New York to Victoria

For Part One of the tale of my mega trip from my home in Troon to see my daughter in Victoria, Canada, using surface transport, click HERE.

I finished Pt 1 of this two part blog having disembarked the Queen Mary 2 in New York and getting a taxi to the Moynihan Train Hall in the middle of Manhattan. To get to Victoria within the rules I’d set myself I had to get across the North American continent without using aircraft. There are limited options for doing this. I quickly decided that train was the only mode of transport I would consider – Greyhound Bus never entered my thoughts – so I had looked into the various rail routes from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Whilst rail travel is by no means popular in the USA or Canada, there are a number of ways to cross the continent by train. I could have caught a train to Toronto and then taken The Canadian, a fantastic four day trip across Canada to Vancouver. I had done this before though and wanted to try something different. I decided that the US operator Amtrak had the best option, a three day journey to Seattle utilising two different trains. On reaching Seattle I could have taken an Amtrak bus to Vancouver where I could then get a ferry but I decided to stay the night in Seattle and get the FRS Clipper ferry the following morning directly to Victoria. I reserved roomettes on the trains some ten months in advance along with the transatlantic crossing on the QM2. The first train was The Lakeshore Limited. This runs from New York to Chicago, a 21 hour overnight journey. After five hour wait in Chicago, The Empire Builder would take me to Seattle in a total of 46 hours over two nights.

The Moynihan Train Hall is a new expansion of New York’s Penn Station. It was completed in 2021 and is rather magnificent. They say that first impressions count which meant my initial thoughts on Amtrak were very positive. On long distance trains you can check your luggage through to your destination which is a particularly good idea if you have a roomette. There isn’t a lot of room in there for a couple of suitcases. On the last day of the transatlantic voyage I had made sure to pack a small bag with the stuff required for three nights on the train and headed to the main Amtrak ticket office where the two suitcases were checked through all the way to Seattle. I then headed to a very nice business class lounge which is open to sleeper passengers. A much needed sandwich and a couple of drinks whilst overlooking the main concourse was very pleasant, especially after being in a bit of a rush to get there. About twenty minutes before departure we were called to head down to the train. I was in luck. I had been given an upgrade. Instead of a roomette I was in a bedroom which had more space and an en suite. Things were going well! It wasn’t a long train and it was easy enough to find my room. Sure enough, it was a bedroom rather than the roomette. That was about as good as it got for this first journey. We departed bang on time into the labyrinth of train tunnels beneath New York before emerging into the daylight in the north of the city. The car steward introduced himself and congratulated me on the cabin upgrade. He then mentioned the downside which was the best views were on the other side of the train. The track runs alongside the Hudson River for quite a long way and my views of this were through the corridor window. It wan’t much of a problem to be honest but it put a slight dampener on the joy of the upgrade. The room itself was, well, tatty. Trains to the east of Chicago use Viewliner stock which is old and badly in need of refurbishment or better still, replacement. Size is limited by the tunnels that run through New York and whilst they seem big enough, when you compare them to the Superliner stock that runs on the services to the west of Chicago they feel inadequate. The train consists of a couple of Viewliner sleeping cars, a restaurant car, baggage car and two or three coach cars but doubles in size when it reaches Albany and is coupled up to the Boston service. The bedroom features a bench seat that converts to a bed, with another bed that can be pulled down to form a bunk. There is a strange looking extra chair that serves no purpose other than to reduce the available space. I tried sitting in it but it was in a bad state of repair that I got straight out of it again. The en suite was a wet room so a bit of planning may be required as to the order of one’s ablutions. It was perhaps the best feature of the room as everything else was tired and worn. There was a little sink with a couple of plug sockets and a table by the window. When I booked the trip I seem to remember a room cost quite a bit more than a roomette. I’m glad I didn’t have to pay that premium.

We progressed along the eastern bank of the Hudson for a couple of hours before we reached Albany. I spent much of that trying to connect to the train’s wifi. I had bought a sim card before I departed the UK to use data in the USA and Canada. I was kind of hoping that the train’s wifi would mean I could stay connected to the outside world. It didn’t work. I was destined to be ‘off grid’ for my entire trip across the USA except for a couple of wifi hotspots I managed to briefly connect to. It was quite a major downer for me. I know we are supposed to enjoy being unconnected to the world from time to time but on a solo journey like this I do like to keep in touch with friends, family and above all Elaine. We had about an hour in Albany where I was able to use the station wifi and that was me off grid until I arrived at my hotel in Seattle. Down on the tracks the other half of the Lake Shore Limited had arrived from Boston and was shunted into our half to double the size of the train. We set off again into the evening. I had a dinner booking for 7:15pm so headed along to the dining car. I plumped for the Chicken Enchiladas. It wasn’t great. The meals are prepared in advance and heated up on the train and compared with my previous experience of train food across the border in Canada, it was poor. Later I wandered along the train to the cafe/bar where I bought a Twix. I mention this only because it got me a walk through the rest of the train to see how the coach passengers were getting on. They were making themselves comfortable for the night in their seats. These looked decent but I’d have hated to try and sleep the night on them. Stops at Utica and Syracuse gave me a brief chance to stretch my legs – such stops are called ‘smoke stops’ although smoking wasn’t compulsory – and eventually it was time for bed. With a little bit of difficulty I worked out how to set the bed up – I’m sure the car steward would have done it for me had I asked – and I settled down to try and sleep.

It wasn’t a great night. I slept on and off but along with the general rattling of a fifty year old Viewliner car and a very whiney A/C, every so often the train would make a rather violent sideways motion, possibly as we passed over the points onto another track. I got up and used the en suite. It was a bit bijou of course but the water was warm and at least I didn’t have to wander down the corridor to the ‘public’ shower. Breakfast was another reheated effort, ok but nothing special, and I settled back in the room as we passed through midwest farmland and the industrial outskirts of Chicago. We arrived five minutes early. I wasn’t unhappy to get off the train.

I had five hours in Chicago before the next leg of the journey. I happen to have relatives in Chicago, or, to be more precise, north of Chicago. What’s more, I had only met one of them before. We’ve known each other for a few years now through social media via other relatives in Canada who had got in contact with my mum via a genealogy website. David is my third cousin and was there with his wife Jane and daughter Erin. I had met Erin before when she was over in Edinburgh. The three of them were there to meet me getting off the train and later joined by Erin’s cousin Kiersten and we spent a happy few hours together wandering round downtown Chicago and enjoying one of the famous Chicago pizzas. It was delicious! Alas, Amtrak waits for no man, just freight trains, so I was back at the station in time to catch The Empire Builder to Seattle, a 2206 mile journey through seven states. I didn’t receive an upgrade on this train so on boarding I went to find my roomette. This wasn’t as easy as it should have been. It was Room 1 in car 730. I couldn’t find car 730. I found car 830 but if I know one thing about the number 830, it isn’t 730. I walked up and down the train a couple of times before I found an Amtrak employee. I was getting a bit flustered by then. I was informed that car 730 was down there. I’ve been down there I said and can only find car 830. She informed me that that was the correct car. It is called car 830 on the eastbound service and they don’t bother changing the number, presumably just to confuse first time passengers on the service. I finally discovered my roomette just as we made an on time departure from Chicago.

The stock used on trains to the west of Chicago is an improvement on that used to the east. The Superliner cars are double deckers and whilst not exactly new, my car was in a much better state than the Viewliner that had delivered me to Chicago. The roomette contained two seats facing each other which converted into the lower bunk with a pull out table between them. There was a small closet with a couple of hangers that should immediately be removed as they annoyingly clunk about with the motion of the train. Above is a pull down bunk which suggests the roomette can be used by two people but it would be a bit of a squeeze. It came in useful, however, as there is no space for bags on the floor. With the bed half pulled down my two pieces of hand luggage were placed on top out of the way along with the bedding for the lower bunk when in day mode. The downside was I cracked my head on the bunk whilst getting out of the seat on several occasions. There are two 110V US power sockets. The nearest toilet was across the corridor and downstairs there were more loos and a shower which was stocked with towels and bars of soap. There was also a luggage stack for larger items if you didn’t fancy checking in your suitcases. Carlos, the cabin steward, was in a roomette across the corridor and a thoroughly decent chap. The rest of the train consisted of more sleeper cars, several coach cars with similar seating to that on the previous train, a dining car and the panorama car which had a cafe on the lower deck. Thanks to the panorama car and the overall state of the train, it was a marked improvement on the Lake Shore Limited.

The train headed northwards to Milwaukee and then northwest towards Minneapolis. Progress was stop-start due to passing freight trains and a tech issue. Long distance Amtrak trains utilise lines owned by the fright companies in much the same way as ViaRail do in Canada so it was no surprise. As it turned out, these were the last delays of note we encountered and we were pretty much on time for the rest of the journey. I headed for dinner which as before is included in the fare for sleeper passengers. Coach passengers can pay $45 and are fitted in at the end of service for sleeper passengers. Like the train in general, the food was a big improvement on what I’d been served on the Lake Shore Regional. You are allocated a specific time for dinner and when called you are seated at the first available table. As a solo traveller this means you get to meet some interesting people. For the first dinner my dining companions were a university lecturer, an orthodox presbyterian minister and a young mum with an eleven month old baby. I’d end up sitting with the first two on other occasions but the mum got off somewhere in North Dakota in the wee small hours. Amtrak do a signature dish of Flatiron Steak so I decided to give that a try. It was pretty good. An alcoholic drink is included and along with the lecturer and minister I went for a beer. I headed for bed at around 10:30pm. I asked Carlos to make the bed up and took notes so I could do it myself the following evening. The bed and bedding were comfortable and I had high hopes for a decent night’s sleep.

It was a decent night’s sleep. I did wake up at 04:50 but that was a good thing as I witnessed the most glorious pre-sunrise with northern skyline a shade of crimson that I have never seen before. We had just passed Fargo, North Dakota and after another couple of hours sleep I awoke again to the endless flat lands of the Great Plains. I headed to the lower deck to try the shower which was very good and after getting dressed I went to the dining car to get my name on the breakfast waiting list. Once called I had a good breakfast of omelette, sausage, potatoes and a croissant at a table shared with a grandad, mum and son on their way to Glacier Park. As usual, interesting stories were swapped and friendships that lasted for a whole day were forged, such is the nature of long distance train travel in these parts. At lunch I was sat opposite Bruce and Becca and next to Jim. Bruce was a recently retired dairy farmer from Wisconsin whilst Becca had homeschooled many daughters indeed. Jim was the presbyterian minister I’d met the night before. Once Bruce and Becca found out what Jim did that was it. I found myself in the middle of a long and involved doctrinal discussion and before long Bruce was thanking God for our Amtrak lunch. I was respectfully silent when it came to the ‘Amens’. As it happened I was wearing a Genesis tee shirt. Becca’s curiosity got the better of her. Sorry Becca, in this instance Genesis is a rock band who take their name from the first book of the Bible. She took it well but I could see the disappointment in her eyes. Eating aside, I spent most of the day in the panorama car. The Great Plains are pretty much the same as the Canadian Prairies. A few small towns, including Glasgow Montana which I was determined to get a photo of, and a lot of flat, dull countryside. I had loved it on The Canadian, just losing myself in the whole big country and even bigger sky thing. Was it the same on this journey? Almost, but not quite. I did enjoy the big country aspect but the big sky was overcast and rainy at times. There was, perhaps, a bit more of humanity’s odd endeavours to see, even if it was only a field full of abandoned cars or a line of nodding donkeys. No different to Canada but more frequently encountered. It wasn’t all plains either, the North Dakota Badlandnds provided some relief (literally) to the landscape. There were a number of smoke stops which meant I can now say I’ve set foot in North Dakota and Montana. Despite the summer solstice being just a few days away, it was getting quite chilly outside, just 5C in Shelby Montana. As the afternoon turned to evening and I went for dinner, the Great Plains started to give way to the Rocky Mountains.

The Rockies are the scenic highlight of the trip. If you make the trip in winter, however, you aren’t going to see much of them due to lack of daylight. My trip was mid-June, close to the longest day which gave me an evening of Rocky action before the light finally faded. The views were good, though low cloud obscured some of the peaks. After a couple of hours we reached Whitefish, the final destination for a number of passengers and a smoke stop for the rest of us. When we commenced our journey the light had faded and the rest of the Rockies passed by unnoticed.

I didn’t sleep particularly well and with gaining another hour overnight I was up and ready to go by 06:30. During the night we had stopped in Spokane where the train had split. One half, along with the panorama car, was going to Portland, Oregon with my half heading to Seattle. The dining car came with us which meant a decent breakfast whilst the fruit farms of eastern Washington State passed by. It was all rather pleasant. After breakfast, however, things started to drag. The train passed through the Cascade Mountains. This sounds scenic and they possibly are but deep in the valleys with tall trees lining the track views were fleeting at best. The route is by necessity meandering which limited speed to 25mph and with the panorama car on its way to Portland rather than Seattle I was pretty much restricted to the roomette for the rest of the journey. We eventually emerged from the Cascades and through more fruit farms before reaching the coast just beyond Everett. The track turned south and followed the Puget Sound into Seattle where the train would terminate. We were actually half an hour ahead of schedule which was a little bonus as by then I was ready for the rail part of the journey to end.

I would have to wait until the following morning to complete the journey though. Amtrak does operate to Vancouver but the train departs before the Empire Builder arrives and the afternoon service is by bus. I didn’t really fancy that so I had booked a night in Seattle and a seat on the FRS Clipper ferry direct to Victoria the following morning. I took a taxi to the Moore Hotel due to the fact I had no idea where it was thanks to my lack of internet access. There I was able to check in early which was a big bonus. The hotel had an air of faded glory but was perfectly fine for my needs. Importantly it had wifi and I managed to reconnect with the world. I also had an afternoon and evening to kill which I did do by wandering round the local area. It was a good area as it happens, with tourist hotspots like Pike Place Market and the aquarium just a few minutes away. It was a little less desirable in the evening as the hotel appeared to be just a block away from where the many homeless of the city gather but that is a problem in most major western cities. It was only a brief visit but overall I liked Seattle and will have to go again.

It was an early start the following morning. I needed to be at Pier 69 by 07:00 to check in for the FRS Clipper to Victoria. It wasn’t too far a walk from the hotel, even with two heavy suitcases in tow, and I was there in good time. Victoria Clipper V is a twin hull high speed passenger only ferry. Whilst it can be used simply for ferrying folk between Seattle and Victoria the schedules are timed for those Americans who fancy a day trip or short break to the capital of British Columbia, hence the 08:00 departure. At check in I had to pay $20 for each suitcase which was on top of the fare. A single fare isn’t much less than a return which is another indication that they prefer day trippers. There are three classes on board, I took the basic one which was perfectly fine. The journey took three hours to travel the 72 miles between Seattle and Victoria. It was a good run in perfect weather, up the Puget Sound and across the Strait of Juan Da Fuca at a healthy 29 knots. Slowing to a snail’s pace we entered Victoria Harbour and moored at our berth just a short distance from the BC Parliament Building. It took a while to clear Canadian immigration but once through, Rebecca was there to meet me and with the bags deposited in the boot of her ageing VW Beetle, I considered that this was Journey’s End.

Conclusion

At the beginning of Part One of this two part blog I explained why I set out on this adventure. Was it possible to get from Troon to Victoria on the far side of Canada using surface transport. The answer is, of course, yes as I have shown. Is it a practical way of getting between the two? It is, but only if you have a lot of spare time on your hands and are prepared to spend a fair amount of amount of cash or if you are really, really keen to avoid flying. From start to finish the journey took eleven days and nine hours. That is a significant chunk out of anyone’s life. You could possibly shave half a day off that time with different connections at either end but that’s about it. I’ll detail the cost below but we are talking in the region of £3,300 for the ‘fare’. That could be significantly reduced if you take a coach seat on the train rather than sleeping accommodation or sleeping in a hostel rather than hotels but had they been the only options, I wouldn’t have gone as I’m not a masochist. Of course there was more than practicality to my trip. For me the journey is part of the travel experience and it was an experience I enjoyed. As mentioned in Part One the QM2 crossing was great to do once but as a ‘cruise’ it was a bit of a dead loss with five days out of sight of land. They treat you nicely and everything but it does get a bit, well, boring. That arrival into New York though… As for the train, again I enjoyed the journey but I was a bit disappointed with Amtrak. The Lake Shore Limited wasn’t great, despite my upgraded room. Shabby carriages and below average food means I won’t be taking that train again any time soon. The Empire Builder had much better rolling stock and the food was pretty good. On both trains the car stewards were great but otherwise the service wasn’t the best. I can’t help but compare the journey with my rail trip across Canada in 2022. That was an epic journey that I’d do again in a heartbeat. Just about every aspect of it was better than the Lake Shore Limited and Empire Builder including the scenery. I believe the California Zephyr is the Amtrak service to go on if you want to be wowed by the scenery so maybe I’ll put that on the to do list. I might be sounding a bit ungrateful here as I really did enjoy the journey. I met some interesting people, saw some things that I’ll never see again and have memories that will last a lifetime, or at least until the dementia sets in. Would I do it again? As I’m unlikely to develop a fear of flying it’s a big ‘no’.

Costings:

• Train Barassie – Glasgow £5.00
• Train Glasgow – Southampton £61.19
• Hotel Premier Inn Southampton £103.00
• Ship Southampton – New York £1388.00
• Train New York – Seattle £1450.44 ($1836)
• Hotel Moore Hotel Seattle £152.00
• Ship Seattle – Victoria £89.86 ($113.75)
• Checked Bags Seattle – Victoria £31.60 ($40)
• Taxis New York and Seattle £27.65 ($35)
• TOTAL £3308.74

Notes: Above costings in US Dollars are converted at a rate of £0.79 to the dollar. In addition I would add the following ‘essentials’, Internet on board the QM2 £81.90 (special offer) plus at least £80 towards drinks on board the ship. I was in a shared taxi in New York which probably saved me £40. You might want to tip your cabin steward on the trains so maybe add another £30. The Barassie-Glasgow train was bought on the day with a Scottish bus pass discount. Train from Glasgow to Southampton was booked on trainline using a ticket split. Both the QM2 and Amtrak fares were booked ten months in advance. Premier Inn was booked direct online a few months in advance. The Moore Hotel was reserved through Expedia. FRS Clipper was booked online several months ahead.