couldn’t do much about it then. Anyway, it was better than being in Greensboro.
(A cook.)
So, that was the spice before the final stretch of my trip. And while coming back home to San Francisco felt like the end of the ride, it really wasn’t:
«You do realize you have to find a new job when you get back, right?»
You say it as if it were a bad thing.
After all, it’s just another adventure…