Hello everyone, I'm from California's central valley. I've only ridden Amtrak a couple of times, once on a field trip in elementary school, and then again last summer on the Coast Starlight round trip to Seattle. The Coast Starlight in a roomette made me fall in love with train travel. I have a trip on the California Zephyr planned for late October from SAC to Chicago that I'm looking forward to. I plan to enjoy the rest of the Amtrak long distance routes in the future.
Hello from California
- Thread starter justn
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Welcome, Justn! What's your "home train" and station? Central Valley of CA runs as far south as Bakersfield and as far north as Redding with lots of Amtrak service in between, and strikes me as a pretty good home base. My general impression (and notice that I'm an easterner) is that north-south service in CA is pretty good, east-west service less so except with the help of Thruways.
When my sister lived in Fresno she lived next to very busy train yard, lots of produce going on trains. But I never went there by train, mostly flew to LA and drove going home via SF, or the reverse. Gave me an appreciation of just how big that valley was.
Once on a plane. FAT-DEN-LGA
Once on a plane. FAT-DEN-LGA
Hi Trollopain, my home train and station would be the San Joaquins out of Bakersfield. Northbound from Bakersfield is quite good. However, if I want to take the Coast Starlight to Seattle, I really need to catch it out of LA so I don't miss the spectacular coastal views.
I really wish Amtrak had a rail line that connected the San Joaquins to Los Angeles. Hopefully soon with the CA HSR it'll be possible to get to LA's union station via rail.
I'll be taking the San Joaquins out of Bakersfeild to catch the CZ in Sacramento this October with a thruway bus from Stockton to Sacramento.
It's a big valley, and only about half of California's length. It's always wild to me how we consider the bay area to be "northern" California, when there's still tons of state left beyond that.
