Yesterday’s post was all about the good parts of my recent Amtrak train trip. Now it’s time for the other (bad) side of things, and why I’ll probably never take another Amtrak trip (at least not quite like the one I just took)
1. Unacceptable train delays
Let’s just lead with the big one, shall we? I had done some research into Amtrak delays, and I knew that sometimes the trains were late, even sometimes by several hours. So on the outbound leg, even though our train was scheduled to get into Denver at 7:15 a.m., I didn’t plan anything until the afternoon – I figured that should cover any delays. OOOOOOH boy was I wrong on that one!
Let’s just break it down by legs – I had 4 legs on the train trip: 2 outbound and 2 inbound
Outbound: Toledo to Chicago
Our first trip went off without a problem. The only downside was that the westbound Capitol Limited train that we were scheduled on is scheduled to leave Toledo at 5:22 a.m., so we had to get up SUPER early (like 3:30 a.m.) in order to get ready, pack up, wake up the kids, get dressed, and drive from our hotel to Toledo’s Union Station. We got there a bit early, checked-in with no problems, and waited around for the train
Hanging out at Toledo’s Union Station at ~5 am waiting for our train
The train was about 20 minutes late but we were on our way before 6 a.m.
Outbound: Chicago to Denver
We had about a 4 hour layover in Chicago before our California Zephyr train was scheduled to depart at 3PM Central time. Because we had a sleeper car and that is considered “premium travel” on Amtrak, we were able to spend the time in the Union Station Chicago Metropolitan Lounge. It had free snacks (which were just Frito-Lay potato chips) and drinks as well as marginal free-wifi, but more importantly, it had seats that we could sit down and wait in.
Our outbound train left on time, and was only slightly late through the rest of the afternoon and evening but then….
Some time in the middle of the night, there was a freight train derailment ahead of us (west of Omaha)
From what I understand, the derailment was not major and I don’t even think there were any injuries, but it DID clog up the tracks and we were forced to take an alternate route.
Now keep in mind that I only found this information out in bits and pieces as nobody seemed to really know anything, and the information that you did get (either online from somebody connected, or your sleeping car attendant, or the conductors over the PA) would generally conflict.
But in the middle of the night, we basically sat in Omaha for hours, and all passengers that were scheduled to get off the train any place between Omaha and Denver were woken up and forced off the train, in order to take a bus to meet up with the train. Meanwhile, those of us going to Denver and beyond were rerouted on separate tracks.
We were rerouted north of our original route (indicated in red) paralleling I-80 and west into Cheyenne, Wyoming
We were rerouted north of our original route, through Fremont and Grand Island, and then paralleling I-80 into Cheyenne, Wyoming before turning south into Denver.
Our original 7:15 a.m. arrival kept getting later… and later… At some point in the middle of Nebraska, our original conductors had reached their service limits of 12 hours driving the train, so we had to stop on the middle of the tracks to wait for a new crew to be railed in. They showed up on a pickup truck that had regular wheels as well as wheels to go on the rails
I was working the phones in the meantime. I had plans to pick up a rental car in Denver, and then an appointment in Colorado Springs that afternoon before staying at the Hyatt House in Colorado Springs. As time marched on, it first was apparent that I was not going to make my appointment in Colorado Springs, so I rescheduled that for Friday morning, even though that was going to put a major delay into the rest of our vacation.
Then I started getting worried about the rental car. We had used Autoslash to save a ton on our rental car, to the point where the agent mentioned that I got “a great deal on [your] car – I’ve been renting these for $100 / DAY!“. But the problem was that the downtown Avis office that we had rented from closed at 6:30 p.m., while we were still wandering through Wyoming. I had actually booked TWO separate reservations (another one at Enterprise), but when I called Enterprise they pulled the old “sorry we don’t have any cars left” move.
The lady at Avis was SUPER helpful as I called her. Luckily for us, my brothers-in-law live in Denver, and the lady at Avis let them pick up our cars for us. A silver lining was that because we didn’t get our car until the evening, it cut a day off the rental period, saving us about $45.
In the end, we arrived about 8:30 p.m., had to wait around to get our bags, make the drive to Colorado Springs, and ended up getting everyone set down to bed close to midnight (2pm “our” time).
Inbound: Denver to Chicago
But wait! there’s more!
After a great trip, we returned back to Denver and dropped off our rental car around 6pm and made our way to Denver’s Union Station
(PS – why aren’t you following me on Instagram?!?!)
Our 7:10 p.m. scheduled departure was already slipping, and we watched the train board as our estimated departure went from 8:45, to 9:05, to 9:30, until we finally boarded and departed at 10:39 p.m.
The lying board of estimation…
Perhaps now would be a good time to mention that a 7:10 departure means that we get dinner on the train, while a 10:39 p.m. departure means we get bupkus 🙁
Inbound: Chicago to Toledo
Our train from Denver to Chicago was scheduled to get in at 3:50 p.m., plenty of time to make our 6:30 connection to the eastbound Capitol Limited from Chicago to Toledo. But as the train moved along, so did our estimated arrival time into Chicago, to the point where I became very concerned that we’d miss our layover.
Again, nobody from Amtrak on the train had anything to say. Our sleeping car attendant said they’d definitely hold our connecting train, while the conductor said that they might hold it 5 minutes, but if we were 10 minutes late they wouldn’t. Amtrak customer service also had no definitive answers.
Our options if we missed the connection were to put us on the Lakeshore Limited (leaving at 9:30pm and getting into Toledo at (GASP!) 3:30 a.m.), or possibly even having to wait till the next day’s train! To top that off, if we got on a different train, we wouldn’t be able to keep our sleeper cars, and instead would get 8 coach seats for a middle of the night ride!
In the end, our train did get in at 6:35, and they did hold the train, though we were racing through Chicago’s Union Station, Amazing Race style!
But all that racing meant that we were among the last ones on the new train, and all the early dinner reservations were taken, meaning 6 starving kids had to wait till 9pm to eat. But wait, you say! Surely the train into Chicago being late past dinner time (Amtrak starts dinner at 5pm) meant that we got dinner on our Chicago train? Oooh suerie that is incorrect. When I asked about dinner reservations I was informed (somewhat rudely IMO) that the California Zephyr does not serve dinner inbound to Chicago. In hindsight I do understand the logic but at the time it was quite frustrating.
Okay then – moving away from the real reasons, I would also like to point out that the cars and especially the bathrooms are a little dirty. Think airplane bathroom, but instead of a 4-5 hour flight, it’s a 30 hour train trip.
And the “first class” bathrooms, which are what the sleeper cars are supposedly are not much better, and not at all comparable to first class airplane bathrooms.
This wasn’t a huge deal for me, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
3. Amtrak can be difficult to sleep on, even in a bed
We were in the “family bedroom”, which has 2 sets of bunk beds. I slept in the larger bottom bunk, and I slept okay. I won’t say it was a GREAT night of sleep, but it was manageable. Other members of my family were not so lucky.
- My wife said she woke up constantly – every toss and turn of the train seemed to wake her with fears that this was going to be “the one” that caused us to derail and everyone die.
- My daugher, on the smaller top bunk, refused to sleep in her bed and crawled into bed with her mom (perhaps contributing to #1!)
- My son, on the larger top bunk, was constantly worried that he was going to fall out of the bed (Even with the safety harness)
I will admit that the last 2 reasons are a bit nitpicky and the cleanliness and sleeping wouldn’t stop me from taking another train trip in and of themselves, but the unknown delays are really a dealbreaker. In this day and age, delays like this are just not acceptable for anything but a novelty.
Especially with kids, it’s just really a nonstarter. I think the only way I’d consider taking another Amtrak train would be some combination of
- No kids
- A train with no connections (like direct Chicago to Seattle)
- A LOT more care paid to contingencies and the possibilities of being late (and I thought I DID do that!)
Which is a shame, because the IDEA of train travel is so cool! Nearly everyone I have talked to about it is excited to hear about my trip, or wants to take a trip themselves, or both!
- Introduction: Big heads, Trains and Bears, oh my!
- My (free) $6500 family train vacation on Amtrak
- Holy Toledo! The lunacy in trying to book this Ohio hotel
- Why you want to transfer Amtrak points to Choice Hotels
- How I spent 350,401 miles and points
- You can book unlimited Choice Hotel award nights?
- Checking historical Amtrak delays
- Amtrak Union Station Toledo parking
- 4 reasons my Amtrak trip was a blast…
- … but I’ll probably never take another Amtrak trip
- 4 laundry hacks when you're doing long term travel
- Amtrak Union Station Chicago Metropolitan Lounge
- Boiling River Yellowstone
- Do you take hotel toiletries, pens and other amenities?
- Finding the REAL geographic center of the United States
- How to get compensation for Amtrak delays
- Amtrak tips: Tipping on Amtrak
- Ranking the 8 hotels we stayed at on our vacation
- Updating my travel map with new visited places
- How I spent 350,401 points
- Why I didn’t spend $9,144.92 on my vacation
This site is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as thepointsguy.com. This may impact how and where links appear on this site. Responses are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers and that compensation may impact on how and where card products appear on the site. Any opinions expressed in this post are my own, and have not been reviewed, approved, or endorsed by my advertising partners and I do not include all card companies, or all available card offers. Terms apply to American Express benefits and offers and other offers and benefits listed on this page. Enrollment may be required for select American Express benefits and offers. Visit americanexpress.com to learn more. Other links on this page may also pay me a commission - as always, thanks for your support if you use them
User Generated Content Disclosure: Points With a Crew encourages constructive discussions, comments, and questions. Responses are not provided by or commissioned by any bank advertisers. These responses have not been reviewed, approved, or endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the responsibility of the bank advertiser to respond to comments.
Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
Interesting comments, the goods and the bads. We’re leaving next Monday for a similar journey with my family of just three, husband, 6 year old daughter and myself. I’ve already heard about the delays on these trips. We’ll travel from Saint Paul, Minnesota with our final destination Oakland, CA. We also have a car rental waiting for us. I’ll call before the rental company, I believe it’s Avis and see what happens if you don’t show up on the day you’re supposed to. Would they hold the car till the next day? I’ll see.
We are staying with relatives the first couple of days so it should be fine if we arrived later, not like we have a hotel reservations.
Something you didn’t mention but that I’m curious about: were there other families with kids around? Of course you have your own gang of kids but for us, parents of an onlie, I would like to see other kids around to play with mine so that she doesn’t get bored. We will bring entertainment, cards, games, coloring, our own movies, etc. but still, it would be great to see other families with kids.
Ok, off I go to get ready for this big adventure.
Thanks for your posts, they will help me to get ready.
Leticia
It seemed like there were 3 types of people that take Amtrak.
1) Old people
2) College students / people with no money / hobos
3) Amish (surprise!)
There were not a lot of families with kids around, though I did see a few
I am pretty sure there are very few hobos that travel on Amtrak. It’s too expensive for them. Agree that most are older folks or college age students. If you take the Southwest Chief you would see a lot of Boy Scouts in the summer going to Philmont.
I have gone roundtrip from LA to Chicago twice and New Orleans once and never had a real big issue with tardiness. Once the SWC was a few hours late but that was good coming home as I was able to get off in Riverside at 8 AM instead of about 3 hours earlier when it was supposed to get there.
It is too bad that one has to plan for possible delays w/ contingent plans for late arrival. It’s hard to blame Amtrak for a freight train derailment. I do think it would have been much better had you been able to get some straight info though while you were waiting. My guess is that no one really knew. Once trains get off schedule, they can keep getting later and later. Plus, you were rerouted so that may make things even worse than a regular delay.
My kids have enjoyed train travel very much. I have only taken 1 or 2 at a time though unless it was really local.
Well, I’m an old person traveling with an even older person with COPD. We brought headphones to block out the crying children (we’ve been there, done that, know how difficult it is) so we were fine with families and children. But after numerous delays, miscommunications, lack of information regarding detours, being asked to “run” to catch a train because of a late connection (what part of 78 years old with COPD do you not understand?) and dirty smelly bathrooms (think “yellow slosh and sticky icky floors) we won’t be traveling on Amtrak again. Ever.
Amish and hobos? No…Amtrak is almost exclusively black, poor people on the east coast (or business people on the WAS-NY train.) They’re rude, aggressive, and sometimes dangerous. I’ll never ride Amtrak again.
Excuse me, yes there are black people on Amtrak but my last east coast trip spandex people of all ethnicities and the rudeness on the round trip was by white professionals cussing up a storm.
Wow, you sound like someone I most definitely do not want to travel with.
Sad,so Sad,Amtrac is a SH…the major roads HATE having to deal with it,…My only train travel these days would be in Europe,where train travel is modern and efficient.,good food,clean rooms, and on time….oh yeah,,,,and FAST…..US rail travel quality peaked in the late 1920s,and except for a WW2 sell outs, its been in decline ever since. I took one of Amtraks Vermont-Wash D.C.awful,stuffy, hot, and garbage food, NEVER again. Plus you had to meet the southbound at Bellows Falls around midnight…..
I’m taking the wolverine from Ann Arbor to Chicago then the Empire Builder from Chicago to Glacier national park later this summer. I live near Toledo but taking the wolverine instead of Capital limited or lakeshore limited because of more civilized departure times.
Makes sense. The 5:30 a.m. departure from Toledo beats what we’d have in Cincinnati (where we live). There the train leaves at 1:47 a.m. one direction and 3:10 the other 🙁
If traveling on time is your thing, then trains are not for you. The reason to take a train is for the experience of the trip and not what’s at the destination. Amtrak does not own the tracks it uses and is constantly sidelined in favor of freight trains of the owner of the tracks.
Thanks for this very sad report. Shame, shame on Amtrak. Rail travel could be and should be a wonderful experience. I too want it to succeed. But the arrogance, the lack of care, the bad lackadaisical 19th century attitudes I’ve encountered again and again….. what a shame your family had to endure this. You should have been offered boatloads of compensation, but no doubt Amtrak will lamely claim “circumstances beyond their control” (ie., beyond their willingness to take responsibility)
Sometimes though, certain circumstances are out of their control. They share track rights with other freight railroads. Sometimes a freight crew reaches their 12 hours and they need to wait a few hours to get re-crewed while in the way of an Amtrak train. Other times, a freight train’s coupling will break and cause a delay while the crew fixes it, holding Amtrak up. Those circumstances aren’t under Amtrak’s control, nor even under the freight railroad’s control. Things just happen on the railroad, and you’ll always get something different that happens every day. Take it from someone who used to work on a freight railroad, me.
Jeremy – I understand all that, but it still doesn’t make me want to travel on Amtrak much, especially if I am counting on them to get me somewhere in a timely fashion.
I’ve travelled all over Europe by train. In Germany and France you can count to the second when the train will roll in an out. Italy and the east I’d say more like to the 5 minutes. Even in China the trains run on time.
That said the only long distance Amtrak I’ve taken (Orlando-NYC) was on time to the minute.
I do agree though the cars are dated and dirty. I think the dirty is primarily because the cars are old and don’t appear to have been refurbished at any time.
(I know a few years late…) What did Amtrak do wrong that they should have to compensate the riders? They are at the mercy of the freight railroads who own the track. If the train is on schedule, Amtrak gets priority, but one the train is delayed, it loses priority. And sometimes, things just go wrong that prevent the freight from clearing the track (derailments, equipment, the track itself, etc.) – that’s life.
It’s certainly fine to note the reliability (or lack thereof) of the schedules, but much of it isn’t something Amtrak can control. For Amtrak to have the level of control necessary, the cost would be prohibitive. Are you really blaming Amtrak for the freight derailment?
Point taken and I am aware that it’s the freight lines that own the track and set the rules. But if I’m paying Amtrak to take me from Point A to Point B, I feel like there’s at least a little bit of an understanding that they will do so in a timely fashion.
I was a locomotive engineer for the Santa Fe for years. When Amtrak ran, it had priority over freight. We had to give way. I was the fireman on Amtrak for a while before it stopped running over our line. I was a member of the BLE. From the late 70’s until mid ’90’s. Trains can’t help cars stuck on the rails, weather, like tornadoes. Amtrak leases the right to use the rails in a district.
We have also taken the California Z. to Salt Lake City and I have to say the BEST part is from Denver to Utah for the lovely scenery! However, even though we have done it twice, we were not in a sleeper car, and it was a long journey in a very comfy seat. The thing about the bathrooms being dirty for me was the most negative aspect of the trip, worse than the delays! Our delay was only about 4 hours (into Provo when my older son was starting BYU.) Still, train travel is great for kids, if you have a REALLY flexable schedule.
Yes – the train trip itself was fine; it was just the delays which killed things for me. If we were a bit more flexible and had nothing to do on the backend, it would have been enjoyable I think
Im up for a cross country trip on this upcoming Sunday night leaving from GNS-WAS then WAS-CHI and finally CHI-PRO.
I do see about an hour delay on leaving GNS and the rest look semi-OK.
The delay history into PRO on Zephyr 5 are absolutely frightening!
I am going with 3 kids too. I might be up for a much more of an adventure than I thought!!
Any final advice?!?!
Good luck! Unfortunately there’s not really anything you can do about it (which I think was one of the more frustrating parts about it). If you haven’t seen it already, I did write a post with some good resources to track delays and train locations. If you are delayed, make sure to read my how to get Amtrak compensation.
Sure did read those over and have the delay links. I don’t want to be stressing out over it but I don’t really like the inconvenience of arriving in the middle of the night. By the looks of it I might have to use that customer relations number if the delays are the same that I am seeing on the historical charts into Utah.
Other questions – how many electrical chargers are in the sleeper rooms? I know wifi and tethering from my phone will be limited but wanted to know this to make sure Tablets are charged to keep some entertainment.
How much luggage storage space in the room? OR should the train luggage storage space be used?
There are a few plugs in the family room – that wasn’t an issue.
As for luggage space, we felt okay. We had 2-3 bags in our room, and put a few in the storage space on the train, but we checked most of our bags.
You can check the immediate status of any train via the Google Map Engine tool embedded in the Amtrak web site. The map displays the actual location of the locomotive in real time and the amount of time it is delayed.
http://www.amtrak.com/find-train-bus-stations-train-routes
Just click on the button on the right of the screen called “track your train”. It’s awesome, especially in the remote rural west, so you don’t have to spend any extra time waiting at an unmanned station in the middle of the night.
Thanks for the trip report!
We caught that same train from Denver to Sacramento. We ended up sleeping on the train two nights instead of one and were 20+ hours late by the time we got to Sacramento. We ended up getting the full cost of our trip refunded. My grandson and I actually had a great time even with the delays. Very few issues once we boarded the train in Denver. Other than running out of food, the employees we dealt with were great. We had so much fun that our next trip is scheduled on the Empire Builder from Seattle to Chicago in March. We can’t wait.
Right – on the train, there was no problem. I mean we were in sleeper cars so they kept feeding us (and since we got off at Denver we didn’t have any issues with running out of food). The problem was that the 13 hour delay really impacted the start of the vacation (most importantly, our rental car place closed at 6pm which was not a problem when we were supposed to get in at 7:30 a.m., but became a big problem when we got in at 8:30 PM!!!)
It did impact my plans on the back-end. I had to change hotel reservations and flights home. It ended up costing me about $400.00 in cancellation fees.
My husband and I took the Empire Builder back in October. We got on in Milwaukee (we were already in town) with plans to ride it to Seattle and then fly back home. The train was scheduled to arrive in Seattle at 10:25 a.m., and I had checked multiple historical train arrival times to ensure that we shouldn’t have any problems making our 4:30 p.m. flight. It had actually been early several times, and the greatest delay I saw was around 20 minutes.
Well, needless to say our trip was full of delays, including several hours in a very chilly Fargo. We missed seeing any sights that were even remotely mountainous, and I woke up that morning when we stopped in Spokane. We were delayed around 5 or so hours at that point, and it was going to be extremely close catching our flight in Seattle, assuming there were no more delays. I pulled up the cost of changing our flight, and any option was ridiculously expensive since we had booked the original so early in advance. The time to drive from Spokane to Seattle was considerably less than taking the train, so we threw all of our belongings in our bags and jumped off the train in our PJs after the conductor had already called “all aboard,” and got a rental and drove the rest of the way.
We were in a sleeper car, but we did only get a voucher for $350 to basically cover the cost of rail (the rail ticket for both of us cost $344). Even so, it wasn’t enough to make up for the cost of our rental and our missed meal.
We met a lot of great people and had a pretty good time, but it definitely feels like no one really knows what’s going on.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that the first morning of our trip, someone had forgotten to refill the water in our car, so no coffee was available until it could be refilled at a later stop.
Yikes! One thing I’ve now learned is that while Amtrak train travel is fun, you absolutely can’t take it anywhere where you have to be anywhere on time. 13 hour delay for me!
That’s the truth! We were lucky our delay wasn’t any more than it was!
You just saved me a ton of money and time. I was just looking at Amtrak from Dallas to Vancouver for summer. Now, I’ll just fly to SEA and take the train to Vancouver. Then, I’ll see more of the BC area.
Don’t get me wrong – our Amtrak trip WAS fun. But… it’s not a reliable way to get anywhere. We actually are planning on another trip later in 2016, but we’re going to do it in such a way that we’re not depending on Amtrak to get us anywhere on any sort of schedule
I’m sorry you had such a rough go. I have traveled solo long distance with my 18 month old and am preparing to go solo with him (he’s now 3) and my 8 month old. We have also taken countless plane and road trips, both domestically and internationally. Amtrak has always been my favorite way to go. In my high school & college days I frequently traveled along the eastern seaboard via Amtrak, so I have learned to expect delays. For the most part, Amtrak doesn’t own the track, a major freight company (like UP or BNSF) does and passenger trains are not a priority. Beyond that, our porters have always been attentive to bathroom issues and the bathrooms and shower facilities in the sleeper cars have usually been fine. I really think part of your issue was your porter. Our train was delayed getting into Chicago once and our porter offered to bring our dinner bc the next reservation wasn’t until 9 and he saw I had the toddler. He also cleaned the bathroom and shower himself.
Yeah, even with a “direct route” trip, delays are long and arduous. I rode the Empire Builder from Chicago to Spokane (originally began in North Carolina, actually.. cross-country!) years ago and remember having to stop near the WI-MN border for the police to come arrest a man that was groping sleeping passengers. Ah, memories.
You stay classy Amtrak!
We just completed Amtrak Kansas City to Chicago and return. Two hour late going because the Southwest Chief was delayed in the west. Rail buckle. with 8 of us, 4 adults and 4 kids it was great. Very restful, great view and the Amtrak people were super nice. Had lunch in the diner going and it was good, and dinner coming home and was good. Overall, I will do it again. no complaints
I had the great pleasure of riding the Emeryville 10:15 PM Amtrak Bus on 12/10/2018 to Santa Barbara for connecting me to the Surfliner train going to Oxnard CA. The ride was excellent and the driver was courteous. However, it appears the Amtrak crews had failed to clean the Toilet for preparing the bus for the trip. As a result, all throughout the ride, the toilet kept releasing an unpleasant smell that was circulating inside the bus and has rendered me nauseous. The feedback is only to notify the Amtrak Dept. of the experience that I had riding the Amtrak Bus so the issues can be corrected on future rides. I still and continue enjoying the convenience of letting Amtrak do the driving. Thanks !