All aboard for a cross-country train trip! (See if this is for you; I think I'll pass next time!)

 I took my first long sleeper-car train trip this past week, due to curiosity about it after seeing YouTube people going on about the subject:

First: my points of agreement with this gent:

1. The scenery is largely spectacular and difficult to get to any other way. I enjoyed the mountains and even spots I'd never seen like Napierville IL, a tidy farm community.
2. The food was better than I expected.
3. Having only one power outlet is inadequate; I took a power strip with me after seeing this video.

But!

Starting with the food ... I was on for 83 hours (Coast Starlight and California Zephyr) not just 52 like this gentleman, and though the food is pretty tasty, there's no way to customize it at all (not helpful for the restricted diet I'm on for these next few weeks)... and the menu is the same, I expect for months. To get anything different, you have to pay extra for the "canteen" on the bottom  level, which I didn't even visit until the last day to see where it was.

Also: no wifi anywhere on any of the three trains I was on, nor in Sacramento station ... only when I got to Union Station in Chicago was there wifi ... which blocked the VPN I needed, making it useless. I fired up the wifi hotspot on my phone that I had been using all across the country, but inside the building there at Union there wasn't enough signal to do a video meeting that I needed to do.

Back to the physical environment: I was also in a roomette, and found it challenging to sleep even without getting the bunk bed involved. The train rattles and shakes at high speeds on part of the track, and there are often train "whistles" (horns, really) at all hours ... I blocked some of this out with earplugs, white noise and a sleep mask. But there were other sources of noise in the room like two clothes hangers on the wall that *banged* every time the train jiggled until I finally took them down and separated them.

This made me think of a NOVA show from 2017  Why Trains Crash:

Basically the most common problem was the engineer not realizing what section of track he was currently on, and going too fast for conditions. The solution is Positive Train Control, where a computer limits the speed and has a GPS link knowing where the train is at all times.

It looks like PTC  is working everywhere now (hooray!) we survived despite speeds up to 89 MPH .

The bathrooms are very much like airplane bathrooms, with one notable exception: the indicators that say OCCUPIED are all broken (on the superliners -- not so on the "local" I took from Chicago to Kalamazoo).  So it was very common to somebody rattling on the handle trying to get in and my having to say loudly "I'm in here!" Not my favorite by half.

The Announcements come any time between 7am and 10pm (in whatever time zone and everything goes to everybody ... why have the "first call for breakfast" repeated to everybody already in the dining car? And there could/should be a way for individual controls to block all except the extremely relevant ones ("this is your stop coming up in 30 minutes") and ("the train is on fire -- head for the nearest exit!")

Currently somebody on staff has to let every individual know directly "your stop is coming up" 

during these "quiet hours" ... I presume the "quiet hours" would be suspended if the train caught fire.

The staff worked feverishly to keep everything running, respond to call buttons to change out the roomettes from "sleeping" to "sitting" and back. Two things about this:

• My sinuses are an indicator that things aren't as clean as they need to be. I had a sinus infection that kept going for years until I started changing the pillow cases every couple of days ... Anyway, they went off after a day and a half on Amtrak, and it struck me that these little roomettes are uncleanable with the time and technology available.
• It turns out to be very possible to lose items under the bed when it's converted from daytime "chair mode" ... I thought I had lost my toothbrush on the Coast Starlight when I changed in Sacramento, but it turned out that it had wriggled under the bed with a couple of other "where the heck is it?" items.

Speaking of changing trains: you don't have much time, and if the change does happen early a.m. or late night, everything could be pretty much closed, unlike major airports where there are always a few facilities open 24/7. In Sacramento the station itself was open, but the only restaurant didn't open until later in the morning... otherwise there were restrooms with a code number lock (no surprise) that the Even Older Guy than I am couldn't get right in three tries and the thing locked for 30 seconds or so before allowing a more nimble-fingered person to get us in. But then there didn't seem to be any water in either of the sinks. I used most of a bottle of water I had with me just to wash my hands. (I later saw another section of the large bathroom where the sink did have water.)

Also in Sacramento, I purchased another bottle of water from the vending machine before the ticket agent approached me to scan my ticket. She then printed me a new hunan-readable one to supplement the QR code one I had up to that point. She then invited me to the "reserved seating area" for sleeping cabin passengers only, where there were exciting facilities like salted peanuts and cookies and little bottles of water free for the taking. So I grabbed a package of peanuts for breakfast along with more water to take with my morning pills ... and finally found a place to charge my phone at a power strip where the water-chiller box was plugged in. Whee!

There was a sign saying "this area under video surveillance" so I later asked the guy behind the desk if could leave my stuff (50 pound suitcase, backpack with 3 laptops + iPad, another too-heavy bag with pill bottles and other stuff) and he said "sorry, that's at your own risk".  So I wrestled it all with me into the bathroom stall, on which trip I found the exciting other working sink.

Overall, not my thing ... but if it's looks like something you want to do, my suggestions:

• Spring for the private room instead of the "roomette" like I got ... you get a private bathroom with shower with this. +$400 or so from the roomette price
• Visit the canteen earlier than I did to see what other food options they had available

Otherwise: see you at the airport!