“Sorry, folks, there’s no wi-fi on-board this California Zephyr train…the only WWW you need is the Wide World outside your Window.”
“What you’re seeing right now is America’s backyard.”
“Folks, here in the snack car I’ve got hot coffee, I’ve got tea and beverages, I’ve got beer and wine available for purchase, I’ve got all kinds of snacks available…the snack car is now open, and I’m ready for ya.”
“You know, the Republicans, they wanted to get rid of Amtrak. Zero funding. But you can’t get rid of us.”
“Folks, there’s no smoking on this train. There’s never been smoking allowed on this train, but now there’s a federal law with some real teeth to it.”
[To me, who is obviously too excited to be on a train for an adult woman] “This your first time on a sleeper train?”
“So the rule was, whoever had a baby girl first got the doll-house. It’s a replica of the original house, too, with full electrical…electricity wiring. And they kept having boys. Until she got pregnant with me and I won it for her.”
“My ex-wife works for the railroad too. Lucky it’s a big country.”
Omg omg I’ve always wanted to ride on a sleeper train. Do you get your own little bed compartment like in Some Like it Hot?
In my head I want to do a sleeper train thing, but it would need to be a proper old-timey 1920s Murder on the Orient Express style train. Much like I want to go on a cruise but only if it’s like the one Phryne Fisher goes on in Death by Water.
I did a cross-country train trip and told everyone I was going to solve a murder and then it was pointed out to me that I was basically hoping for someone to get murdered. Oops.
Well, if someone’s going to get murdered anyway…
Haven’t seen the movie, but IMX the basic option is a little compartment, 3’6″x6’6″, transformable to be either a bunkbed or two seats facing each other, a tiny bit of storage space.
I went on one when I was a little kid and I remember it as days and days of boredom. I was not interested in scenery back then. I remember passing the time crocheting little hats for my mouse figurines.
A friend did an all-Amtrak honeymoon, and they loved it. They rode trains for 10 days, with a couple of days for stopovers in interesting locales.
The most significant factor, though: She and her spouse are each less than 5′ 10″ so the short berths were no problem. My friend assures me it would be a Very Bad Idea to book tall Mr Rose on a sleeper car. I can assure anyone who will listen that Mr Rose is Completely Intolerable if he has not had a good night’s rest. TBH, I am almost as crabby when tired.
You do!! And an awesome porter to help with the ro-agami to get everything set up. I took an Amtrak sleeper from Minneapolis to Rochester NY for my aunt’s 50 anniversary as a nun.
We do have some cool nuns here in Rochester!
(the motherhouse is not far from wegmans)
The only sleeper train I’ve been on was between Moscow and St. Petersburg. The inspection stickers in it still said CCCP. In 2006. Needless to say it was not exactly the most comfortable experience.
Eastern Europe sleeper trains were not terribly comfortable either in the mid-90s. Plus since that was pre-EU, there was lots of being awoken multiple times to show passports for 2 am hour-long border crossings.
The BEST, though, is when you cross from a formerly USSR country to just plain old Eastern Europe, and the train has to be lifted onto a different set of wheels to fit a different track gauge #lol
Amazingly, that’s not a bug, it’s a feature! Because the different gauges means that anyone who wants to invade Russia from Europe has to do the same thing every time they want to send food down their supply lines. This was a major pain in the ass for the Germans when they invaded in WWII, from what I’ve heard. Best way to annoy a Nazi: screw up his logistics.
Riiiiight. Just like how the USSR neglected to pave any of its dirt roads- totally to bog invading troops in the mud!
It may or may not have been a planned feature, probably just an effect of 1800s thinking and lack of early standardisation – “the Russian empire will never be connected internationally to the west anyway so why would we design our railway around other countries’ choices when they haven’t even made up their minds, instead of choosing what’s best for us”. But it did slow down the Germans. And unlike unpaved dirt roads, having a weird railway gauge won’t make your own country suffer, because it won’t slow down travel and shipping within your country, and all your trains will already be correctly fitted. The Germans, however, would of course have to cross the Russian border every time they tried to ship troops, food and gear from Germany to their armies in Russia, and get stuck in a logistical bottleneck at the border every single time because they had to make their German trains fit the Russian rails (or steal enough Russian trains and then move everyhing to the new trains).
Oh, no argument from me that it slowed down the Germans; I just think that your suggestion that it was the result of Russia’s lack of standardization is much closer to the cause of the situation- didn’t it take them until the 20th Century to fix the calendar? To my eye, most Russian/Soviet work-arounds for avoiding updating or meeting standards (pencils in space; Turkish toilets because why not?) are the result of a “well, we can stand it” mentality.
Ultimate eastern european sleeper train story. http://themoth.org/posts/stories/unhooked
came back to comment OMG THANK YOU FOR SHARING. Amazing.
Oh I went on that one too! With a class trip. There was a person who came around selling tea.
I didn’t get any tea offered to me. Clearly your Soviet sleeper car experience was a bit classier than mine?
I’ve been on that train! I actually really loved it, but it may have been the romance of the thing blinding me. Or the actual old Russian men who shared their vodka with us.
I didn’t get on it until like two in the morning. So yeah. Nothing was really seen or experienced beyond my being completely unable to get to sleep.
A hop, a skip, and jump over in Finland, in 2002, and their sleeper cars were just fine, in my remembrance.
Except the train up to Rovaniemi stopped in the near-midsummer twilight for no discernible reason, and the entire family woke up, including the baby in the pop-up crib on the floor, and we all go to stare at the bunks above our noses, in the slightly-too-warm, slightly-too-cramped silence and stillness.
Sleeping in a *still* train = nearly impossible.
Exciting! In the first few months of my job, I managed to schedule myself for an evening appointment in London and a morning appointment in Aberdeen, which – OH NO! necessitated getting the Caledonian sleeper. And then my dad pointed out it was 50 years to the month since he’d got the London to Aberdeen sleeper train for his first year at university!
I once took the same sleeper, it was marvellous.
Some Toasties might like the train journey sequence in the old (1945) Powell and Pressburger film ‘I know where I’m going’, in which the heroine takes the train to the Hebrides. Here is a youtube link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNomqxjRYlw
( I am a new commenter, hope the link is ok, thanks to Toasties above and below the line for being awesome.)
I love I Know Where I’m Going! It always struck me as having a very modern romcom feel to it. And any movie that has the corryvreckan whirlpool in it is my kind of movie.
YESSSSS.
THAT IS MY SECOND FAVORITE MOVIE.
(A Matter of Life and Death is first.)
I may identify with Joan Webster a bit too much, though I’ve yet to bump into any Scottish island lairds on furlough. One day. One day.
You are a person of excellent taste and we should hang out sometime.
(Also, I just ordered myself the Powell and Pressburger box set from Amazon.co.uk and had it shipped to the US, as my Xmas present to myself).
Yes please. I feel the need to vomit my all consuming love for the Archers on people periodically, but no one gets it.
The most success was when I forced my then thirteen year old brother to watch A Matter of Life and Death with me. He sat there through the whole thing, apparently bored to tears. But now, years later, he’ll look at me and out of the blue put on a fuzzy English accent and pretend to be doing a 40s radio cricket commentary. It’s beautiful.
Our local film museum did a retrospective a few years back, and I got to see almost all of them on the big screen. It was great!!
“The Small Back Room” (which is a bit harder to find) was one of my particular favorites, about a bomb diffusal expert.
I love this misspelling, it’s like making a bomb harmless by turning into a vapour.
yaaasss but also ‘Colonel Blimp’
Ugh. They are all. so. good. All of them. I just want my life to be like living inside of one of their movies, is that too much to ask? Glorious technicolor and sparkling dialogue and gorgeous cinematography and cocker spaniels and also Anton Walbrook and/or Roger Livesey. (Also would not say no to David Niven and Pamela Brown…)
“Colonel Blimp” remains a stock character for some section of Britain, the kind of person who writes angry letters to the newspaper about bringing back caning in schools, hanging in prisons and how the world has gone mad.
DUDE HOW WAS THE CALEDONIAN SLEEPER? I’m going to Scotland in the fall with my friend from England and we were considering getting the sleeper from London to Scotland. A slumber party! On the rails! It sounds so fun. It has to at least be more scenic than the commuter rail from North Billerica to Boston…?
I have never been to North Billerica or Boston, so I cannot comment!
Actually, it is not very scenic at all, because it’s night time – you leave London about quarter past nine, and get into Aberdeen about seven or something? I did it at the end of August, so in theory I could have just about seen the countryside from London to about York, but I see that countryside all the time anyway, so not very exciting. The trainline between Durham and Edinburgh is amazing by daylight – you go right along the coast up between Newcastle and Berwick-on-Tweed – but that’s the middle of the night so you’re probably asleep. North of Edinburgh is also absolutely amazing, so it depends whether you value scenery or sleep more at 4am.
Oh, I would recommend buying food at Euston. The food on the sleeper is very terrible. And if you’re travelling alone, might as well go first-class and have a sleeper to yourself: it was only about £120 so still cheaper than a train ticket AND a hotel.
I’ve never gotten a sleeper (because I was far too broke at the time), but I’ve made the train trip between London and Edinburgh many times and it’s quite lovely. Especially if you go in the springtime when the gorse (i.e., yellow stuff) is in bloom and all the little lambs are gamboling around. Or whatever it is that lambs do.
They absolutely gambol. They also frolic.
Are the snacks included on the sleeper train, or do you have to pay extra?
Dinner and breakfast are included, I know that! And they have really good food on the Amtrak too, surprisingly.
The actual dining car sit-down food. The snack bar hot dogs etc. are nice enough but not great.
Yes, you are correct – I should have clarified. The snack bar stuff is roughly equivalent to something you’d get at a gas station or a baseball stadium.
I did not know this. Not even a little. That’s awesome.
This is exactly what I imagine an American train journey would be like. All friendly and that. The British equivalent to this list would be much more antagonistic. E.g. (from a quick Google) “Please let passengers off the train before boarding. It’s not the storming of the Bastille you know.”
From this btw http://londonist.com/2015/01/the-funniest-things-…
To be fair, people who barge onto the train before people have finished getting off are monsters who deserve all the antagonism from conductors in the world.
SF BART conductors get plenty grouchy. “Please get off the train so people can get on the train. I won’t leave without you.” “If you force the doors open, they will stop working, and this train will go out of service. Then EVERYONE will be late.” I bet subway conductors are grouchy the world round.
I have literally heard a nyc subway conductor say “don’t make me come back there!” when fools wouldn’t let the doors close. It was a real bonding moment for my carriage (who were doing the right thing and letting the doors close!).
My friend from Singapore told me the train door story to end all train door stories. He says that once upon a time, Singapore invested into new subway trains. The doors were fancy automatic ones that wouldn’t close if something was in the way, and the train wouldn’t be able to go until all the doors were closed.
Kids started sticking gum in the tracks of the doors to keep them from closing. It was mayhem! These expensive, shiny new trains were constantly getting held up by gum. The government was like, hey kids, stop sticking gum in the doors or else we’ll ban all gum.
The kids were like, haha, suuure you will.
So the government banned all gum. And the trains ran happily ever after.
Fuck, I knew gum was banned in Singapore but did not know this was why. That is… well, it’s very Singapore.
Is that why chewing gum is illegal in Singapore? Goodness.
I was on the Underground recently and heard someone asking a friend what would happen if they got a body part caught in the door. “It’s like a lift door – when it feels something in the way it’ll immediately stop without crushing you.” HAHAHA. I have been caught by the Tube doors many a time, and they tend to close extremely forcefully on whatever body part is in the way.
I mean, *selling* gum is illegal, but you’re not gonna get arrested if you come back from a holiday in Malaysia or Thailand or wherever with a pack of gum in your bag. I’d never heard about this being the specific reason for banning it though, just gum being a general nuisance on pavements etc!
Can confirm grouchy subway conductors for Munich. Plus, they’re almost always older men with Bavarian accents, which sounds extra grumpy and offended. One highlight was along the lines of: “God in heaven, get out of the doors, I want to get home today, too”. (“Herrschaftszeiten, gehts aus der Tür naus, I will heut a no heimkumma.”) (If you stand a bit too near to open doors, you’re blocking the light sensors, preventing the doors to close properly.)
All train systems should hire uniformed people to shove commuters in and out of the doors, like in Japan.
“The only WWW you need is the Wide World outside your Window” – what I will say to my still imaginary future kids on road trips right before I play Hamilton for the 7th time that leg
I will happily drive a couple of shifts on that road trip.
My 9-year-old daughter sang/rapped “Alexander Hamilton” and “I Know Him” to me all the way to school this morning thanks to hearing them 9,343 times during holiday travels.
I was so pleased to discover that the drive from DC to Charlottesville (where my in-laws moved not too long ago) is approximately 1 Hamilton.
My kids, I think, have forgotten that other music exists. It’s just a given that when they ask me to switch from radio to music, we’re gonna listen to Hamilton.
Love trains, but the only sleeper train I was on seriously disillusioned me.
I thought it would be so romantic; I envisioned Some Like it Hot and Hitchcock movies. Safe to say in the overnight train from Vienna to Krakow my “room” was tiny, full of snoring men piled on top of each other, and a rough experience in general.
My friend had a part of the train fall off and hit her in the eye on a sleeper train to Krakow. A big part too, a metal pipe of some sort. She thought she might lose her eye, it was bleeding that much. Luckily, when she arrived at her hostel, it turned out the father-in-law of the man at reception was a doctor, so the receptionist abandoned his post to drive her to FIL who sorted her out.
Could have been worse, is all I’m saying.
Aaaaaaaah!
Ahh that’s so terrifying! Thank goodness she could find a doctor!
I think it was one of those things where it looked worse than it was, but it’s really hard to judge the relative severity of ‘bleeding profusely from the eye.’ Anyway, that put me off any romantic notions of sleeper trains.
oh too bad — usually the conductor makes a big effort not to have any single women stuck in compartments full of men (and you can definitely ask for help with that if there is a next time).
The sleeper car is great but it gets increasingly nice the more money you pay, unfortunately. The most fun (which I only did as a child with my parents, mostly the Vienna to Belgrade line) is to reserve a compartment just for yourselves, a 2-person or 4-person one, and then you get your own sink, and a funny swinging ladder for the top bunk, and big velvet curtains to shut yourself off from the corridor, and so on. And the wonderful train noise to rock you to sleep.
Mine was kind of romantic! I was sneaked on board the overnight train that crosses the border between France and Italy (they told me at the station to just pay cash to the conductor. Was it a bribe? Was it horribly illegal? At the time my French was not good enough to determine any of this) and the conductor took me to a sleeper car full of people already sleeping (it was midnight).
The lights were off and there were three bunks on either side, and people’s hands came out of each of the bunks, all silvery in the moonlight like that wall of hands in Labyrinth to help lift me to the top bunk, and they all sleepily murmured hellos, and then we all fell asleep crossing the Alps.
<3 <3 i love this, and am imagining the hands saying hello, like in labyrinth
That is so most romantic!
Omg, A+ train anecdote. My favorite yet.
how is this not the opening to a story about magical schools, I would read BOOKS of this.
This is perfect.
I did meet (and hook up with) a seriously attractive man on my first overnight train trip, so in that respect it was actually like the movies!
Living the dream~
It wasn’t a sleeper train but in the summer of ’99 my sister and I traveled around Western Europe and on the overnight train between Marseilles and Geneva this Mysterious Man came in to our (non-smoking) car and tried to tell the Canadian guys sitting a few rows behind us that he was an investigative reporter on the run from the Cosa Nostra and he needed them to take a parcel for him to somewhere I can’t remember exactly. It was crazy. Anyway the guys said no and I saw the Mysterious Man get off the train in some tiny village in Switzerland just before dawn. When we got to Geneva all the men on the train were directed to customs to have all their luggage searched! I think the most likely scenario was that the MM was an investigative journalist but he was investigating if college-age kids were still dumb enough to take packages from strangers across borders.
Oh! And the other great thing that night was getting to see my sister scold the Spanish men who tried to smoke in our car. She was 22 at the time but she has always been good at that sort of thing. It’s the withering scorn that really makes it.
Heard on the Sunset Limited (LA -> New Orleans): “Ladies and gentlemen, that’s a whole ‘nother country right there!”
We could allegedly see Mexico. I saw a decently sized fence, at least…
Good morning, America; how are you?
Don’t you know me, I’ m your own back yard
I’m the train they call the California Zephyr
And I thought you’d like to know we’ve opened the snack car
Thanks for the earworm.
I’ve ridden on the train they call the City of New Orleans! It’s got a great observation car and there was a park ranger of some sort there with bones and other stuff explaining ecology to the children. It was great.
While Mr. Sok was courting me, he went on the sleeper from Toronto? (maybe Montreal? I am bad at northern hemisphere geography) to Vancouver. I was alternately delighted to get messages from him and wildly jealous. We have made plans to go together in some years time.
Sleeper trains! I love sleeper trains!
I first went on one when my family went to Europe when I was 14. We had a compartment with bunk beds and we brought a little picnic and it was a fantastic adventure. Best way to get from London to Rome.
Years later, I was in Madrid for a conference and I decided to take the train up to London for a weekend before heading home. I bought myself the most delicious ham and cheese sandwich I’ve ever eaten (for a really good ham sandwich, you have to go to Spain) and I read Sense and Sensibility. I ended up sharing a compartment with three other girls, and I was the only one who spoke any English. So it was slightly isolating, but I had my book and my sandwich and it was still fun.
For my honeymoon, my one desire was that we take an overnight train (this time from Barcelona to Paris). I was so excited. I did all of the research. We planned our entire vacation around this train trip. And then we got to the train station and discovered that we had tickets for the wrong night! We managed to get across the border into France where we spent the night in a tiny little hotel (49 Euro/night. 59 if you want a shower) with a questionable bed (we slept on top of the bed spread). We caught the commuter train up to Paris in the morning and were ultimately only a few hours behind schedule, but it was still disappointing.
I need to find a way to do this again and wipe out my bad memories so i can focus on the magic of the good memories.
I got the sleeper train from Mannheim to Prague, after travelling from Newhaven to Dieppe on the midnight ferry and then sitting around at the station in Paris for hours; by the time we made it to the sleeper train I had been awake for about 36 hours and was ready to fall over. Our “couchette” was six bunks crammed into a space so tiny that there was barely room for all of us and our bags to get in and collapse into bed. I slept for the vast majority of the journey, although was woken up at intervals in the night by loud train-related noises. In the morning, I was so sleepy and in such a hurry to get dressed and ready that I put my trousers on over my pyjama bottoms and did not notice until I had reached the hostel we were staying at. It was great.
(More exciting but also more alarming: the train that was meant to be a sleeper from Bangkok to Kulala Lumpar. At night we could feel the train moving backwards, and we woke up the next morning to find that we were stopped in the middle of heavily flooded countryside, unable to go anywhere because of unstable ground. We were there for four days and they turned the water off. It was an adventure.)
I have also been on a train from Melbourne to Adelaide, which was not a sleeper but which took about 12 hours. My partner and I did extensive research about What Food Would Be Available, because the website was irritatingly vague (and the email replies we got from the train company were deeply unsatisfying). When I wandered down to the buffet car and tried to buy an apple, they insisted on giving it away for free despite only being about one hour into a twelve-hour journey. I don’t understand their business practicies at all.
Oh, and there was possibly-drunk guy who shouted profanities a lot. We escaped to the buffet car and watched Arrested Development DVDs on my laptop instead.
(Australian long-distance trains require you to arrive half an hour early to board and for your luggage to be weighed! I have been on a train from London to Edinburgh and nobody cared about such things.)
I took a sleeper train from Venice to Paris once and it was an interesting life experience! There were six little bunks to a car, so it was definitely not glamorous. (One could pay more money for a private or semi-private room, though, and I bet that was a little bit more exciting.)
My only sleeper train experience was from Marseille to Florence back in my study abroad days. It was much like described above: six bunks, strangers, creepy-old train with questionable safety standards. We were initially excited because it seemed like there would just be the three of us in our little compartment. Sadly, as night fell and we made a stop, three older, smelly gentlemen joined us in our crammed space. I was in the middle of a set of three bunks and spent most of the night terrified that I would become a sandwich. In the morning, however, we looked out the window and saw the Tuscan countryside as the sun was rising–worth it.
I took the Amtrak for the very first time this past Thanksgiving. Even though it wasn’t the sleeper car (it was just from Chicago to St. Paul, so not very far), it was AWESOME! The coach seats were so big and comfy! All the employees were so friendly and helpful! I could get up and wander around if I got restless! The observation car was so much fun! The sights were beautiful! You could get a beer from the snack cart!
Definitely the most pleasant travel experience I’ve ever had. I’m gonna take the train again in July and I’m so looking forward to it. When I have more money saved up, you can bet I’mma take a sleeper out to Colorado or the west coast or something.
I took the same leg but in the other direction back in August. It was beautiful and magical, wasn’t it? That section where you cross a bunch of bridges to get into Wisconsin was particularly lovely.
Yes! The area around Winona was gorgeous. Although I was a doof and picked a seat in the observation car facing the wrong direction, so all I saw was rock face instead of the river.
Next time just ask the conductor if you can switch your seat. 😉
It’s not the worst to go ahead and do the overnights in the coaches. Just bring a blanket because it can get very chilly in there. I love taking the train and would do that instead of flying down to LA if it weren’t such a time difference.
This past summer I took the Canadian, which is a three-day four-night trip from Toronto to Vancouver, and it was the GREATEST. I met so many lovely old retired people and the most polite and accomplished fourth grader. I lay in bed and looked at the Rockies. I put feet in every Canadian province. The sunset in the Prairies was spectacular. I ate blueberry pancakes for breakfast and when I got off the train in Vancouver it was as though my shoulders had dropped a foot, I was that relaxed.
I’ve done that, too! Magical.
But did this man have the voice of a learnèd and seasoned old-timey announcer who is nevertheless overcome with sheer delight at his subject? If I don’t hear at least three “Aw, Gee”s and the odd “What A Country,” I haven’t gotten my money’s worth.
A life goal is still to take a train across Canada. Too bad even the discounted rate is a fortune.
I’ve always been intrigued by that very prospect but I don’t want to commit that much of my life (and money) to Via Rail.
Only time I’ve taken an overnight train was in India and despite being deeply stressful at the time, I look back on it with strange fondness.
The thing that stands out the most is being woken first thing in the morning by at least two men carrying large machine guns. They didn’t ask to see our documents or anything…just kindof looked at us for 15 or 20 seconds and then left. Hmmm.
I love train rides! Last summer, I had a wedding to go to in Portland, and so I took the bus up to Chicago and then a 58-hour train ride from Chicago to Portland, OR. It was beautiful and long and there were so many interesting people to chat with, and one of the nights, I stayed up until 1 AM in the observation car with about 15 other people, three of whom had guitars and one of whom had a penny whistle, and we sang songs until someone fell asleep.
I tell you, you have not experienced America until you’ve been chugging at a moderate pace through North Dakota at 11 PM singing the Folsom Prison Blues with a few eccentric older woman, a New Zealish exchange student, and a group of guys going back to work in the oil fields.
You are living the best life.
My daughter and I took a sleeper from Chicago to Albuquerque this Christmas to see family, and I loved it. Travel that’s relaxing! Such wizardry! All I had to do was hang out and read and eat. Well, and keep the kid entertained, but she loves to read too, so it was pretty easy.
I had a damned decent steak for dinner, better than I’ve had in a lot of restaurants. They’ll even bring it to you if you’re in a sleeper car, though I don’t really recommend it because it gets cold and there’s a lot of food packaging to deal with in a small space. But it was nice to have the option, because I wasn’t feeling well that evening and couldn’t quite face going to the dining car and sitting with strangers. We did go to the dining car for breakfast and lunch the next day, and really, the “sitting with strangers” thing wasn’t so bad, even for my introvert ass. And all the employees were super nice and helpful. Our car’s attendant decorated it with Christmas lights and brought cookies for her passengers. (I’m sitting at work, typing this and thinking I kind of want to go live on the train again for a while.)
Also, for some reason they would randomly play a (bad) Christmas song over the PA about once every half hour or so. That would have irritated the shit out of me in any other context, but on the train it was THIS close to being charming.
Really, the only thing that would keep me from traveling this way ALL THE TIME is that it’s so expensive.
I took a sleeper train in Thailand once, and the standout memory of that trip was running to catch the train, boarding in the non-sleeper car end of it, and having to wade through several cars of poorer passengers bedding down for the night using sundry items as protection from the hard floor and bench seats. It was the moment I became aware of my privilege in the world.
Ugh, sleeper train from Kiev to Prague with sweaty shirtless conductor bringing us tea in beautiful glasses. When they stopped to change the wheels (YES) the police came on and took my brother because of his Peace Corps stamp and my mom was all “well, that’s the last we’ll ever see of your brother” for two hours.
Also, sleeper car from Venice to Paris when you are on your own and weeping is not as romantic as one might expect, somehow.
WHAT! Tell us when you got your brother back!
it was about four hours. This was preferable to the time he got punched by the village police and had to buy and then drink vodka with them, but still. Eastern European train police are no joke.
YIKES. O.O Duly noted.
My first sleeper train experience was going from Paris to Barcelona at 19. The soothing rocking motions of the train canceled out the weirdness of having to sleep in a small space with a bunch of strangers, and I liked waking up in the night not being entirely certain what country I was in. The downside was that one of my sleeper car roomies was a racist old lady who told me that she lived in Switzerland for a long time with her watchmaker (of course) husband and that “Switzerland used to be nice but now there are too many black people.” I woke up around 2 AM and saw that she was up and poking the person in the bunk above her with the point of her umbrella because they were snoring.
My second was Madrid-Paris during the same trip and it was not as nice. I wasn’t in a compartment but in a regular train car with reclinable chairs, which wasn’t nearly as comfortable. The train was delayed and a fellow passenger started complaining that “this is worse than Amtrak” and then in the dining car I had to share a table with an elderly Frenchman who just had to comment on every aspect of the dinner. He gave me a lecture about the wine I had chosen and remarked that it was “very unusual” that I chose to have coffee after dinner (??). He asked if it was a habit of mine. I don’t know if he’s still alive but if so I would like for him to retroactively fuck off.
A few years later my husband and I took a sleeper train from Granada to Barcelona on our honeymoon (I really like Spain, evidently). Reader, we totally Did It.
I’ve lived in Spain and taken the train countless times, because, surprisingly, their train system is highly efficient and generally affordable. There are parts of the country that are so beautiful to ride through and parts in central Spain that are just ugly, dry, and flat.
Best bang for my buck was a train pass for Spain and France which allowed me to high speed trained between countries. It was lovely. (On my Madrid to Toulouse train I suddenly remembered I didn’t speak French and started Duo Lingo-ing enthusiastically, which wasn’t very effective.)
Basically trains are great and my preferred mode of transportation in Europe.
My favourite overheard conversation on a plane was when I was near a bunch of Desperate Housewives types who were talking about Game of Thrones.
I took the night train from Pau to Paris once, but it wasn’t a sleeper train, so I basically spent 4 hours trying desperately to sleep in an upright train seat. It didn’t even keep moving but stopped for a few hours in Bordeaux. Needless to say I did not hear any classic quotes.
When I got to Montparnasse I was ready to throttle anyone who got in the way of me and my huge suitcase on the metro.
Mallory: are you still on the train? I feel like you’ve been on that train for 3 days? It occurs to me that I have no idea how long interstate rail journeys actually are.
She is asleep in my guest room, having somehow slept through the galloping of two children and a large puppy overhead very early this morning.
I hope we get some pictures of Sansa and Mallory bonding while she is visiting.
I want more miniature pony pics. With Mallory, with Sansa, with both, whichever.
Amtrak trains spend so much time being delayed to allow freight trains to get through that California to Utah in 3 days seemed totally plausible to me! I’m glad to hear she did eventually get there.
Ugh, the freight traffic delays are constant and awful! One time I asked the Amtrak conductor passing by why passenger trains don’t have priority over freight trains, and he said that we did–in theory. In practice, though, it’s a 5 car train vs. a 100+ car train, so…no contest.
I took a sleeper train with my family once when I was a tiny little Absotively. My parents had booked a bedroom, but Via Rail messed up the booking somehow, so we ended up in berths instead. Still very exciting, but since my sister and I were probably about 3 and 5 years old, I can definitely understand why my parents still sound annoyed when it comes up.
They’ve since changed the route in question so that instead of a sleeper train there are two overnight stops. They claim this is to support tourism, because apparently they think the scenery is so great that people will want to spend three full days staring at it.
In summary: up with sleeper trains, down with Via Rail.
Ah this takes me back. My first experience of a sleeper train was when I was 15. I came home from school to find my Dad sitting in the hallway with two backpacks, into one of which he had shoved a random selection of my clothes. He gave me 5 minutes to change and then we had to leg it up to London to catch the Eurostar. and, from Paris, we caught the sleeper to Venice. I remember lying in our compartment listening to my Dad happily snoring away and a bundle of blankets on the opposite bunk sleep-muttering, while wondering if this was, in fact, an impromptu holiday or whether we were actually fleeing the country. Then we spent the day happily meandering around Venice, got the train to Milan and took the sleeper back from there (the trip back was better because I had resigned myself to being arrested so I was able to focus on my surroundings more, and the guy sharing our carriage was a photographer who had been working in Milan for fashion week so he was interesting).
When we got back it turned out that Mum had wanted to do some serious DIY so she had ordered Dad to get us both out of the house for the weekend – and my Dad decided to leave the country as well.
(needless to say, I was a riot at school on Monday…)
My first overnight train experience was Paris to Venice with my university’s Italian class. There’s not a whole lot to do in a tiny room crammed with six people, so the tradition for the trip was to basically get really trashed. I’m convinced that the normal laws of nature don’t actually work the same way on trains, though, because I easily had 2 or 3 glasses of champagne, at LEAST a dozen glasses of wine, and several vodkas (with what was basically apple juice flavoring because only one person brought a bottle of something non-alcoholic) with very little food, yet managed to wake up without a hangover and head straight to a gondola. This should not be possible for an inexperienced (then) twenty year-old who’s 5’2 and weighed maybe 110 pounds. The only reasonable explanation is that trains are magic.
I’ve done a number of overnight train trips: a sleeper somewhere in the northeast when I was too young to know our departure or destination points–the middle bunk was definitely claustrophobia-inducing; a sleeper from Madrid to Sevilla in my twenties–I practiced my middling Spanish with my very friendly Madrilena roommate; an overnight in a second-class train going down the west coast of Mexico–noisy, crowded, smelly, but somehow entertaining; moving from Philly to New Orleans with all my worldly possessions–who knew northern Mississippi was so big? I still love train travel and would do it all the time if it wasn’t so expensive.
There is no such thing as too excited for an adult woman on a train.
My MIL (who hates all travel, never flys, and lacks an appreciation for the logistical wretchedness of airports) always wants to know why we train it rather than fly from NY to NH. BECAUSE TRAINS ARE MAGIC ROMANTIC JOYS. I will watch a sunrise moving backwards slowly thankyouverymuch.
That dollhouse sounds dope as hell. Good on ‘er.
I love trains. I’ve taken the train from Chicago to Utah, and then from Utah to San Francisco. Both were overnight, but I just got a regular ticket and then slept in my seat. It was perfectly comfortable; no one was next to me and I could spread out. Of course, I was also 18, which helps.
Great, now I want to take a sleeper train journey and I want a family heirloom dollhouse with electrical wiring.
This would seem to make you an excellent candidate for that Amtrak fellowship where you ride Amtrak for a spell and write about it. I know they did it once. Thought I’d heard they were doing it again.
She wrote about it once! http://the-toast.net/2014/03/12/trains-wonderful-…
Mallory, your excitement is not in the least bit misplaced, but rather EXACTLY AS APPROPRIATE AS REQUIRED FOR SUCH A SOPHISTICATED JOURNEY. I took a sleeper train cross country this break! I AM STILL SO EXCITED ABOUT IT.
I have done many wonderful European sleeper train journeys, although most sleeper trains have sadly now been cancelled.
The last and best journey was Germany to Italy and back with my dog for Christmas 2014. Dogs are allowed on this sleeper train if you book a private compartment, so I splurged the extra euros and got the two of us a first class sleeper cabin. It came with a private hot shower, three fluffy white towels, and breakfast served on actual china with actual metal cutlery!
The only feeling better than lying in bed on a train while the world flies by is taking a hot shower on a train while the world flies by.
seat61.com is my favourite site for sleeper train plots and dreams.
Ohhhh, this is making me itch to Take The Train Somewhere. Anywhere. Pity I’ve booked a flight back to Boston already for next month.
I have slept on a train before, but it was in a chair. Compartments are expensive y’all.
I’m gonna take to train to Paris this year and I’m so excited. Planes are the worst form of transport >:|
EEEEEE I love trains and I’m taking my first-ever train trip to Seattle this spring and this article (plus comments) is really adding to my excitement. HOWEVER, I don’t think I can afford sleeper car tickets so I was planning on just getting a coach seat. Is 38 hours in a non-sleeper car the worst possible thing I could ever do? I can sleep very well basically anywhere, and especially in cars.
It’s good that you can sleep anywhere. Bring a neck pillow and good blanket!
I’ve gone from Idaho to New York in a coach seat, which takes several days, and it was fine. The seats are much bigger and have more legroom than airplane coach seats, and you can walk around more, and you can go to the dining car or lounge car for a change instead of being stuck in your own seat the entire time, so if you can sleep in a car or a recliner chair, you will not be very miserable. Try to get a window seat so you have a better view of the scenery and don’t have someone trying to get past you all the time, if you can.
I didn’t have a sleeper car for my 58-hour excursion. If you’re there overnight, try to make friends with the conductor and see if he or she can hook you up with a seat without a seatmate – if you’re a good curler and smallish, you can sleep decently on the seats (or, alternately, on the floor if you’ve got the seat in front of the bulkhead, by the stairs). They do recline to about 140 degrees, also. Bring a small pillow or a conveniently scrunchable sweatshirt. Also, the train is often COLD. I try to bring a smallish fleece blanket for the evenings. Be prepared for snorers and people who won’t stop talking.
Also, you should have access to electrical sockets, but if you want to be an awesome seatmate in the event that you share a seat with someone who would _also_ like access to electrical sockets, a travel power-strip thing with multiple places to plug things into is a good move. Finally, especially on long trips, they might run out of food at the dining car, and if you’re on the Empire Builder going into Seattle, the train splits in half at Spokane and only one half of the train gets a dining car. Bring snacks! And a water bottle – there are some fountains with potable water.
The stories in the comments here are the BEST. I am itching now to save up for a train trip somewhere. I’ve been on a few trains (most frequently, just a two-hour one from Portland to Eugene, and then some British and European ones), but never overnight.
I did once sleep in the Brussels train station from midnight to 6 a.m., when I was 19. Really fortunate nothing unpleasant happened. (They had a heated room with benches, and around 6 a conductor came in and asked to see tickets, which effectively scooted the homeless out.) That was my only experience in Belgium (I was on my way back to London from a trip to the Netherlands).
Psst sometimes if you are on the sleeper train between Vancouver and Toronto you can also hear a banjo/accordion duo playing sets of exclusively songs about trains.
Reading this almost makes me want to me want to take an overnight train. Then I remember that I just took one a couple weeks ago, and the things I heard were:
“No, not that stall! Really, you don’t want to go in there!”
“Sir, you’re really going to have to put your shoes on, or I’ll need to reseat you.”
[In a booming voice, at four in the morning, from one deadheader to another] “So I was working my last shift with Tom. No, not Williams. Tom who used to work with Gary. Married to Jim’s sister? Yeah, that Tom. So I was working with my last shift with Tom, and he said last time he was up at his in-laws’ place hunting Jim Sr. told him…”
“No, my company really ships Mexicans up here! Now, what they should do instead is find all those unemployed people in the cities and send them out here to earn their living if they want to keep getting their benefits.”
“Sorry. I’m so sorry. They’re tired. So, so sorry. I know they’re being loud. We couldn’t get plane tickets this year, and the girls haven’t seen their grandmother since….sorry.”
[Nu metal played on a smartphone phone sans headphones]
[To me, upon my asking if that seat was taken] “Nope, sit right down. Oh, but I’ve been reading. Is it okay to leave the light on?” (Not everything about the train is a disaster, after all.)
I took Amtrak on a short trip on Christmas Day with my boyfriend awhile ago, and every time they blasted the horn at an intersection (it’s a legal requirement for unprotected intersections with roads), they honked out “Jingle Bells.” That cheery BWAAH-BWAAH-BWAAAH, BWAAH-BWAAH-BWAAAH, BWAH-BWAH-BWAAAH-BWAH-BWAAAAAAAAAAAH is one of my favorite train memories.
I have only ever lurked on this website because everything I want to say has already been said more articulately. But I adore train travel and am compelled to share some sleeper train advice: Bangkok to Chang Mai is especially fantastic, because in addition to being reliable, private, clean, safe, well timed for actual sleeping and stuff like that, the dining car has a disco ball in case one prefers an all night dance party.
Worst is a tie between Amtrak (3 days late) and Burma (I guess the trains don’t fit the tracks right? but Bourdain accurately describes the experience as kidney softening).
I have such lovely memories of taking the Amtrak with my grandmother to visit my mother every summer. I went by myself later as a teenager and played the How Many Different People Can I Be game the entire trip there. I had a VERY vivid imagination.
I have come to the conclusion that I need to travel by train more often.
Also, the first five comments are #PeakDad.
I married my wife in part for her Amtrak conductor uniform, even though she doesn’t wear it anymore now that she’s an engineer. The other part is that now I have a pass rider card, so I can go on a sleeper car as long as they’re not sold out anywhere in the US for free. I could probably write a book about our adventures on the train if I wasn’t afraid she’d get fired for it. I regularly ride with her on her shift and sleep all cozy in my little bt room while knowing she’s trying to make her stops extra soft and singing Melissa Etheridge- you can sleep while I drive-
i definitely just looked up what it would cost to take the train from Vancouver to Halifax (and also stop over in Montreal and fly home). while i love Canada and think it would be amazing, i feel like $4500-5000 might be better spent going to Europe for a week…
My husband and I took the train from Springfield Massachusetts to Chicago, and then after a few days from Chicago to San Fransisco a couple of years ago. It was a very relaxing way to travel, and I was very happy to avoid TSA bs. We just had coach seats for the first bit, but a sleeper for the Chicago to SF bit.
It was a fascinating look at the 19th century hotspots of the USA, and I learned that Amish families use it quite a bit.
I think one of the oddest bits was hearing a woman describe the graduation ceremony for her daughters college (that she was returning from)and realising that it was mine (without her mentioning the name- some of the traditions are unique) as the reason we were on the trip was my college reunion. We were travelling through Colorado at the time- my college is in Massachusetts. Just such a small world.
The food is included in the amtrack sleeper bookings- and it was pretty good
My husband and I took the train from Springfield Massachusetts to Chicago, and then after a few days from Chicago to San Fransisco a couple of years ago. It was a very relaxing way to travel, and I was very happy to avoid TSA bs. We just had coach seats for the first bit, but a sleeper for the Chicago to SF bit.
It was a fascinating look at the 19th century hotspots of the USA, and I learned that Amish families use it quite a bit.
I think one of the oddest bits was hearing a woman describe the graduation ceremony for her daughters college (that she was returning from)and realising that it was mine (without her mentioning the name- some of the traditions are unique) as the reason we were on the trip was my college reunion. We were travelling through Colorado at the time- my college is in Massachusetts. Just such a small world.
The food is included in the amtrack sleeper bookings- and it was pretty good
I have traveled overnight on the Moscow-St. Petersburg train, overnight on the Venice-Paris train, but despite being 75-years-old and raised Catholic, the only time I’ve ever played bingo was in a conductor-organized game on the Halifax-Montreal night train.
(the motherhouse is not far from wegmans)
…meets Sheldon Cooper.