The next leg of my travel is through the American midwest. But instead of flying I took an Amtrak Train from Penn Station in New York City to Cleveland, Ohio. The distance is about 750 km or 465 miles.
The train was the #49 Lake Shore Limited which travels daily from New York’s Penn Station to Chicago’s Union Station. It travels up along the Hudson river in New York State with stops at Croton-Harmon and Albany, New York. Albany is the state capital. Then the train heads west through upstate New York with stops in Schenectady, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester (home to the Great Yellow Father Eastman-Kodak), Buffalo, Erie Pennsylvania, Cleveland Ohio, Toledo Ohio, and South Bend Indiana (University of Notre Dame football) before it reaches its final destination in Chicago.
The train departed Penn Station at 3:45 in the afternoon so I had time to take care of some business in Manhattan in the morning before we left. I was up on Park Avenue which is a very ritzy area. Then I headed back to Penn Station to board our train.
The Lake Shore Limited left Penn Station right on schedule. The view along the Hudson River is quite scenic. In Albany, New York at Rensselaer Station there was about a half hour stopover while we waited for the train from Boston. So there was time to get off the train and stretch our legs a bit and get some drinks and snacks inside the station.
At Albany they hooked up a new locomotive plus a few more cars for the Boston passengers. They also added a dining car. Then they took reservations for dinner. We finally arrived in Cleveland at about 4:30 in the morning, which was just one hour late. I actually wanted the train to be a few hours later because they open the dining car for breakfast at 6 or 7 AM. Having breakfast in the dining car on a moving train is one of life’s grand experiences.
We had coach seats that were very comfortable for sitting, but not so great for sleeping. Tickets cost about $60 or so for coach seats depending on which discount you qualify for. There was a sleeping car, but a sleeper on Amtrak is very expensive. Like hundreds of dollars!
This is one of my complaints about rail travel in the U.S. I take night trains all over Europe and a kupe only costs a little more. Even in Germany which has the best trains in the world, sleeping accommadation adds only 10 or 20 Euros to the ticket price. But in the U.S. it might add $200 or $400 dollars!
