Miles Traveled on Amtrak

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I'm just trying to ride all the western LD trains
That's a good goal; IMO the experience is better on those trains anyway. Even though they're obviously longer, the logistics are also easier since they tend to end in major cities and you can plan loop trips. In my experience the hardest ones to ride just to essentially check off the list are routes like the Blue Water that reach the endpoint late at night with an early morning return departure and few or no alternative transportation modes available.
 
That's a good goal; IMO the experience is better on those trains anyway. Even though they're obviously longer, the logistics are also easier since they tend to end in major cities and you can plan loop trips. In my experience the hardest ones to ride just to essentially check off the list are routes like the Blue Water that reach the endpoint late at night with an early morning return departure and few or no alternative transportation modes available.
I'm not bothering about the intercity trains too much, I couldn't possibly work those into a somewhat logical tindery for the little travel I do. Just trying to check off the LD trains out here, then the LD trains in the east.
 
Since 2012 when I started keeping track, I have traveled 118,839 miles. While I traveled some before then on Amtrak, it likely amounts to less than 5,000 miles. My travel has picked up a lot since March 2017, as that was soon after my 16th birthday so I was able to travel on Amtrak alone at that point and have done all of my domestic travel by train since then. Since that point, I have traveled 99,949 miles on Amtrak.
Woah how have you been able to travel so much at a young age?!? I'm not too much older than you but have significantly less mileage under my belt.
 
That's a good goal; IMO the experience is better on those trains anyway. Even though they're obviously longer, the logistics are also easier since they tend to end in major cities and you can plan loop trips. In my experience the hardest ones to ride just to essentially check off the list are routes like the Blue Water that reach the endpoint late at night with an early morning return departure and few or no alternative transportation modes available.
It used to be somewhat easier. I rode the Blue Water route when covered by the International all the way to Toronto. And some of the other routes by continuing on or returning on a Greyhound or other bus, when there was a lot more service. Being an employee during much of the time, also gave me an advantage. Besides the obvious free travel, I would sometimes stay at crew hotels at employee rates, and share a ride in the crew van if necessary to get there. And in a couple of instances, the crew allowed me to stay aboard the coach overnight.
A real big advantage was when I got to know the late Jim Larson, VP of operations at the time, and got permission to ride a couple of the many Amtrak “test trains” he ran over freight only routes. One was Denver to Sidney, NE on BN, then UP/C&NW all the way to Chicago. The other was New York to New London, CT on the NEC, then P&W to Worcester, MA, and the Guilford lines all the way to Bangor, ME. Overnight there (in the coach), and then down to Boston North Station, using the future Downeaster route from Portland.
Great memories... :)
 
I keep track of my Amtrak miles on an Excel spreadsheet. As of now, my Amtrak miles are over 286,000. I have not been on an overnight train since December 2019 when I traveled cross country in quite memorable trip. I have yet to travel on any Amtrak Michigan trains, but hope to sometime in the future.
 
Woah how have you been able to travel so much at a young age?!? I'm not too much older than you but have significantly less mileage under my belt.
I typically do 5 LD trips a year and about as many on the midwestern corridor trains. Living in Chicago, I take an annual trip to Florida, 1-2 other trips to the east coast, 1-2 trips to the west coast, and the occasional random trip to somewhere else. I've also gotten the 15 day rail pass twice which added over 10,000 miles in each case. I'm in college so I have a lot of time available during breaks and I travel entirely in coach so it isn't as expensive as you might think. For example I just got back from a trip on the CZ (about 2,400 miles each way) which only cost $88 one way due to the Black Friday sale. I also pack food for most of the trip so I don't spend any more on that then I would at home.

Once I graduate and start working full time I'll have to cut back on my LD trips significantly, but a lot of trips are even possible on a long weekend from Chicago such as the NEC or Colorado. Obviously that doesn't allow much time at the destination but only having a day or so in a city isn't so bad when you get to visit frequently.
 
I'm pretty young for this forum, and so I only take an LD trip every year, sometimes every other year. Would love to travel more, but simply can't
 
I keep track of my Amtrak miles on an Excel spreadsheet. As of now, my Amtrak miles are over 286,000. I have not been on an overnight train since December 2019 when I traveled cross country in quite memorable trip. I have yet to travel on any Amtrak Michigan trains, but hope to sometime in the future.
How many routes do you need to complete all of Amtrak's current ones? From your signature it looks like not too many :cool:
 
I keep track of my Amtrak miles on an Excel spreadsheet. As of now, my Amtrak miles are over 286,000. I have not been on an overnight train since December 2019 when I traveled cross country in quite memorable trip. I have yet to travel on any Amtrak Michigan trains, but hope to sometime in the future.
I do the same thing although I'm only at 63k miles for the past 15 years. More than a dozen LD routes end-to-end, most more than once.
Also on my spreadsheet is (if I make note of it) Sleeper car number and room number; SCA name; locomotive numbers and on-time performance (or lack of).
Routes remaining to travel are all eastern.
 
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I keep a spreadsheet of miles traveled, plus about every other stat under the sun (total trips, total trips/route, miles/route, etc. I've ridden all the long distance trains except the Auto Train and Silver Star. I haven't ridden very many of the short state sponsored routes, though.

I remember when this thread first came out and the brouhaha that began due to one person's rather condescending position on counting miles. I enjoyed going back to the beginning and seeing all the controversy.😁
 
How many routes do you need to complete all of Amtrak's current ones? From your signature it looks like not too many :cool:
I have not completed all the routes I have listed. I have only ridden on some portion of the routes. I have yet to travel on any of the Michigan trains, but hope to get 2 of them in October. I guess I need to sit down and make a list of the routes on which I have not yet traveled.
 
i have an estimate of miles, but it’s probably pretty far off as j don’t remember all my trips and I estimate the miles from google. Maybe one day I’ll try to correctly calculate all mine
 
Well that was an entertaining read for the first few pages. :)

I posted on this thread in August 2008 with 56,000 miles at the time. Checking my spreadsheet, I was actually at 58,457 miles as of that date and shortly took the Heartland Flyer for the first time right after that. I guess I'll update my signature with 212,106 miles as of today. But here I am being a creep for keeping track of my miles.
 
Well that was an entertaining read for the first few pages. :)

I posted on this thread in August 2008 with 56,000 miles at the time. Checking my spreadsheet, I was actually at 58,457 miles as of that date and shortly took the Heartland Flyer for the first time right after that. I guess I'll update my signature with 212,106 miles as of today. But here I am being a creep for keeping track of my miles.
In my opinion, you are not a creep, you are meticulous.
I recall that you may have been my motivation to start my spreadsheet (and reconstruct earlier trips). Not too long ago, I believe we were at the same mileage. Then, you started flying more and I retired and was able to take more trains. I want to say that you are half my age, but, although true at one, time, it is no longer true. However, I am still a generation older than you. I know you will pass me soon.
 
I'm just trying to ride all the western LD trains

That's a good goal to start with, I agree with that earlier opinion. I started with that as well. In one of your further posts, I read you'll do one a year since you're so young. You've got a good plan in place if you carry through with that. I only started riding Amtrak in December 2007 and had my first LD trip on the Empire Builder in June, 2012, to Portland. By late 2018, I had ridden all of the western LD trains, ending with the EB to SEA. I've not ridden some of them end to end as of yet, but will someday. I've not been on the Coast Starlight south of Sacramento, the California Zephyr west of Sacramento, the Sunset Limited east of San Antonio or due to weather, the Texas Eagle between San Marcos and Fort Worth.

I also read that you're not that concerned with intercity trains. Neither am I. My aim is exclusively Amtrak.
 
Well that was an entertaining read for the first few pages. :)

I posted on this thread in August 2008 with 56,000 miles at the time. Checking my spreadsheet, I was actually at 58,457 miles as of that date and shortly took the Heartland Flyer for the first time right after that. I guess I'll update my signature with 212,106 miles as of today. But here I am being a creep for keeping track of my miles.

A creep is when you keep track of someone else's miles.
 
Like my signature says, 12,138 miles and counting. I will be adding another 2,482 miles in October (Champaign-Chicago and Chicago-Sacramento).

Add in two round trips from Spokane-Chicago in the pre-Amtrak days, one round trip between Chicago and Bloomington, and another pre-Amtrak Spokane-Hinkle round-trip, and my total rail miles add up to 20,000+. And by next month, I should have enough AGR points to qualify for the famous Slidell-Los Angeles loophole trip. Should I take that trip next year, that will add the miles to the total quickly!
Hmmm tell me more about this Slidell Los Angeles loophole trip.
 
Hmmm tell me more about this Slidell Los Angeles loophole trip.
Alas, the days of the Slidell Loophole trip are long gone, due to Amtrak Guest Rewards changing their point system. Note the original post is from 2008. Unlike today, where the amount of points for a trip are based on the cost of the fare, until a few years ago, the point cost was based on travel within and into different zones. There used to be three zones in the U.S. (Western, Central, and Eastern) and it cost a different amount of points whether your trip involved staying in one zone, traveling into another, or traveling into three. How the Slidell Loophole worked was you could start out in Slidell, LA, one stop east of New Orleans, and end up in Los Angeles, on just the cost of a two zone trip. Slidell was in the Central Zone, and you could take the Crescent to Washington DC, the Capital Limited to Chicago, the Empire Builder to Portland, and the Coast Starlight to Los Angeles, all for the price of a two zone trip, even though you started out in the central zone, traveled through the eastern zone, went back through the central zone, and ended in the western zone. I don't remember what the point cost was for sure; I believe it was 20,000 for a roommate for two zones. And since the cost in points was the same whether one or two people rode in the roomette, my uncle went with me on this trip. I live in eastern Washington and he lives in central Illinois so I flew out his way. The only cost concerning the train was a roomette from Champaign to New Orleans and coach fare from New Orleans to Slidell.
 
I have been traveling Amtrak since the 80’s. Until I retired, most of my travel was for business, so I traveled all over the country. Fortunately, I have had the opportunity to travel on almost every current LD route plus several that have been discontinued over the years. My granddaughters who love to travel with me on extended multiple night trips on the train, helped me calculate the miles I have actually traveled on Amtrak. For some reason I still had electronic versions of my expense reports, so we used a spreadsheet to calculate. The total was over 250,000 real miles.

unfortunately, my last trip was summer 2019. My 2020 trips had to be canceled and I have not scheduled anything for 2021, but we are already planning a couple trips for 2022.
 
This is interesting. Now that I think about it, most of my train riding has been non Amtrak, although I've lived here in the States most of my life, going back to way pre-Amtrak. I certainly have ridden Amtrak - both the Coast Starlight and the Cascades between Portland and Vancouver BC, usually the whole way, both in this century and back in the '70s (which would've been inherited, old rolling stock. I may have ridden the Coast Starlight route to and/or from the SF bay area post-Amtrak. Definitely rode it on the Southern Pacific's Shasta Daylight in the '60's when I lived in southern Oregon with my parents. Since my dad's folks lived in Oakland and my mom's in Portland, there were several possible meet up with you later scenarios since my dad usually taught summer session. Since I went to College here in Portland and lived in Saskatoon with my parents, I've ridden the CN between Saskatoon and Vancouver many times, but only once on that route recently via VIA. I think I took Amtrak from Mpls/St. Paul to Chicago at least once when I lived in MN 30 years ago. What I remember best is how shabby but still busy Chicago's Union Station seemed compared to my memory of it from '59 when we went Buffalo to CA to OR and back. I remember dome cars and sleepers and stations from that trip but not what RRs we rode (I was very young). And I can't remember at all our cross Australia trip in the mid-50s before they had the same gage all the way across. I may be forgetting something. A few short excursion trains here and there. There's a certain train-ness that I like no matter where I'm going. And a bunch in Europe, including a short haul on the TGV. How many miles is that? Maybe close to 10,000 total and 1-2,000 Amtrak? I hope to be adding to that substantially soon-ish. Considering how much I like trains, by far my preferred mode of travel, I have ridden them only sporadically. My favorite station is Buffalo's magnificent but sadly neglected Central Terminal, but my memories of that may be a little rose-colored. Buffalo Central Terminal they have openings for board members and a director for the restoration effort.
1627022476822.png this is the vision, it's a long way from this now
 
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