I've taken Amtrak 4 times from the Midwest to the West Coast. Oddly, every single time they have been EARLY....sometimes, the train actually parked for awhile to avoid being too early for stops. I swear from all of the stories that I've heard, I must be the only person who has experienced this level of service.
I guess you are. For a year I had a FL railpass, since I was working in Tampa and my family was still living in Jacksonville. This is a 4 to 5 hour drive if you don’t hit traffic, but since the pass cost $200 for a year, it was a very cheap way to get home on weekends, especially since I could work on the train for the 6 hours it (supposedly) took.
I finally had to give it up. The train was almost always late, generally anywhere from 1 to 6 hours for a 200 mile trip. Once I barely made it back into work on time Monday morning, when the train should have arrived at 8 pm the night before.
Especially frustrating is pulling onto a siding so a long, slow freight train can exert its priority over a train carrying hundreds of actual people.