Hop on / off across the country

Hello. My wife and I are interested in traveling across the country from NY to the west coast or reverse on Amtrak. Rather than spend overnights on the train, we would like to hop on / off at various stops to visit cities and towns along the way. Not sure how to manage logistics. Does Amtrak have a planning service to help with this or do you have to figure it out on your own. Thanks for any advice.

George said:

Hello. My wife and I are interested in traveling across the country from NY to the west coast or reverse on Amtrak. Rather than spend overnights on the train, we would like to hop on / off at various stops to visit cities and towns along the way. Not sure how to manage logistics. Does Amtrak have a planning service to help with this or do you have to figure it out on your own. Thanks for any advice.

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Because the trains western trains generally only run a maximum once daily, it would be difficult to travel cross country without spending the night on the train.
For example, if you wanted to travel from Chicago to Denver, you would arrive in Denver the next morning. You could spend the night in Denver and catch the train going west the next morning.
You could call Amtrak with a list of cities and an agent could provide you with times and fares, but to my knowledge, there is no planning service.

You could plan yourself by checking the website, looking at the routes and determining which cities you would like to visit.

If you plan to travel in coach, consider a rail pass.

George said:

Hello. My wife and I are interested in traveling across the country from NY to the west coast or reverse on Amtrak. Rather than spend overnights on the train, we would like to hop on / off at various stops to visit cities and towns along the way. Not sure how to manage logistics. Does Amtrak have a planning service to help with this or do you have to figure it out on your own. Thanks for any advice.

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The problem you'll face is that for most of the distance on the cross-country routes, there is at most only one train per day. So if your goal is go coast to coast, you won't be able to do it without spending some nights on the train. For example, from New York, you can get a day train to Buffalo or Pittsburgh, but from both of those cities, the only train continuing to Chicago leaves about midnight and gets to Chicago the next morning.

From Chicago you could make it to Kansas City or St. Paul by bedtime and stop for the night. But the next day, the only train continuing west would be the next day's version of the one you took the previous day, which would leave at nighttime to continue toward California or Seattle.

Actually, if you're determined not to spend a night on the train, you could get all the way from New York to Kansas City (or Minneapolis) by rail, but it would involve at least two overnight stopovers plus a routing through Canada, and you'd have to use a taxi/limo or bus to get back across the border from Windsor, Ontario, to Detroit. But west of Kansas City, there'd definitely be no rail alternative to an overnight ride.

I think this may be out of date, and of course daylight is longer in the summer and the trains are often late so that throws things off too, nonetheless this may be helpful. For instance, I did the Empire Builder last spring and got Glacier in the daylight coming and going aided by longish days and being a little late. The CA Zhephyr's schedule is meant to give you all its best bits in the daylight. And this doesn't include the regionals that run to some of the same places as the long distance trains.

danasgoodstuff said:

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I think this may be out of date, and of course daylight is longer in the summer and the trains are often late so that throws things off too, nonetheless this may be helpful. For instance, I did the Empire Builder last spring and got Glacier in the daylight coming and going aided by longish days and being a little late. The CA Zhephyr's schedule is meant to give you all its best bits in the daylight. And this doesn't include the regionals that run to some of the same places as the long distance trains.

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This is great, thanks for posting!