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I'm loving your attitude and yes, any trip is better on a train!

A digression, but I first heard the term "goods train" for what we Yanks would call a "freight train" in Dorothy Sayers' wonderful golden-age detective novel, Murder Must Advertise. Fuddy-duddy Mr. Copley, one of those insufferable co-workers known for nitpicking and punctuality, has overslept...

I usually see the term "bench seating" to describe those seats in which passengers sit sideways to the direction of travel and are affixed to the wall like, y'know, benches. Though I don't know the corresponding term for the dominant (on Metro anyway), window-and-aisle, inner-and-outer, seat...

And rail miles between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia are about 350 (thank you, RPA timetables) and the landscape flashes by in a brisk...7 hours and 20 minutes. More in the morning with padding. Montreal to Toronto in 5 hours looks pretty good.

Okay, at the risk of sounding like a tech dinosaur: what about GPS? Huge stretches of Amtrak's long-distance routes have no wifi and no cell signal. In theory, our smartphones can get the info from satellites instead. Do they? Do we have to preload maps? Or is a separate GPS called for...

Thank you, member formerly known as Amtrak Maineiac. That's good to know. I expect that Grand Junction is an interesting place to spend a night before showing up at the Enterprise bright and early (or late and leisurely) next morning. I know about as much about the Western Slope of CO as my...

Non-driver here too, first by choice, then by necessity (visual decline...legally I could drive, morally I shouldn't). That's a practical choice in Washington DC and downtown Pittsburgh. And in a few other metropolitan areas. Unfortunately it's not an option in huge swathes of the country...

Update, three years later, and a query about the Grand Junction, Colorado (GJT) station: My friend's mother, the "government girl" of this thread's subject line, died last weekend, six months after her 100th birthday. The last few years of her life were hard due to cognitive decline and having...

Can we buy FNBO an atlas? Image from a robomail thanking me for having had an Amtrak Rewards Mastercard for another year. Besides the top 6 (really?) "destinations," I'm struggling to find Chicago. Please help.

"I think the meat was chicken" and "it was a sort of omelet" did not make me salivate to book a trip to China on United.

Look at the shine on those shoes! Both the soldier's and the conductor's.

That sounds like a dream trip, even a "circle trip" if you come back on the Builder (or maybe across Canada?). Welcome!

Welcome, Josh! But now we wanna know...who won the quizbowl?

Same here. I dislike "fake food." Black bean burgers are delicious in their own right, relatively unprocessed, and aren't pretending to be something else.

I think the upcoming generation can grasp "antique forms of transportation" (the VW bug, station wagon, old railcar), but that tall red box will flummox them.

Welcome, Ken, and thank you for visiting your old aunt; I hope you inherited her genes! This Easterner had to look at a map to convince myself that Las Vegas is indeed closer to Kingman than to Reno. Much closer.

Welcome, turtly! I envy you and others who had even one train ride as a kid. I had zero, zilch, nada, unless you count the kiddie train at Kennywood. I'm very much making up for that in adulthood. South Bend is a great (well, could be greater if not for delays, but still) hopping-off point...

I have never ridden that trackage and I look forward to it! It's a long, "overland" route to bypass the tunnel. The Allentown neighborhood is a stone's throw from where my dad grew up on Mt. Oliver and went to the now-closed St. Justin's High School (3 classes ahead of quarterback Johnny...

Or, I dunno, call in the United Nations peacekeepers?

Oops, now I recognize from your detailed description the entrance you're talking about. And it seems to be open in daytime, locked at other hours, including those hours when the Cap Limited leaves on its westbound and eastbound legs (around midnight and 5 a.m., respectively). I haven't taken...