I agree that train travel is not for everybody.(though obviously it is for me, 140,000 miles under my belt ) ....but it is worth giving it a chance. You might like it.You don't ever have to do it again if you do not like it.
For me, time stands still on the train. I relax, watch the scenery, meet new people in the dining car and the lounge car. Few, if any are "creeps". I have seen a drunk or two during the years but scarcely anybody I would classify as a"creep".And you can see drunks on the plane and bus and hotels also.
It needs to be pointed out that coach seating on a train is much roomier than coach seating on a plane. You will NOT be like sardines in a can.
Sometimes the food is incredibly good,but usually it is AT LEAST "ok". especially dinner and breakfast. For lunch the choices are not that great. The Cardinal's snack items should be good decent food, though not quite the prime rib steak one can often find in the full service dining cars at dinner.
Some of us enjoy eating on a moving vehicle, walking through the train, people watching. It is neat to go bed with one kind of scenery outside your window(like forests) and wake up to something completely different(like the desert). Nothing that drastic would happen on the Cardinal's route of course, but if you are traveling from Chicago to the west coast, for example, it certainly does happen and that is rather neat.
It can be neat to observe small and smaller town America outside your window. Look at the little towns, the stores, search for the town name, the towns you no longer see from the Interstate. If can be nice to wake up in the middle of the night, look out the window roll over and go back to sleep.
In the diner you are seated with strangers for logistical reasons---ooops,I believe you are a family of four---then this would not apply. But if you are a party of 1,2 or 3 you may be seated with stranger(s)and that can be quite delightful. You never how interesting that new face might be.(sure, not always, but sometimes.)
If you are in a sleeper there is nothing quite like that experience. Changing clothes on a moving train, figuring out the lavatory details etfc.
Sometimes trains run late, this is mostly due to freight train interfernce, the freight lines own the tracks in most parts of the country and they sometime take the right of way. Note that few delays are Amtrak's fault. Of course at the present moment trains and everything else are in serious trouble in the flooding, snowing, mudsliidng areas of the western U.S. That is not anybody's "fault".
What else? Just relax, slow down, smell the roses, it is a way of enjoying life in the present. It works for me. It doesn't work for everybody. But it is worth a try......who knows?
OBS.....
