Ava and I took the train to Raleigh to visit with Mom this weekend. My first proper rail trip in the US that I can remember. I was pleasantly surprised. Some notes
1. A wedding had just finished at the Salisbury station. New bride and groom were waiting on the platform next to 100 empty seats waiting to go inside for the reception. Our train blew horn, bride gave us a wave, we waved back. pretty cool.
2. Its nicer than I ever imagined. Especially the Piedmont train was immaculate. Large comfortable seats with power plugs. It reminded me of first class on an airplane. I would have happily eaten off of the floor in the food car. It was scary clean.
3. Because it felt like first class seats in an airplane, my brain auto-shifted into air travel mode. I was scrambling to secure bags, turn off my phone, buckle ava in. But WAIT. no worries, train just takes off slowly and nobody cares. There was a family plowing into a box of Bojangles as we left the Charlotte station.
4. Average speed 52 MPH. This doesn’t sound fast in the days of 200 MPH bullet trains, but tearing through small-town-NC at that speed feels pretty wrong.
5. Time to drive from my house to Mom’s house = 2:45. Train trip was 3:10. Tack on another hour to get to and from train station and on and off train, its well over 4:00 hours. but removing the stress and hassel of driving on I-85 was well worth it. Cost was $101 round trip for both of us. So if you factor gas and added mileage on your car, its probably cheaper than driving for 2. But numbers favor driving as you pack more folks in the car.
6. On a down note, the train we took back was the Carolinian, which started out in NYC. It was not as clean. Especially the bathroom -which we almost successfully avoided. ACH had to go just as the train was pulling into Charlotte. Yikes. But the train did have wi-fi, and a roaming drink cart.
