glowingfish

The biggest difference about Amtrak outside of the NEC (and kind of outside of a few areas in California and Chicago) is that you have to plan for it. On the NEC you can basically just find a train anytime you want to. On the long distance routes, the train only comes once a day, so you have to think about exactly what times you will be in your departure and destination stations, and how you can get to them, etc.