no more of coach trips for me

shop deals on amazon
Shop deals on ebay
Advertise with us
Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum

Help Support Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Status
Not open for further replies.
S

supergrandmother

Train Attendant
Joined
Feb 10, 2009
Messages
96
Location
Tennessee
I took my daughter and two grandchildren to Washington DC this past week. On the way from Atlanta to DC we had two roommettes but I was being stingy with my AGR points and since both children liked riding and sleeping in the coach seats, I reserved coach for our return trip. The trip there was uneventful except for leaving Atlanta 1.5 hours late because the Crescent was stuck behind a broken down freight train. They even held dinner for us. We did not make up any time during the night and actually arrived in DC 2 hours late. Not a problem. However on the return trip we were seated behind two women with 3 babies between them. At least one of the babies cried or screamed the entire 10 hours. The train left Washington with full coaches so there was no moving to another seat until late in the evening. By that time my grandchildren were snuggled in asleep (with earplugs) across the aisle. This is the first time I have had a constantly crying child in the car but it was enough. No more LD coach trips for me. I am too old for that. LOL
 
I will do coach for short rides-NO to Atlanta(although last time we had a sleeper-H room),or NO to Birmingham. Planning on doing coach from Hammond to Memphis,but like RyanS said once you do sleeping car you get kinda spoiled.I don't even know if I can do a roomette,maybe if I were alone,but on my trip back from Jersey I had H room all to myself, I was in sleeper heaven,can't wait to go alone again in a sleeper. Call me spoiled!! lol
 
I've had crying/screaming/roughhousing kids keep me up in sleepers. Those walls are better than nothing but they're still pretty thin. I'm not sure if today's parents just don't realize it or if they simply don't care. When I was a child I got in trouble for making too much noise/ruckus in public. Pretty rare to see that today. At least in my experience.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I was on the CZ with a grandmother who had twin infants with her in the family bedroom. There was a young couple who were in the roomette next door and they said it was awful - they could hear the babies crying all night through the walls and with ear plugs. There was an empty room upstairs so luckily the young couple was able to come upstairs after the first night.I think it might have been harder for this poor woman because she was alone and dealing with not one but two infants.

At the end of the day, babies cry and they are allowed on the train. It is a fact of life, and one that we deal with on planes as well as trains and all other kinds of transit. That is why I always pack ear plugs.
 
oh_snap.gif
 
There is a difference of a small child on a train and one in a restaurant. Parents who bring small misbehaving children to a dining establishment need to be drawn and quartered in public. It is one thing if a child behaves, more the welcome to them. If not, the stocks for the parents !
 
They've got just as much right to be there as you do, so stuff it.

We do everything we can to ensure an annoyance-free meal (hell, I don't like listening to them any more than you do), up to and including removing them from the restaurant, but I'm not just going to stay home to suit you.
 
I've never been bothered by children being children anywhere except in movie theaters, concerts and on airplanes on long flights!

We were all babies once upon a time and I've not yet seen a little baby or hyper active toddlers not cry or want to run around expanding energy! They get tired, hungry, sick, need changing etc. Its part of life for everyone!!

The crux of the matter is if the parents try to control their kids running around, take them away to settle them if crying etc. If they don't, they're lousy parents, its not the kids fault!

Most societies treat children better than we do in this country, try riding on second class trains,buses etc and going to cafes etc in third world countries!

Children: "Bah! Humbug! They should be seen and not heard!" So sayeth Scrooge!!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
jimhudson said:
I've never been bothered by children being children anywhere except in movie theaters, concerts and on airplanes on long flights!

We were all babies once upon a time and I've not yet seen a little baby or hyper active toddlers not cry or want to run around expanding energy! They get tired, hungry, sick, need changing etc. Its part of life for everyone!!

The crux of the matter is if the parents try to control their kids running around, take them away to settle them if crying etc. If they don't, they're lousy parents, its not the kids fault!

Most societies treat children better than we do in this country, try riding on second class trains,buses etc and going to cafes etc in third world countries!

Children: "Bah! Humbug! They should be seen and not heard!" So sayeth Scrooge!!
Click to expand...
Jim does that mean u wont share your BBQ with the children
 
Devil's Advocate said:
RyanS said:
They've got just as much right to be there as you do, so stuff it.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's pretty much the attitude I see today.
Click to expand...
To be fair, there's plenty of adults with an entitled attitude that are just as bad, if not worse, than most kids. So yes, they do have just as much right as an adult to be there in that they can be there until they cause an unnecessary amount of disturbance to other patrons.
 
RyanS said:
Devil's Advocate said:
RyanS said:
They've got just as much right to be there as you do, so stuff it.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's pretty much the attitude I see today.
Click to expand...
Try reading the whole post.
Click to expand...
Do other people normally keep listening after you tell them to "stuff it?"

jebr said:
Devil's Advocate said:
RyanS said:
They've got just as much right to be there as you do, so stuff it.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's pretty much the attitude I see today.
Click to expand...
To be fair, there's plenty of adults with an entitled attitude that are just as bad, if not worse, than most kids. So yes, they do have just as much right as an adult to be there in that they can be there until they cause an unnecessary amount of disturbance to other patrons.
Click to expand...
I suppose the difference is that nobody seems to get that worked up over someone being annoyed with another adult. So why do they get so defensive upon hearing that it was a child which made a mess of the situation? Babies are going to cry but the bulk of the children I've seen acting up or making an obnoxious fuss were well beyond the age of babies.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
There is no area on an Amtrak train that is always noise free. If you are in a sleeper, there may be the occasional encounter with the individual who likes to play his boom box at 2 AM, sometimes people talk loudly late at night and baby's cry as that's what they do! We can tell the adults to keep quiet (good SCA's will do this) but there isn't much you can do about a baby. On one trip a baby started crying in the next bedroom at 3AM. It woke me up and lasted only for a few minutes and wasn't terrible. In the morning I saw the young girl with the little baby leaving her room and thought that I would make a congratulatory comment. I said "good morning, I bet that your baby slept well last night" she replied " not really".
 
Took the train from LAX to San Diego a while back. Woman in the seat in front of me must have called every single person on her contact list to tell them how much she loved them. Thank God for earplugs. I use public transit a lot and always carry them. But on a recent roomette trip, the neighbor was also very loud on his phone much of the day. Hard to win. There's a reason why people drive, even over long distances.
 
I wonder if the noise level remains high because people who are annoyed rarely bother to say anything. If these louder folks were constantly being reminded to keep it down would they continue to make a ruckus forever? It would seem that after a while they may become tired of constantly being interrupted and either quiet down or save it for another time. I typically say something if the noise doesn't resolve itself but I am acutely aware that in a society this heavily armed and reactionary I'm potentially risking a mortal wound every single time I speak up.
 
I normally have headphones and only time I am annoyed by crying baby is if I am at a movie and the parents don't seem to care. So-o I wonder if I am one of those people on the train with headphones singing and don't know that I am loud when I'm jamming to the music. I'm sorry.
 
Be thankful y'all have good hearing. Some day you may not and then you'll be complaining that you can't hear conversations. Deafness can be depressing for people who had "normal" hearing most of their life.
 
I do a pretty much annual trip to Atlanta and back (from Albany, NY). Generally I've done coach down and sleeper back. In part because I just can't sleep too comfortably in a coach seat.

But anyway, the worst coach trip in regards to passengers as the woman who could NOT seem to understand that at 2:00 AM in the morning folks did NOT want to hear her yacking on her phone.

I'm FAR more sympathetic to a crying baby (especially if the parents are trying to calm them) than a grown adult who has NO regard for others.

On the other hand, if there's no one overly annoying on coach, I sort of enjoy the "rhythm" of it going from day to night to morning.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest posts

Back
Top