Last-Minute Cross-Country Train Travel — With Kids!

On July 19, 2024, after a vacation with relatives, my family was scheduled on a Delta flight home to MSP from Seattle. If you were paying close attention to travel news last summer, you might have already guessed that we did not fly anywhere that day. Thanks to the CrowdStrike outage, we ended up taking a spontaneous cross-country train trip instead — and thanks to then-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttegieg, Delta reimbursed the cost.

As our evening flight was repeatedly delayed over the course of that Friday afternoon, the likelihood of flying at all seemed to be decreasing. We guessed that rescheduled flights would be hard to come by, so we canceled our plane tickets and booked two Amtrak roomettes for our family of four, departing in the late afternoon the following day. (Spoiler: Our lucky guess was proved correct — people were still stuck in airports after we’d made it home via train three days later.)

Planes, Trains, Automobiles, Monorail

This change in plans added an extra day in Seattle and several new modes of transportation to our trip. Luckily I have two transportation-obsessed children, ages six and nine. Earlier in the week a highlight had been a visit to the Museum of Flight, and they were excited about the new train plan. An Amtrak trip had even been on our summer to-do list, although we’d anticipated taking a shorter day trip on the Borealis.

We returned our rental car, slept at a hotel for the night, rearranged our luggage — thankfully we’d done laundry before leaving our AirBNB — and then headed into Seattle. We took a shuttle bus from the hotel to the airport, light rail into the city, the monorail to the Pacific Science Center. We didn’t ride bikes, but we did see some nice bike infrastructure in Seattle, including curb-separated bikeways.

At the kids’ request, we’d planned part of the day around taking the monorail, which runs from Downtown to Seattle Center. It was a very quick trip with some great views of the city, including the Space Needle.

Waiting for Amtrak

After a day of adventures, we took the light rail back to Chinatown to pick up some dinner, then walked to the Amtrak Station where we waited. And waited. And waited. 

Mysterious delays, limited announcements, the time our train was listed on the big board as “departed.” I took advantage of the delays to head out to buy some books for the journey.

After leaving the bookstore, I went in search of snacks and suddenly found myself in the midst of crowds of fans in Sounders gear getting dinner, drinks and hanging out. Lumen Field is just south of the Amtrak station, and I realized a soccer game was happening later that evening. 

As a resident of the Midway neighborhood of St. Paul, less than half a mile from Allianz Field, I was *extremely*  jealous — for years our stadium has been bordered by empty lots and fenced-off construction sites, at what is currently one of the more unpleasant intersections in St. Paul. Even the recent addition of the giant loon hasn’t helped the area match the pleasant atmosphere in Seattle. 

Finally, a couple of hours behind schedule, our train was underway. As “first-class passengers” we boarded early and headed up to our roomettes on the top level of the last car of the train.

The Dining Car

Our first-class tickets also included meals in the dining car, and overall they were a great deal. The meals weren’t terrifically fancy, but they were pretty tasty, and the kids adored the entire dining car experience. They felt very grownup when they ordered regular meals instead of kids meals—their favorite was the wine sauce that came with the steak! And a lot of dessert. 

As a party of four, we usually sat together, but the few times we broke up into pairs and ate separately we had a nice time chatting with our assigned table-mates. An extremely chatty 6 year old at a table with two strangers seemed risky, but it turned out that people taking Amtrak generally don’t mind talking about trains! One person we met showed us his phone app that could display your current speed and told us about how fast he had traveled on the shinkansen in Japan.

The Sleeping Car

Likewise, the kids thought the sleeping car was a great adventure. The top bunk being pulled down, the seats turning into beds, reminded them of one of their favorite books about a cross-country train journey. 

As an adult, sleeping in a narrow roomette bed with a 6 year old who is too scared to try the top bunk was a little like sleeping in a coffin while cuddling a very bony octopus.

The movement of the train was noticeable only when it stopped. We parked for a few hours in the middle of the night in North Dakota, to give the train crew some mandated rest before continuing, and the stillness woke me up.

Life on the Train

During the day we let the kids sit in one roomette together to play video games while my husband and I sat in the other and read books, which made the trip surprisingly relaxing. Since our meals were included, we had two full days with almost no additional expenses. The only purchases we made were a couple of drinks and snacks at the lounge car, a couple of decks of cards and tips for the dining car staff.

Unlike trips in a car, no one was distracted by being the driver, which made playing “road trip games” all together a little easier. Unfortunately the high plains didn’t offer a lot of visual variety, but with some creativity we managed to find something for each letter of the alphabet while looking out the big observation windows. We played Solitaire, read books and admired the scenery. When the train made longer station stops, we dutifully trooped out into the humidity to stretch our legs. We slowly traversed the time zones. We played with silverware. 

Best of all, we didn’t spend any time in a crowded airport during the upswing of a COVID-19 spike.

Arrival in St. Paul

Our train’s final arrival at Union Station in St. Paul was delayed by several hours, but since we had already been delayed by days and were finally on our way home it didn’t bother us. The train had been fairly sparsely populated when we embarked in Seattle and gradually filled as we headed east. A good number of people disembarked in St. Paul, where the train crew announced that all the seats would be full for the rest of the journey on to Chicago.

Taking the Green Line home was a very different light-rail experience than we’d had in Seattle, even though the cars themselves were very similar. Two trains were waiting at the Union Station stop when we arrived, as usual with no indication as to which of them would be the next to depart. One of the Go-To card scanners wasn’t working. 

Traveling along University Avenue, I imagined what the city would look like to a visitor from somewhere else. Unlike our past few experiences on the Green Line, nobody on the train was particularly disruptive, but the view out the window was discouraging. Between the tracks, dead plants and weeds tangled with trash. At the stations we passed: groups of people doing drugs, more piles of trash, an overturned shopping cart. Out the windows as we headed west, scattered between thriving businesses: empty storefronts, empty lots, more trash. Rows of struggling sidewalk trees punctuated by broken-off stumps. 

Taking More Train Trips on Purpose?

After getting home from the trip, my kids got out all of their blocks and train toys and set up an entire train city on our floor. For at least a week they referred to our dining room as “the dining car.” Since then they’ve been asking to take more overnight train trips— mostly so they could eat the steak with wine sauce again.

So why doesn’t my family take a train for every trip? The main reason: cost. At almost $1800, our one-way trip home from Seattle was comparable in price to the combined cost of plane tickets, a couple nights in a hotel and restaurant meals for four. Pretty similar to what it would have cost (and what Delta would have also reimbursed us for) if we’d stayed in Seattle waiting for a replacement flight, but still not exactly affordable strictly as a transportation choice.  Tickets can be less expensive if purchased more than a day in advance, but often still cost more than other modes of transportation.

Also: traveling with small kids. Train travel gets less expensive if you don’t go the roomette route, but that means trying to get kids to sleep while sitting up in a coach class seat. Doable, but not exactly fun. Travel time is also more of an issue with kids. We recently traveled to Las Vegas to visit relatives — a four-hour direct flight. By car, it would have been 24 hours of driving to travel 1,600 miles. Via Amtrak the trip would take 72 hours (four days!) and involve taking the train to Portland then down the coast to California, followed by a six-hour bus ride. It would theoretically be possible to take a train to Chicago, then the Southwest Chief to Kingman, Arizona, then a three-hour bus ride to Las Vegas. But the arrival and departure times mean that option would require an overnight stay in Chicago.

Missed connections and late-night arrivals also complicate possible train travel. We’re planning another train trip this summer, to southern Illinois, where my in-laws live within 30 minutes of an Amtrak station. The most direct method involves arriving at the final destination after 1 a.m. (assuming no delays). Arriving at a more civilized time of day requires an overnight stay in Chicago to make the transfer.

Driving (11 hours) and flying (two-hour flight plus a two-hour drive) to southern Illinois are also fairly inconvenient. So this summer we’ll be trying Amtrak again, going for the option that involves staying overnight in Chicago, and adding an extra day to visit museums. Keep an eye out for an update sometime next fall!

Photos by Lisa Nelson