Trip from PA to Myrtle Beach

[Dan Colgan]

Hi,

Every year my family and I go to Myrtle Beach, SC and while I love the time in the car with my children LOL I am interested to see if we could possibly take a train.... Can you advise?

 

[PRR 60]

Hi,
Every year my family and I go to Myrtle Beach, SC and while I love the time in the car with my children LOL I am interested to see if we could possibly take a train.... Can you advise?

Amtrak serves Florence SC as the gateway to Myrtle Beach. Florence is about 70 miles west of Myrtle Beach so you would have to rent a car and drive.
Two Amtrak trains serve Florence. One, the Palmetto, arrives around 5:30pm after a 7:30am departure from Philadelphia. The Palmetto does not offer sleeping car or dining car service, but does offer Business Class coach seating and has a cafe car with sandwiches and the like. The Silver Meteor is the other train and has full sleeping and dining services, but it calls at Florence at 3:30am so that probably would not be a great choice.

Returning you have the same two trains with the Palmetto leaving Florence a little before noon and getting to Philadephia at 10pm and the Silver Meteor leaving at about 10:30pm and getting to Philadelphia at about 9am the next morning.

This all assumes that by PA you mean the Philadelphia area. If you are coming from western PA you would first have to get to Philadelphia or Washington to get to the Atlantic Coast service trains. Coming from any distance would make connecting to the southbound Palmetto impossible without an overnight stay.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

I'd take the Palmetto via business class down, and the Silver Meteor via Sleeper.

Actually, I'd take the Regional to New York, The Lake Shore Limited to Chicago, the Empire Builder to Portland, the Coast Starlight to Los Angeles, the Sunset Limited to New Orleans, the Crescent to Washington, and the Silver Meteor to SC. Going back, I'd take the Silver Meteor to Washington, the Capitol Limited to Chicago, the California Zephyr to San Francisco, the Coast Starlight to Eugene, the Cascades to Seattle and then Vancouver, the Canadian to Toronto, the Maple Leaf to New York, and the Acela Express to Philadelphia. But if you take that routing, you're nuts.

 

[BobWeaver]

I'd take the Palmetto via business class down, and the Silver Meteor via Sleeper.

Worth noting is that coach class on the Palmetto is the equivalent of the business class cars on Regional trains if you've ever ridden one before.