Sacremento - Las Vagas

[Rob Wright]

June 2015 I took the California Crystal from Denver to Rosevillle and thoroughly enjoyed it. In April I will again be visiting (from UK) and this time plan to travel from Sacremento to Las Vegas. I would be grateful for any information/advise that the very helpful members of the forum could provide.

I am mainly interested in the best option for the Sacremento - LA leg as the Amtrak ticket page offers many different options but any advise on the journey would be much appreciated.

 

[Bob Dylan]

I believe you took the California Zephyr from Denver to Roseville if you went via train??

To travel from Sacramento to LA you definitely want to ride in the Coast Starlight, not the inland San Joaquin Train/Bus connection to LAX from Sacramento!

If you book a Sleeper ( Roomette is fine) you will have Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner on the train included and use of the great Pacific Parlor Car. This is a Daylight trip ( it will start getting dark around Santa Barbara as you eat and if you're lucky you'll see the Sunset over the Pacific as you roll down the Coast to LA.)

The LA to Las Vegas connection is a Charter Greyhound Bus from Union Station, but this requires an overnight stay in LA. It can be booked thru Amtrak in conjunction with your Rail tickets.

 

[willem]

Be sure you get a ticket to the Las Vegas that you hope to visit. There are two of them, one in Nevada (the famous one) and one in New Mexico (which you can reach by train). In both cases, you would go from Sacramento to Los Angeles, preferably by the Coast Starlight.

 

[Rob Wright]

Thank you both (Bob Dylan and Willem) for responding and for the pointers. I'm sorry - I must have had a senior moment! I meant the California Zephyr. I am grateful to you both - the information is very useful.

 

[tp49]

If you want to get to Las Vegas the same day from Sacramento the best bet is bus from SAC to Stockton; train from Stockton to Bakersfield; then bus from Bakersfield. The bus at Bakersfield would appear to be to be a dedicated Amtrak California bus as opposed to a Greyhound (from what I can see a regular LA-LV run that happens to stop at Union Station instead of being a dedicated charter for Amtrak.)

Without saying what exactly you're looking it's hard to properly advise. I will just say that if you prefer the option of the Coast Starlight with the overnight layover in LA (on your own dime) you're going to have to use the multi-city booking tool to get it done. When I checked Amtrak.com for random dates in April the only two options it gives from Sacramento to Las Vegas involves the aforementioned SAC-SKN-BFD-Las Vegas. The final option given has you go from Sacramento to Salt Lake City on the Zephyr then a regularly scheduled Greyhound run from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas.

Just depends on what you want to do or what you mean by best, but to me best means getting to Vegas the fastest to spend more time there so I'd go the inland route and arrive the same day.

Cheers!

 

[caravanman]

Hi,

I would tend to agree with tp49. I have taken the Bus-Train-Bus route from Sacramento to Las Vegas several times. It is the cheapest option, but a full days travel.

The bus from Bakersfield is an "Amtrak" bus, and will wait for the train if there are delays. There is a rest and refreshment stop en route at Barstow.

I stayed at the Hi Hostel in Sacramento, which is convenient for the station... Other hotels are available!

The other option would be to go by Coast Starlight from SAC to LA, stay overnight in L.A. then a bus from the Union Station to

Las Vegas.

Given that you have to take a bus either way, there are no passenger trains to Las Vegas, I feel the route via Bakersfield is the sensible option.

Cheers,

Ed.

 

[Robin Wright]

Thank you tp49 and caravanman for some very useful pointers. I am grateful to you. Being a stupid Brit' I have to pose the question: Why no trains from LA to Las Vegas? Seems very strange from this distance. Maybe I'm missing something.

 

[CCC1007]

Because Union Pacific wanted too much money in 2000.

 

[caravanman]

As a Brit in Nottingham, I object to the to the stupid tag .

Rather like the Beeching cutbacks here in the UK, the USA passenger services have shrunk and shrunk over the years.

The main issue nowadays seems to be that so much freight is moved by rail, and the freight railroads own the tracks, that trying to get them to allow, or find space for a passenger train is very difficult / impossible. They ask very high prices to allow passenger trains to use the track, sometimes too much for economic service...

This is also why the longer distance passenger trains experience delays and have hours of "padding" built into their timetables, to cover time spent waiting for freight trains to clear.

Ed.

 

[TiBike]

Another option, depending on the day of the and whether or not you feel lucky, is to take the Starlight to Burbank and grab a cheap Southwest Airlines flight to Las Vegas. Train scheduled to arrive BUR at 8:30pm, some nights there's a 9:10pm flight to LAS. Train station is colocated with the airport. 40 minutes is tight but possible at BUR -- its arguably the most civilised big airport in California -- but that's assuming everything works as scheduled, which isn't a particularly safe assumption. OTOH, you can sometimes find a cheap hotel with free shuttle at BUR, and its a short rail hop via frequent commuter routes to LA Union Station. If you want to do a rail/air trip to Vegas, Burbank is the way to fly.

 

[Guest]

My apologies Engineer. No offence intended - I meant in a self mocking way. Thank you for the explanation.

Thanks also Service Attendant but I would like to travel by rail as much a possible.