We did the Martinez to Denver route about 10 years ago. I really really want to love the train and for it to be successful but we were 22 hours late arriving.

We did the Martinez to Denver route about 10 years ago. I really really want to love the train and for it to be successful but we were 22 hours late arriving. Some of it was weather but we had a train car lose it's suspension near Truckee, then due to that delay the crew went "dead" due to their hours and we literally had to stop for a couple of hours in the middle of Nevada while the next crew came to us. After that we got moving and made some decent time but then a freight train had issues ahead of us so we sat somewhere in Colorado for a few hours waiting. To top it all off, the woman in the sleeper next to us ran out of extra oxygen because she wasn't expecting to be at higher elevation that long and without access to more oxygen supplies and so we had to wait for an ambulance to come. We flew back. Some of this was Amtrak's fault, some of this was not. If the food were better and the trains a little more modern we wouldn't have minded as much but even then spending 22 hours extra on that route is just not going to work for much of anyone. But with all the moving parts it takes to get right for a train to come in on some semblance of a schedule I just don't see how it will ever be anything but a niche product for long haul routes.