I want to take the train.

But the train price is, at best, the same as the airline ticket. and are often, from what i've seen when price comparing, much worse.. especially if you're gonna be on the train for over night, or multiple nights, and want a bed.

Plane gets you there in a couple hours, add another hour for security. Just an inconvenient portion of a day.

Train gets you there in a couple days, you do get to enjoy a incredible view watching scenery roll by, but its a long time to be in a train, especially if you couldnt afford a bed and the privacy/get-away-from-people-ness that personal room provides.. and not to mention Amtrak isnt exactly known for its punctuality, with delays being delayed hours, even tens of hours, and so common that you're told to factor in a delay when you're planning your trip.. and the meals and snacks being expensive since you're a captured audience with no alternative. Which means you could be facing another hundred+ dollars in food and drink costs in addition to the ticket costs (unless you got the ticket that included meals, but again, thats gonna be more expensive).

train travel really needs to be like...1/4th the price. and hte private rooms need to be even less than that.

And so incredibly polluting. Past a certain point, your trip produces more greenhouse gases than a plane flight. It's so wasteful, and flying is so much quicker.

I would also love Phoenix -> Flagstaff -> Salt Lake City and Savannah -> Atlanta -> Chattanooga -> Nashville.

Bakersfield to Barstow has some mountains as a major challenge.

The other two are fairly flat.

Not sure how feasible it would be overall, but I like the thinking.

There are 700,000 people in Wyoming. It's slightly larger in size than the entire UK. There are also 1.2 million cattle in Wyoming, though.

Looks like no stoppin in Uhdaho either.

South Dakota is a perfectly beautiful place. And it's on the way to more populous places.

IIRC, the northeast corridor is the only profitable portion of Amtrak, and I think one of the very few runs of track that Amtrak actually owns.. and as a result, the only area that Amtrak spends money on, for anything, including laying its own rail.

Everywhere else it operates leased time on freight company rail lines.. so they can only, realistically, go where freight trains go. as building rail would be too expensive, and too politically inconvenient since they'd probably have to resort to overpriced buyouts and imminent domain to get a lot of the land to lay new rail on.

It's a stop on the Chicago -> West routes.

Check out the California Zephyr line.

It does this when there's too long of a layover or the connecting train doesn't leave from the same station (I can't book direct to Salem, MA because in Boston you have to walk between stations). It's very annoying but not having to deal with an airport is worth the janky website.