If you want to catch the best Southern California scenery, you drive up the 1 to the 101. But I didn’t know that the Amtrak Coast Starlight follows approximately the same path, but closer to the ocean. From Gaviota to Pismo Beach the highway cuts inland, but if you zoom way in on Google maps, you can see train tracks hugging the coast. That’s the route the Amtrak Coast Starlight takes, and it is breathtaking. It’s just the train, the beach, and the birds. It’s a piece of California you’ve likely never seen because there isn’t a lot of infrastructure out there–it’s easiest to go through on the train.
So on my most recent visit to Nene, I decided to take the Coast Starlight from Union Station to Washington State. The trip takes about two days–you leave Los Angeles just before 10 am and can be in Seattle for a late dinner the next day (assuming the train isn’t delayed, and apparently an hour delay is doing pretty good, so I guess you should plan to arrive late).
I got a roomette! You can see from the sunlight in the window that I’m on the east side of the train. That’s the wrong side for seeing the ocean. But Amtrak doesn’t let you pick your room, it’s just a 50/50 chance when you book. And given the hundreds-of-dollars cost of a roomette, it’s sort of put me off doing this route again unless there’s some way to know where your room is. (Maybe booking via phone would help?) But you can always sit in the observation car, right? Not on this train. I never saw a free seat in the observation car, even when I got up at 6 am the next morning to try to sneak a peak at Mt. Shasta. People bring their laptops and a friend to save seats and just settle in. How about all those empty tables between meals in the dining car? Nope, not allowed. The tables in the cafe car? Nope, for paying cafe customers only.

The situation threw me because my only other long-haul Amtrak experience was on the Sunset Limited, which, compared to the Coast Starlight, was practically empty. There were nearly always seats in the observation car on the Sunset Limited, and they used only one of the two dining cars. The Coast Starlight was so full that they didn’t have enough room for all interested coach passengers at meal time (they didn’t starve exactly as they could go to the cafe car). I opted to have meals in my room instead of fighting for reservation space in the dining car where communal seating was guaranteed–you’ll take all your meals at a table with 1-3 strangers.

Getting meals in your room is also a bit of a challenge on a train that crowded, because your room attendant is responsible for taking your order and brining it to you. So you’re never sure when meals will happen because the room attendants can get busy. And it took about three hours for dishes to be picked up after meals. Then if you’re vegan, that throws a wrench in things because your room attendant isn’t as familiar with the menu or the substitution options in the kitchen. So he has to check, and then that’s another delay. (The room attendant looks after all the roomette passengers and is responsible for manning the doors at each stop. No matter how long the stop is, the room attendant has to stand by the train door for the duration. They also keep the train car climate control and bathrooms/showers stocked and in working order, plus keep water available for everyone. When we first got on the train, the attendant made a few announcements along the lines of, “I WILL come by your room and introduce myself and answer your questions, just give me a MINUTE.”) Side note: there’s a vegan dinner option on the Coast Starlight! Not sure if they’ve added it to all trains or if it’s specific to that route.
So to see the ocean on the Coast Starlight, I ended up standing at the door to my train car, between the bathrooms and the luggage rack, and looking out the window. (It was nice, actually, as I was the only one down there, but I could see the disappointment in the one or two other passengers who came down to see that I’d already claimed that standing space in front of the window.) It’s a long time to stand, but it was so pretty. It was sunny and then foggy and then sunny again. And I couldn’t get over how there were no signs of humanity on the beaches.

So although there were some incredibly frustrating things about the Coast Starlight, I can’t say it’s put me off Amtrak travel. I feel like the pros outweigh the cons, and now that I know, I can be mentally prepared for next time. (I think I expected the ease of the Sunset Limited experience, which isn’t going to be the case for a route as popular as the Coast Starlight. And now I know.) I was chatting with my room attendant just before I got off the train in Washington, and he said the relatively uncrowded trains from Los Angeles are the Sunset Limited and the Southwest Chief. (And Nene was just telling me that the Southwest Chief has, arguably, the best scenery of any of the Amtrak routes, so maybe the Southwest Chief should be next! I’ve never been to Chicago!) One of the train forums online said something along the lines of “It’s a train. You have to expect delays and grumpy passengers and not enough resources for everyone all the time. But it’s okay, you’ll still get there.” And it’ll still be better than flying, I would add. (One of the Coast Starlight passengers said something similar–you just have to expect that things won’t go perfectly, but you’ll still have views and food and water and get to your destination sort of when you were supposed to.) In some ways your lack of control on the train is what makes it great. You have no responsibilities. There’s no internet for long stretches. You just sit and look at the view. By the end of the trip you feel very meditative and calm, like all that stuff that was worrying you back home doesn’t exist anymore.
A pretty tree at the San Luis Obispo station. If I had to do it again, I’d go from Los Angeles to San Luis Obispo, spend the night at a hotel, and then head back to Los Angeles. (You get all the pretty beach scenery that way.) That’d dramatically decrease the cost of your train travel because you could be in coach instead of in a roomette, and you’d double your chances of getting a seat on the west side of the train. Plus, Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner does the same route, which adds to your options. (Come to think of it, I should do the Pacific Surfliner to San Diego some time.)
The rest of California was inland, so there was a lot of golden grass and oak trees mixed with farmland. The Salinas-to-San Jose section was especially pretty with that fog/sun/fog thing happening again, and eucalyptus forests. By the time we left San Jose (and stopped to have one of the train cars removed at the San Jose train yard), it was dark. The next morning I woke up in the Mt. Shasta area, and got to see the mountain during breakfast. A few hours later we crossed the border to Oregon.
Southern Oregon was on fire. I’ve included a screenshot of Google’s air quality index (AQI) map so you can see the situation. (The map just shows the smoke, the train wasn’t driving through actual fires or anything.) The train’s first stop in Oregon is Klamath Falls, then it heads toward Eugene–you can do the AQI math (it’s bad). Since the train was built in the 1970s, it has no effective air filtration system, so you’re in the smoke. Your chest feels tight, like you can’t take a full inhale, and you get a headache. (Fortunately all that goes away as soon as you’re back to the green parts on the map.) Then there’s the fact that the passenger trains stop to wait for freight trains to pass. So we ended up stopping in the smoke three times (two for freight trains, and once for the stop in Chemult). It was the only stretch on the route that I read my book instead of looking out the window.
Made it to Portland! I don’t think I’ve ever seen Portland in the sun. It looks good!
Forty-six seconds of train scenery, set to the sound of the conductor welcoming us to Vancouver. All the footage is in California except the last two shots, which are crossing the Willamette river into Portland and crossing the Columbia river into Vancouver. The California shots are riding a golf cart to the train at Union Station, five shots along the California coast (from Oxnard to San Luis Obispo), golden grass with oaks near Paso Robles, birds flying over water in the Watsonville area, farm fields in the Gilroy area, farm fields just before San Jose, crossing the freeway in San Jose, and the meadow near Mt. Shasta.

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