I haven’t been on that route, but I did travel on Amtrak from Mineola, Tx to Alpine, Tx in 2008.
It took about 24 hours. The same route could be driven in around 10 hours. The accomodations were fine. But just being on the train for so long left me feeling tired. The views of the country side were great. There was even a seperate “viewing” car that you could go and sit in and watch the scenery go by.
The people on the train were friendly. There were lots of opportunities to chat with people throughout the whole trip. The conversations that I had with various passengers made the trip enjoyable for me.
The food was expensive. And you had to order your meals at particular times. It seemed that they weren’t set up to actually feed everybody on the train. On my trip, we were suppose to arrive in San Antonio around 10:00 p.m. and depart again at 5:00 a.m. I figured that I would be able to get a decent meal when we stopped. Big mistake. The train was delayed for several hours on the side of the track, and we pulled into S.A. about 4:00 a.m. Most of the passengers scrambled over to a Denny’s and wolfed down a quick meal.
If your going to ride the train, make sure you allow for extra time because I’ve heard of lots of stories about delays. Plan on bringing some food/snacks as a backup.
Thanks for sharing your experiences and good advice. You are making me more and more excited about trying this mode of US travel for the first time in more than 50 years. There was a time that we could make this drive in 2 days by driving `100 miles/day, but we just don’t have the stamina for that any more. 900 miles/day is about our limit.