How My Amtrak Experience Unfolded
Two months. Twelve thousand miles. That was my introduction to Amtrak — not a weekend jaunt, but a full immersion into what it means to cross this country by rail. Everything I share here comes from that trip, my first time riding Amtrak in any way. I authored a book about the full experience of those two months, but this post is the practical stuff — the first-time Amtrak rider tips.
If you are a first-time Amtrak rider, or even someone who has ridden a handful of times but is eyeing a longer trip, I hope you find this a helpful for practical information on traveling by Amtrak Trains.
Start With the Amtrak App, Not the Website
If you take away only one piece of advice from this whole post, let it be this one. Here we discuss the Amtrak App booking process.
I began planning my trip on Amtrak’s website and nearly talked myself out of the trip entirely. I found it clunky, rigid, hard to think through. It was not until I discovered the Amtrak App that planning became enjoyable. Book a segment on the App and you can board with your ticket right there on your phone — no paper needed, though you can always get a printed ticket at a station if you would rather have something in hand.
The App also becomes a kind of travel diary on its own. As you book segments, it lists them sequentially, and it keeps a history of everything you have completed. I leaned on that history constantly while writing about the trip afterward.
For planning, I found searching by “Train Route” more useful than searching by “Train Station.” Pick a route, choose eastbound or westbound, for example The Sunset Limited, and you will see every stop along with arrival and departure times. That is essential, because most stops do not give you time to explore — the train arrives, then leaves again shortly after. If you want to see a place, you are looking at an overnight stop, with the Northeast Corridor being something of an exception.
Amtrak Coach vs Roomette
The first real decision you will make is how you want to travel. Shorter Northeast Corridor routes sometimes offer business or first class, similar to air travel, but for the longer routes that most first-time long-distance riders are drawn to, the real choice is between coach and a private room.
Here is where I have landed, after twelve thousand miles of Amtrak train Travel
For single-day trips with no overnight travel, I stick with coach. The legroom rivals business class on a plane. Coach passengers can still access the observation car, the café car for snacks, and the dining car for a sit-down meal at an extra charge. Not every route carries all three, but the App will tell you what is available before you book.
For overnight Amtrak trips, I book a roomette. It sleeps up to two and, in my experience, makes a real difference in how rested you feel the next morning. The one exception is during high season, when roomette prices can climb steeply — in those cases, I have made coach work rather than pay a premium.
If you are traveling with others, run the math on a room or roomette against the combined cost of multiple coach seats. Sometimes the private space ends up being the smarter call, not just the more comfortable one.
Do not Ignore the Amtrak Bid-Up Process
Somewhere in the App is a feature that took me a while to fully understand: the Amtrak bid-up process. If you are ticketed in coach, Amtrak will sometimes offer you the chance to bid on an available roomette as your departure date nears — and roomette passengers can bid up to a room the same way. In my experience, these offers tended to show up about two days before departure.
I used it several times over my trip. Sometimes I won the bid, sometimes I did not. I would not call it a guaranteed bargain — but it was consistently cheaper than booking that same upgrade outright at the time of purchase. If you are planning a long trip and want a shot at upgrading without paying full freight, it is worth learning the rhythm of it. Just remember, upgrade opportunities are not always available.
What to Pack
Packing is personal, but a trip like mine — constant boarding, disembarking, and walking between platforms and hotels — taught me some things the hard way.
I traveled with a backpack, the same one I carried across Europe back in 1988, right after college. There is something fitting about an old, sentimental pack going with a new kind of long journey. I packed light. I still wish I had packed even lighter.
A Few Things I Would Call Essential:
– A reusable water bottle. I never drank the tap water on the train, and I would not recommend it. I am not a fan of single-use plastic, so I refilled wherever I found filtered water — hotels, mostly — and carried it with me. I could not avoid disposable bottles entirely, but I kept them to a minimum.
– Basic utensils. I did not bring these and wish I had. Not every meal happens in a restaurant or dining car — sometimes you are pulling together something from a grocery store, and a fork makes a real difference. Try cutting a block of cheese with a bent paper clip sometime. I do not recommend it.
– Cash for tipping. More on this below, but I would add, that while on the trip, I walked into a Chicago bank and asked for a mix of ones, fives, tens, and twenties. The teller looked baffled until I explained I was headed out on a cross-country Amtrak trip. He laughed, told me he was about to take his own trip, and thanked me for the tip about tipping.
– Snacks, especially for longer routes. Every train has a snack bar, and I found the prices reasonable, but hours can be unpredictable. A small stash of your own closes that gap.
– Something to pass the time. This might matter more than other first-time Amtrak rider tips, except the water bottle. For me, it is books — a small library’s worth by the time I reached Chicago. Others swear by an e-reader, an audiobook, a deck of cards (you will find a game in the observation car if you are looking for one), or a crossword. And then there is the journal, which I consider essential. A simple daily journal will reap many memory dividends down the road.
A Word on Amtrak Tipping Etiquette
Tipping mostly comes into play for room and roomette passengers, and for coach passengers using the dining car. In the dining car, it works much like a restaurant. But if you are in a room or roomette, your meals are included in the fare — there is no bill to add a tip to. That is where the cash comes in.
On an overnight trip, the same attendant will serve your car for the duration — making meal reservations, preparing your bunk each night, answering whatever questions come up. It is customary to tip that person as you disembark. Worth remembering, crew members typically work the full route (example, Sacramento to Chicago on the Amtrak California Zephyr eastbound), so you will be with them the full route if you stay on the train the full route.
Bring an Open Mind
Here is the part that is not really about what to pack.
If speed and efficiency are your top priority, a train might not be your best option — there are faster ways to cross this country. But if the journey itself is part of the destination, if you have the time and want to see the country at ground level in a way no highway or runway will ever offer you, Amtrak delivers something genuinely rare.
You can walk the length of the train. Sit in the observation car and watch the landscape change by the hour. Wander to the café for a snack whenever the mood strikes. None of that exists in a car or on a plane. Bring curiosity. Bring a willingness to strike up conversation with a stranger.
The People Might Surprise You
People ask me, often, what my favorite part of the trip was. It was not a canyon or a mountain range or a particular sunset. It was the people.
Traveling solo, I met three new people at every meal in the dining car. There were conversations on platforms while waiting for a delayed departure, conversations in the observation car that stretched for hours, conversations I have never had — and never will have — on a plane or in a car. If you are riding solo, do not brace yourself for isolation. Brace yourself for company you did not expect.
Travel With a Purpose
One last thought, and it is one I return to often: travel with a purpose, especially if the trip is a long one.
It does not need to be a grand purpose. It could be visiting a certain kind of museum in every city you pass through — art, history, whatever draws you. It could be architecture. It could be tracking down the books written about each place you stop. For me, the purpose was the writing itself. Without it, I suspect this trip would have blurred into one tourist stop after another — a long string of photos I would never look back on, and few memories that stuck.
What would your purpose be if you set out on a trip like this one?
And whatever you choose — keep a journal. Even if it is not a habit that comes naturally to you. It is the difference between a trip that fades and one you can still walk through, years later, page by page.
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