Amtrak

Great customer service from amazing staff. Train arrived at the scheduled time. I had forgotten my camera on the train which was more then a hour away when I realized, but an employee there, Kenny, with help from others, went above and beyond to retrieve it all within hours. I must say Amtrak couldn’t have handled it any better!

Amtrak is one of three reasonable ways to go back and forth between Schenectady and New York. All of them take about three hours and a bit more. [The others are by Capital Tours bus — not very nice — and driving.] This should be an easy deal. When it works, it is.
Sadly, the system does not work very well very often — and Amtrak seems OK with this.
Amtrak trains rarely arrive in Schenectady on time, both going down to town or coming back. This would be livable, but Amtrak does not provide even vaguely accurate assessment of how late a train will be. The web-​site data is never to be trusted. Amtrak’s 800 number gets you to an automated system that rarely works, and if you ask for a representative, be prepared for a long wait and a surly response. The local station has a very bad answering machine; heaven forfend these folks should do more than decorate the ticket office, by answering the phone.
If one is prepared to go to Rensselaer, things are marginally better if one gets the trains that originate there. But this entails a 20 minute drive and a garage parking fee. At that point, flying becomes viable…

Train travel is so classy.
I had only ever heard horror stories about Amtrak: how there were crazy delays, how unreliable it was, etc etc. Thankfully, I had a great experience taking the train in NY during my vacation. The trains departed and arrived on time!
Super comfy and roomy! Far superior to plane seats. *shudder*
My only complaint is that there is no assigned seating. This could be a good thing for some, but for a packed train? Not so much. Without assigned seats, you don’t feel like you can ask people who are hogging two seats to move over so you can sit down. I saw a mother and daughter look longingly at the many open seats next to singletons and lament that they couldn’t sit next to each other.
However! There are food cars! Nothing fancy, but still fun nonetheless.
How I wish train travel were more accessible across the country! Come on America, get with the train travel! I want high speed trains à la TGV soon!

I love riding the train. It was cold, and there is not enough room to wait inside before boarding, but still, this was a clean and efficient location. What more do you want when traveling by train?

This is a review of the Amtrak station in Schenectady, with some pointers.
The station is a rather sad 1970s «ministation» that neither replicated the glory of the old-​fashioned train station nor replaced it with anything like the slipstreamed practical structure that it was supposed to be. There’s a small waiting room that’s kept clean but has no amenities at all (if you need to use the restroom, you have to get the key from the station agent at the window) including no place to plug in electronics.
There’s one of the scanner-​ticket-​issuing machines inside the waiting room (if you’ve already bought on-​line), and one agent there from 830 AM on to late afternoon. The agent, fwiw, is pleasant and business-​like.
(Unfortunately, Amtrak is still stuck in the ticket-​punching era and you have to go through the elaborate charade of scanning your ticket-​to-​get-​a-​ticket to get a ticket that’s then punched and exchanged for a seat check on the train. Yoo hoo, Amtrak, portable scanners? Invented a few decades ago. Look into it.)
The platform and stairs are kind of a horror, particularly the peeling walkway up to the platform. The elevator was too creepy for me to contemplate going in, but it was apparently in operation.
The platforms have old-​fashioned benches and while offering a covering from the rain offer no other protection against the elements. You can board from a stairway without going through the waiting room (see the «Train Platform» door window to the left of the main entrance). If you have somebody dropping you off, I’d recommend just staying in the car until you hear the train approaching.
If you need sustenance and forgot to bring any with you, there’s a Burger King across the street that keeps hours compatible with the train schedule.
Parking is immediately in front of the station, with the entrance off Erie Blvd. There are some confusing «Do Not Enter» signs that don’t actually apply to the main entrance. If you pull straight in front of the station, the pick-​up/​dropoff parking is to your left; other spots in the lot are for commuter parking for downtown Schenectady, and there’s a self-​service long-​term parking option (which I haven’t availed myself of so can’t explain how it works…)
I’m grateful the train service still comes through here, and it is more convenient than the «Albany» station over in Rensselaer, but the latter is a nicer station across the board. Amtrak needs to get Schenectady’s updated station project off the drawing boards and under construction.
We no longer have interurban trolleys, of course, which used to connect all the cities of the region, but the main line of the old New York Central pretty much parallels the Thruway and it’s amazing there hasn’t been an effort to use the tracks for a local commuter rail system. Stops at the Dunes/​Washington Extension complex and the State office complex could easily be added, and something reasonably close to downtown Albany with a shuttle could be sited. But that may require too much foresight about transportation planning, given that the growth along the Northway seems to have dominated what passes for «regional planning» hereabouts. The reconstruction and widening of the Kosciusko bridge over the Mohawk on I-​87 will probably cost about what it would take to retrofit this line into a short regional commuter system but will only have mild amelioration of the traffic problem there, and that too will be wiped out with further growth in Saratoga County (which is also served by three train stations).
In any event, I doubt the current sad state of the Schenectady Amtrak station is going to build any groundswell towards rail.

I normally travel by plane, because I dont like spending more of my vacation than necessary just «getting there». However, a plane trip really takes the whole day — security, check-​in, boarding, waiting, waiting, more waiting…
I am on a train trip from home to New York/​Boston and it’s fantastic. The staff are great, there’s the food car, you can get up and stretch… no annoying seatbelts to dig into you. It’s quieter than a plane. you can arrive 3 mins before departure and still make it on (though it’s not recommended… :P). The view is great, the seats are big, there’s wifi and power outlets, you can text with friends. All kinds of advantages :)
No more will I take short plane trips — saving that for only the long trips, and trains are my new thing. Hurray!