Many years ago, a friend of mine from Honolulu—a tall, strikingly handsome Hawaiian man in his 50s—was vacationing in London. At my urging, Abe had booked a first class compartment...

Pressed for an answer to that question, I think most people would probably say Amtrak’s Train 5, the California Zephyr. Although there are portions of other long-distance routes that are certainly...

Most Spectacular View. I’ve already mentioned the Grand Canyon once in an earlier post. So what? It is, after all, the Grand Canyon. There is a reason why people come...

The issue for today: For any given long-distance train, is one direction better than the other? There are a lot of factors to consider. For instance, what if the train...