7 Amtrak Trains That Make the Slow Way Worth It

Train travel in America has always been something of a dare. The country laid 250,000 miles of track in the 19th century, effectively invented the long-distance passenger train, then spent most of the 20th century backtracking. Something shifted in the last few years. Amtrak moved a record 34.5 million passengers in fiscal year 2025—its second straight year of all-time highs—and on April 15, kicked off the largest long-distance railcar order in its history: 800-plus new carriages bound for the routes that actually show you the country. The Acela gets the magazine covers, but the NextGen Avelia Liberty trainsets now whip Boston to Washington at 160 miles per hour, and good for them. The real network sits elsewhere: on routes measured in days rather than hours; through canyons no interstate reaches; in the kind of silence that only exists when a phone has nothing to say.

The timing has a peg, of course. The United States turns 250 this summer, and the official commemorations have the subtlety of a stadium giveaway—replica Liberty Bells, a canceled Freedom Train, a FIFA World Cup match staged at Lincoln Financial Field on July 4 because nothing says E pluribus unum like ticketed sport with FIFA’s markup. 

Amtrak is an official America 250 partner, a term that obscures the real story. Its long-distance network carries the country’s founding-era geography more faithfully than any museum program. Saratoga, where the British surrendered in 1777 and the Revolution turned. The Horseshoe Curve, which broke the Alleghenies open in 1854 and made Pittsburgh possible. The old C&O mainline through Appalachia, which built the industrial republic one coal seam at a time. You can visit all three on a ticket that costs less than a flight to Miami.

If this is the year you finally take the slow way, the argument for it is stronger than mere nostalgia. Jet fuel is up, domestic airfares with it, and the experience of American flying has reached a kind of terminal indignity nobody even complains about anymore. Europe’s sleeper train renaissance has reminded a generation of travelers that overnight rail still works as both transit and hotel—that a journey can be the point, not the thing you survive to get somewhere. 

Americans are staying stateside at rates unseen since 2020, and the slow-travel instinct, once a European affectation, has crossed the Atlantic with linen and opinions. Seven Amtrak routes reward it. None of them are fast, and several are famously late. The country built them anyway, and the country is better for it.

Best Train Rides in America

• The Cardinal—New York to Chicago via Charlottesville and the New River Gorge
• The Adirondack—New York to Montréal
•  The California Zephyr-Chicago to Emeryville
• The Empire Builder—Chicago to Seattle or Portland
• The Pennsylvanian—New York to Pittsburgh
• The Coast Starlight—Los Angeles to Seattle
• The Crescent—New York to New Orleans

The Cardinal—New York to Chicago via Charlottesville and the New River Gorge

• Three weekly departures, roughly 28 hours, on the only Amtrak that draws a U-shape across the eastern United States.

Book eastbound from Chicago if you want the New River Gorge in good light—westbound hits it late in the day for half the year. Out of New York’s Penn Station, the Cardinal cuts south to Charlottesville for Monticello and UVA, then burrows into Appalachia on CSX’s old Chesapeake & Ohio mainline. Past White Sulphur Springs (detrain here for the Greenbrier if the schedule cooperates), the train delivers what no other Amtrak offers: a glide beneath the New River Gorge Bridge, a 3,030-foot arch of COR-TEN steel suspended 876 feet above the river. You pass under it, not over it, framed by cliffs. Twenty minutes later, the train stops at Thurmond, a near-ghost town inside America’s newest national park. Coach is fine; the handful of Viewliner roomettes sell out weeks ahead. Bring a book and food for dinner.

The Adirondack—New York to Montréal

• Eleven-plus hours on the east bank of the Hudson, the cleanest car-free run from Manhattan to a foreign country.

Ride the Adirondack northbound in October. The Palisades, West Point, Saratoga—where the British surrendered in 1777 and the Revolution turned—and the west shore of Lake Champlain all catch the fall light, and the train is, forgivably, slow. The route had a bad two years: Canadian National imposed heat restrictions on the Rouses Point Subdivision, killing summer service above Albany in 2023 and 2024. Amtrak’s last dome car, a 1955 Budd called Ocean View, had been retired in 2019 and sold to a Maryland tourist line—a minor national tragedy that nobody publicly mourns. Service resumed, the CN track agreement is funded, and 2025 ridership sat at 83,938, well below the pre-pandemic 117,490—another way of saying the train is delightfully underbooked. NPS rangers narrate Saratoga and Lake Champlain on select Saturdays.

 The California Zephyr-Chicago to Emeryville

• Fifty-two hours across seven states, Amtrak’s longest daily train and the strongest case for American West scenery.

Book a westbound roomette on this train and make sure to sit on the left for the Rockies, right for the Sierras. Past Denver, the Zephyr climbs the Front Range, threads 31 bores and enters the Moffat Tunnel—6.2 miles under the Continental Divide at 9,239 feet, the highest point on the entire Amtrak system and a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark since 1979. Fifteen minutes of dark, then the Colorado River for 238 canyon-filled miles. Upper Gore Canyon has no road, no trail, no way in except this train or a whitewater raft. Glenwood Canyon delivers 12.5 miles of red rock; time a stopover in Glenwood Springs for the hot springs, a short walk from the depot. The original 1949 Zephyr rolled out with Vista-Dome cars and the tagline “look up, look down, look all around,” which still holds. The Sightseer Lounge is open to all.

The Empire Builder—Chicago to Seattle or Portland

• Forty-six hours along the Lewis and Clark corridor, the one Amtrak train that delivers you to a national park’s front door.

Great Plains by dinner, Mississippi at dusk, Twin Cities by nightfall, North Dakota at dawn. By the second morning, the train climbs Marias Pass at 5,213 feet—the Continental Divide crossing Lewis and Clark searched for and missed. Great Northern’s John Stevens located it for the railroad in December 1889; a 60-foot obelisk to Theodore Roosevelt marks the summit. Detrain at East Glacier for the 1913 Glacier Park Lodge, a Swiss-chalet hulk the Great Northern built to sell tourists a Rockies they’d never otherwise see. Essex, Montana, sits deeper in Glacier country—the Izaak Walton Inn opened there in 1939 to house crews shoving helper locomotives over the pass, and later converted four cabooses into guest rooms. The inn closed in March 2026 and was listed for sale at $18 million, so confirm status before booking. The Sightseer Lounge earns its name somewhere near the Montana line.

The Pennsylvanian—New York to Pittsburgh

• A nine-hour day-train over the route that broke the Alleghenies and turned Pittsburgh from river town into steel capital.

Board at Penn Station before 11 a.m. and you’ll take the Horseshoe Curve in afternoon light. About five miles west of Altoona, the Pennsylvanian rounds it—2,375 feet long, 220 degrees of arc, designed by Pennsylvania Railroad chief engineer John Edgar Thomson and dug mostly by Irish immigrants who arrived with shovels and stayed to build the town. The curve has been a National Historic Landmark since 1966 and an ASCE Historic Civil Engineering Landmark since 2004. Its stakes were sharpened in June 1942, when a U-boat landed eight Abwehr saboteurs on Long Island with the curve and the Altoona shops on their target list. Six were executed. Today the bend carries 50-odd Norfolk Southern freights a day—plus the Pennsylvanian, the only passenger train that still takes the curve, once in each direction at a scheduled 35 mph. Sit on the right side westbound; the view runs out the window for a full minute.

The Coast Starlight—Los Angeles to Seattle

• Thirty-five hours up the spine of the West Coast, most famous for a stretch the Pacific handles itself.

Board in Los Angeles and ride northbound and sit on the left for the ocean, right for Mount Shasta at sunrise. The selling point is a 104-mile run between Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo where the rails hug a ledge above the Pacific, no highway visible, nothing between you and the water. Ridership climbed past 359,000 in 2024; Amtrak added a third coach car for summer 2025, and the train still books out in advance. What’s gone is the Pacific Parlour Car, a 1956 Budd Hi-Level lounge rebuilt from Santa Fe’s El Capitan and called, fairly, a living room on rails. Amtrak retired the fleet on February 4, 2018—a decision the long-distance rider population has not forgiven and should not. The Sightseer Lounge remains, open to all, with panoramic windows and the same Pacific. No replacement has been ordered. The view pays the bill anyway.

The Crescent—New York to New Orleans

• Thirty hours and 1,377 miles through 12 states plus D.C., from the northeastern megalopolis to the Mississippi Delta.

No other Amtrak route crosses more jurisdictions. The train is the lineal descendant of the 1891 Washington & Southwestern Vestibuled Limited, the first sleeper service to carry dining cars between New York and New Orleans. It glides through Charlottesville, Charlotte, Atlanta and Birmingham, crosses Lake Pontchartrain on the longest railroad bridge in the United States—5.8 miles of trestle over saltwater—and terminates a few blocks from the French Quarter. Book a roomette for the overnight leg; the coach seats are fine south of Atlanta when the scenery earns the window. In July 2024, the Justice Department sued Norfolk Southern for failing to give the Crescent the track priority federal law requires. January 2026 on-time performance hit 84.8 percent, which for Amtrak is a minor miracle. Ride it with a book and no hurry. The dining car still serves flat iron steak.