American trains are wild shitty. Regional rail and subways are a nightmare, and it's rare to find an Amtrak train that isn't far along its decay. I do love Amtrak though, I used to take the New York to Montreal train now and then to visit my sister. Twelve hours, but visually stunning all through the Adirondacks. A lotta time following water, like Lake Champlain and the Hudson, all of it. Pittsburgh to Philly and back is a nice trip, too.
Saw a funny thing a couple years back...for much of 2018 they were working on the rails beneath Penn Station, meaning NJ Transit and Amtrak had to share tracks and then make the switch somewhere further south. That meant a lot of piling up on the shared tracks for the few stops in either direction.
So I'm waiting at Newark International's train station for my NJ Transit ride back home, with however many other people also waiting for one of 5 trains due on that track in the next 30 minutes--one of which was an Amtrak to DC. My train shows up first and I hop on...and am followed on by a European family with their big bags and everything. I thought nothing of it until they started speaking in what sounded like a panic, and one of them asked the conductor "Washington?" That must've sucked, because we'd made it 5 or 6 stops, there was no way they were getting their DC train.
But also, who the f*ck climbs onto a piss-drenched NJ Transit regional train and goes "Ah yes, this must be the vehicle that will carry me these 225 miles" and doesn't turn around right away? Is it that wherever they came from the trains kinda looked like that, or that they had the (correct) impressions that American long-distance trains totally suck and the vehicle matched their expectations.
