Amtrak's California Zephyr - Emeryville to Chicago in Coach [4K]

I'm in San Francisco, California, and today I'm taking Amtrak's train six, the California Zephyr, to Chicago. The California Zephyr is Amtrak's signature train. The land cruise of all the land cruises. There are so many videos on the California Zephyr. Over a thousand dollars a person to go in Amtrak's roomette. Don't even ask what a bedroom is, and if you're doing more than one person, oh, that's what kept me off of it for so many years. But since I only have $200, why not just take Coach? In a roomette or a bedroom, you've got a sterile personal experience, but in Coach, you just don't know. It's the same view out of any window on the train. So today, we're going to finally make it happen. After 18 years of riding Amtrak and having only taken the California Zephyr on the boring overnight portion from Denver to Chicago, I'm going to get the whole route in. We're taking Greyhound, right? No, no, no, no, we're not. Yes, it's still here. It is early today. In the early days of transcontinental train travel in San Francisco, you'd start by ferry over to the East Bay. These days, an Amtrak thruway bus connection does the job. Emeryville is just north of Oakland, and it's where the California Zephyr has begun its daily eastbound trips since the tail end of the 20th century. Coach bus ride here can also be made from a number of other California cities to other stations down the line. Superliners have only about a decade left to go, and we should ride them in all of their forms if we want to remember them as best as we can. And at what a value. Just $200 for two nights accommodation and three day parts on a train. Some people can't stand Coach no matter what, but I think $200 to get halfway across the country over several mountain ranges. The lowest bid up I could get was $375, which if you figure in the cost of buying every meal rather than getting the sleeper car, I only plan on going for a dinner and a breakfast. Everything else I've got packed in a bag, but I think I'm going to be just fine based on the last couple of trips. I've got a lot of food this time, but let's go in the station and see what else there is. Emeryville station has plenty of people capacity and a sparse amount of in-house food and drink options at prices you'd expect for a place that's competing with walking to McDonald's or door dashing food to the station in the morning hours. I spent some time at the Safeway by the San Francisco ballpark the night before and had the red duffel bag of doom plumb full of snacks as one part of my nutrition plan for the next few days. I was hopeful to eat plated traditional dining in the dining car for at least a couple meals and dig in on scenery undistracted by food at other times, especially on the second day in oh yeah we got a slow sourdough danish crumble cake we have several sparkling fruit waters with a little bit of sweetener we have bananas we have that bag contains cheese pretzels and yogurt raisins oranges and yep the other water also peanut butter recipes I got enough half-off deals to make that three days worth of snacks for about 26 steak dinner is really the best and I think I'm gonna go for it tonight cafe car no there's no cakes but there are coffee cakes a few good things this train we are catching was about an hour late they tend to keep more equipment down here at oakland usually have well on-time departures when the trains aren't horribly the station agent is now shouting to everyone that we've got a locomotive problem broken down in the yard this is one of the many things people love to hate about that track and rightfully so but it's also the part of going across the continent on 19th century technology viewed through a late 20th century lens waiting for train number six the zephyr that train is delayed there what you could do by air in four hours requires three days by rail and amtrak starts all their trips by immediately metering expectations and doling out boarding scenarios by staff shouting at the horde of starry-eyed passengers yeah even the most confused ones fit that description it's been washed it was nice to see that amtrak cleaned the windows of this train late and down on locomotive power as it was let's let conductor reggie lay out the scenario for us coach passengers and we're gonna stop in roseville and put another engine a freight engine on it and all i can tell you is cross your fingers if i'm only here to reno so i can only give you my love to there after that better pray to the train guys not quite the most comfortable recliner the super liner coach seat is only a few spots down the list luggage space above seats and bigger bags are stored on the lower level we were assigned seats by reggie for this trip but i got a window and control of the two power outlets by proximity and the fact that my seat mate who was also on to chicago same as i was actually didn't spend any of the trip in the seat next to me yet had a seat check for his seat there so no one sat in his place more on that later we are destined for chicago illinois or there will be a break folks we need your walk up to the sightseer lounge car and i get acquainted with my digs for the next few days without this car it really would feel like a survival trip on amtrak instead it's a land cruise well it's one of those rides where they assign seats but luckily i got a window on the pretty favorable side for colorado it smells very clean and the train windows are okay and as always when you hear the announcement we ask you to please gather your whole party together the dining car has chosen to not take in more money but from coach passengers they say they're short staffed and it sounds like they have a different menu which i think is code for it's flex dining i am really glad i didn't spend the extra 375 dollars for a poor bid up i'm just a normal coach passenger still we only ever had limited options the lack of dining car access was disappointing but it'll afford some chances to cross off or circle other cafe car items on my list or my finger card i had taken this part of the route on a capital corridor train from martinez the day prior like and subscribe to see that video in the coming weeks state capital which we actually have a station stop at uh we won't do town bay because that's one opposite way enjoy the history lesson i'll eventually roll out a longer video with more scenery and many more words from conductor rich i easily cut eight minutes of his antics alone and i'm still conflicted on ever having to do it is i mean the fact that he laid out his personality with his choice of every word in his brain at every possible moment really showed a level of commitment to doing his job memorably right away and through reno during his time on board he really elevated my mood my super liner was built by pullman standard as part of the first batch of coach cars it's been redone once in the 90s and it still looks pretty good this is the blue kind and it's about as average as you get on the super liner since this is a baggage coach you also have the full baggage compartment taking up half of the lower level over here as well mine was the last car of this train and folks bound for reno salt lake denver and chicago were assigned seats in it back in emeryville coach passengers bound for stations in smaller towns were initially seated in the coach ahead of us this made my space and coach like my own personal space snacking while on the move and enjoying the view out of this new to me section of california is somewhat more than i had hoped for and i was feeling like my small investment in rail travel was off to a promising start we were running with relatively minimal delays for now and my seatmate has and will mostly remain in the sightseer lounge car for the rest of the trip as in even overnight this is a wacky train ride already we're gonna get later better check out the cafe once we get going here you got a noodle salad buy on board from the cafe on the lower level of the sightseer lounge car is open to all passengers there's seating in the lower level you can use while eating food purchased from the stand this car has the new stand or maybe mall eatery style setup since i can't eat any meals in the dining car that would be prepared hot in an onboard kitchen we're going to dig into some familiar commissary items during this trip i like a cold lunch so i went with my old standby the noodle salad and dressed it up with an extra packet of mayo for protein let's say now the first g is going to be that of generosity folks we want you to be generous as possible with your money yes share with us we love when you're generous with us but more importantly we want you to be generous with your patience we live in such a cynical hateful world i want you to see that eagle of life that ray of hope that star that radiates immense positivity love respect and admiration for everybody you encounter on the train and the last thing we're going to talk about is that of grace now folks i want you to dig deep into the precepts of your memory if somebody reached out to you with some grace some form of grace that may have manifested itself in a lot of different ways maybe it was a country boy help that you needed in a crisis maybe it was just some wise words that you live by for this day somebody looked out for you and i want you to give that grace to somebody you meet on the train today so in a few months when you see this video come up again remember it's the version with extra reggie and you should probably check it out again if my computer can handle compiling the really long version of this video our train in order to get over the mountain and there goes reggie to get our train over the mountain passengers about which casino in reno that president kennedy was said to have a tryst i don't know it's time to shave that's much better yes it's the ladies lounge with this seat secret bedroom no seats here that's a coach baggage still in roseville still in roseville the union pacific locomotive being attached to the head of our train is made for hauling freight not speeding passengers across the continent so we're going to be speed limited enough so as to be able to maintain the pace of our schedule from here on out we're supposed to have an arrival in chicago in about two days from now the lack of spare amtrak locomotives on short notice in oakland this morning will certainly set our speed sufficiently lower to make a daylight arrival in chicago rather questionable especially given it took over an hour to attach the freight locomotive we've passed beyond the part of california where passenger rail is frequent the zephyr is the only passenger train that takes this route may have your attention please the first sight the landmark is not really a landmark but it is in the lake and we are about to go on our journey into the pier and you'll be able to see the west core of the american canyon river from east of sacramento to salt lake city amtrak has one train per day in each direction and that's all of the passenger rail for this region given how many folks on board have seat checks for reno it seems like extending some california service out to nevada would be decent for the economies of these mountain communities we call on over several hours but it's not crowded like a commuter train the interstate handles traffic reasonably well and of course flying is faster most of amtrak's long distance trains fill the shoes of past named trains operated by freight railroads that were once the sole means of transporting the masses but the california's effort was created in the late 1940s by several different freight railroads that existed prior to amtrak to attempt to revive the image of transcontinental train travel in the face of the advancing thunder of highways and airlines that amtrak still operates the train daily in 2026 albeit very often not on time is something of a miracle considering all the downfalls of tying your mode of transportation to this rugged and unforgiving land as it's often called my check engine light come on now when i see it long distance trains are considered both regional transportation as well as prestige pieces of history both past and in the making the appeal at a glance of the zephyr is its scenery and its route was designed to hug these hills passes canyons river valleys and deserts we'll see along the way this is the smokiest smoke stop i have ever not smoked at reno we're only an hour late at one o'clock i think we'll make that up coming into salt lake i think i've got all the pillows pretty well sorted it's going to be comfortable enough a lot of people lop here see how many come on reno has some history they paint their character across every structure ever settled here there's something different about these restrooms on this coach here we lights put in several new layers still pretty much the same oh this is what they've done with it that's that's a lot more than it used to be wow i i did not expect this not too far east of reno the zephyr has some more recent history the site of the former sparks amtrak station has spent less than 20 years without passengers the scenery gets plenty of room to spread out in northern nevada come dinner time i felt like trying something new i'd never had the cheeseburger i knew it was the microwave type in a bag but it actually tasted like real meat now i eat plenty of kind of fast food burgers and the worst i could say about this is it kind of looked like cheese whiz but so did i it tasted just fine though the cookies are always amazing no butter cakes for sure which sad to say we're on board but only for sleeping car passengers in the dining car but the cookies have a nice burnt butter flavor too we lose a bit more time on our start into the desert from the sound of it and based on who i saw with their luggage at various stations most of the sleeping car passengers seem to be headed at the least to denver a few out to cities within the mountains and a considerable lot were bound for cities in illinois and chicago coach was kind of all over the place that's the fair that's competing with greyhound mostly many stations see amish or mennonite passengers getting on primarily for the plain coach atmosphere but i've seen quite a few pony up for the sleeping car accommodations too i guess amtrak with its 30 to 50 year old hard product isn't considered too fancy for those folks i would like to step getting to stand in a sleepy desert town aside your train at night when you don't have the lens of the train window between you and these towns at these station stops fresh air brakes whatever you call them they feel a lot more relatable everyone lining the platform infusing additional humanity temporarily into the town's population our next station stop is elko nevada it's just roughly two hours and 10 minutes from now three camping pillows one back support pillow one mantis sleep mask and i had to put on an extra pair of pants because this coach got quite cold at night that was the sleeping arrangement though i eventually ended up sleeping across both seats for a while because like i said my seatmate never returned though he was seen on the platform in reno there head on back and try to spot who sleep is kind of going it's an ever-evolving posture but whoever was sitting next to me initially has not been around if on time we'd have slept through the salt lake city metro and awoken closer to the second station from here down the line salt lake city sprawl with the backdrop of mountain ranges to the east is quite the appetizer for the geographic spectacle smorgasbord that is to come in about an hour from our breakfast at the lounge and that is the first time i have ever had one of those with a collapsed top and it tastes different provo is the end of the line for slc's front runner commuter rail and a couple street people's previous nights this is where the route we're taking is no longer the fastest or most direct to chicago this is the scenic route through utah's high desert and into the colorado river valley that will guide us into the rocky mountains over the course of the rest of the day's daylight the sightseer lounge car began to see familiar faces sticking to the seats a fellow from north chicagoland who regularly takes this route for leisure a great deal of couples and many folks on their own through the morning the lounge maintained about half to a third full there was little talk of the delays and potential for misconnections the run up the mountains and across intermediate expanses with horizons seemingly infinitely distant will take all day time padding for the train built into the schedule was mostly eaten away by stopping for freight train movements outside of salt lake city to the west as i attempted fits of 20 minutes sleep at a time the challenge of the geography of the course ahead kept me awake and confidently minded about how easy going this day was going to be all the promises and the countless videos already created about this route that i as well as a vocal many i talked to in the lounge had seen staged the expectations of those like me who were taking this part of the route for the first time and among those who had been on board before like the guy from chicagoland the consensus was that the trip is never the same twice owing to the variable timing of when the train travels each section and the people on board both passengers and crew in combination no conductor like reggie today so the landscapes often running inches outside the train windows set the stage and handled this narration well enough in his place they had initially intended to split this video up into day parts but didn't it's not just that i think getting all three days in a row experience in a single video better matches the long haul tone of the zephyr it's mostly that the second day holds the key to understanding the first and last days of the trip it's the keystone if you will to finding out why i took this trip after already having seen really well produced videos from plenty of travel vloggers ladies and gentlemen this is green river depot that we are leaving right now geography and trains really captivate me but sitting in the lounge car on this stretch was something else and talking to folks that also came aboard for such an experience really exposes the appeal of this train in its combining of people and scenes with stories from both and it's certainly best experienced by camping in the lounge car until the daylight runs out just try to switch seats now and then not just to see scenery on the other side but to see who might want to sit in your place instead i'd heard from some that had had it as a flex dining meal the greek salad was good and yeah it was loaded the dressing was really nicely refined despite coming in a plastic cup just straight up really good lunch a flash flood warning from the passing thunderstorm set off phones as i applied some cafe car bread to my san luis obispo sourdough back at my coach seat for a little snack we mostly traced the edge of the rain and it nicely added to the dramatics of the scenery but eventually it cleared up and the colorado river stopped reflecting raindrops and only our gaze as we looked out for the classic colorado salute that is whitewater rafters taking down their pants and showing you their backsides i don't know if they do it to freight trains as well and there's also a national moon amtrak day that i believe is also popular in new york and new jersey owing mostly due to the frequency of amtrak in those towns i did see some mooning later on in the trip but i didn't catch it on camera you're welcome when you're the little town with a smokestop on the far edge of western colorado in the middle of such scenic times your station has to match it right well it's kind of got some character it's got plenty of ephemera some of which i couldn't help but pass up and then on the other side there's a historic station and a rather small store that was touted by the conductor on the way in but i had to get a look at this place before i would commit any of my funds to it i still have a duffel bag full of food i know places that size and that lighting yeah they're that's probably more expensive than it needs to be the moab happening is free the delay just invites the happening of seeing omaha in the daylight and more of iowa which is the real scenic part of this trip not what's going to happen in the next three hours right all right that's where we're camping out for the rest of the afternoon next to the accommodations on the multi-thousand dollar two day canyon spirit the california zephyr actually seems like applicable public transportation excellent excellent no one has said that i don't want to discuss this oh no that handle that became more of a comic thing that you did a group of four or five older folks got on in grand junction and they seemed really excited to be taking this trip one of them was more aware of the railroad history than the others but they were all in great spirits and were definitely there for the experience on just a day trip kind of basis really awesome glenwood springs smoke break fresh air break because there's no smoking in this town outside after glenwood springs the zephyr turns into the most densely scenic and highly mountainous parts of the trip we had waning daylight and we were taking in every bit of it as we could while we could by the time we got through the mountains past granby and winter park we would eventually hit the moffett tunnel at darkness our time spent descending into the mile-high city of denver around the big 10 loop would be done only with vague points of light for reference at first houses nestled up here in the mountains invisible to us in the darkness but eventually the skyline of denver would shine through but until then we had these as our last daylight memories of the second day of this trip i sat in the sightseer lounge with a fellow content creator and we watched and tried to find the right scenes and tried to look out for ways that we could avoid light shadows but it's the sightseer lounge it's not really possible i hope your shots turned out like you wanted them cindy especially since my career was in i.t as a fourth generation back then it was uh windows 8 i'm not doing anything fancy other than just i think it was that like the brady oh that's a good thing kind of station it's now evening two on a two night trip on the california separate and we've made that magical transformation of the people that hated the trip at the start of it now becoming the people reassuring everyone getting on board here in denver yes we are yes there is still no chef for the dining car but we still have a lovely night ahead of us just sailing through nebraska waking up somewhere in lincoln or omaha maybe i think by my estimations and then the iowa part the whole cross section of iowa leading over through burlington into illinois and then a night in chicago it was such a great day with awesome scenery i can't believe the cindy you're an amazing person never stop taking photos of anything and please take every trip regardless of how ridiculous the itinerary sounds and i think it was sean you should always keep your cars keep all of your cars don't let anyone say you don't need those cars even if you don't away and a nebraska merge one more night in this tube we can do it leaving denver this is the part of the california supper that i have taken before in 2016 in a full-size bedroom if you can believe that but tonight in coach i spent much more of my time sleeping and by that i mean maybe three hours but colorado certainly was nice to lull you to sleep and what we woke up to in nebraska was about on where i expected to be a little to the west because we'd lost another couple of hours and that was the tale that we would keep repeating throughout the rest of the last day of the trip after having some breakfast at my coach seat i decided that the sightseer lounge would be where i would spend the most of the third day of the trip as well because the body odor level in the last coach was starting to get very unappealing the coach car ahead of mine the one with the refurbished bathrooms it was doing just fine despite having fewer bathrooms and and technically having more of the smells concentrated in a smaller amount of space in any case by the time we rolled into lincoln we were beginning to settle into the ideas of where would we be and when would we be well this makes a few more minutes of my life added onto the clock for time i've spent in lincoln nebraska now omaha there i had many years really early i've never seen this in daylight on the train although i only ever saw it once before at night my sleep got a little better last night to the tune of maybe an hour to 90 minutes there were many more noises some guy got on in denver the conductor thought he didn't have a ticket kind of looks like a person that you know hangs out on the street and now he's on the train going to chicago with all this stuff out of the seat next to him i don't think they want to start fighting amtrak's investment in your train is late snack packs has probably paid off in a few more survey points than when they didn't have them a lot of russia in the i was reluctant to take one at first except for the water bottle but eventually found myself snacking on several it appears they had plenty on board the most effective advice i can lend when taking the zephyr or any long distance amtrak train is to do yourself a favor and book a night to lay over in your end point city remember that the trip will still conclude according to random human factors freight congestion and weather if you are sitting in the coaches you're traveling by yourself you're about to have a seat mate so we asked you to sit up put that seat up next to you we are filling out both your movies don't like your current seat you walk with the observation card this is my really old home territory i'm talking like back when i was six years old i knew the nature of this train i read its rap sheet of scenery and unreliable timekeeping whatever i could theorize would take place made no difference as to how randomly the outcomes would be generated for my particular day's train i always got a subdued version of california's very geography and agriculture i'm not trying to say it's on the same level as all but my family is from the states so i kind of have a soft spot for it all the same the amtrak portion of it through the southern part of the state skirts most of the major cities of iowa and there's a lot to be said about that it's the way that amtrak has chosen to go and it still remains an important connection for iowans albeit not the most populous tract of iowa and enjoy the likelihood of spending additional time aboard with the impromptu community that you've spent nearly 60 hours together with in a shared fate by mode of transit crazy temperature in the midwest this is like the worst i've seen in a new home it's just a lot of like which don't come through as well on the camera but they've been keeping up with them really nicely the smell and the coaches luckily it didn't happen till this morning but the scenes along the way are so disarmingly deep to behold the chaos won't likely be the first part of the story you tell about your time spent on board car is now open and serving and that this kind of crisis may trade bloody marys for a screwdriver my trip saw scenery of enormous spectacle passengers both periodic for parts of and static for the whole ride with unpredictable stories character and unforgettable humanity and a crew that dealt with people and the machinery we relied on in tandem through the tribulations of both try not to jump into this trip blindly but embrace the fact that it's too lengthy with such varied geography to expect an on-time arrival and understand that a train has little capability to dodge problems along the way today as much as in past centuries it takes a lot of to go over 2400 miles across the continent by rail to satisfy all passenger expectations along with their connections is an impossibly unlikely goal we're going to need uh for everybody to go back to their either their assigned seat or their room we need uh we're getting the space uh cleared out so that we can set up we're breaking out the stew there comes a moment of vast awareness that the time of arrival or status of the delay has become meaningless almost all connections have been missed save for the lakeshore limited and hiawatha trains whatever i had chose to do tonight is now abbreviated and pushed against the wall of closing times for chicago businesses or intended sleep schedules such as to make it hardly any fun to go out after arrival did the scenery make up for this delay and the inability to eat dining car meals back to galesburg i already walked around here in the straight on sun it was about this temperature too if i read their translation right they are putting beef stew onto rice or whatever they have because who knows last few days of a toss-up in that dining car although a rumor has it that the locomotive problems that started all this were due to the inbound train five from days ago uh having a boulder strike on the locomotive or something on the tracks just a rumor doesn't matter we got our up unit one snack pack and one bag of chips and an observation card stew is the typical meal kept on board for coach passengers to be given free of charge when amtrak's i've had it before as a first class passenger and felt it on par or better than a great deal many amtrak dining car offerings oh and yeah the by the magic of being the first one up i got and then got to lead everyone back past the line and it does smell really really good just like last time on the empire builder so hello what is it yeah that's the whole nation yeah before luck shined down on me with a sleeper car dinner box i was on the fence about whether beef stew alone could make up for the prior issues but being as i had no connections to make in chicago amtrak easily won me over with this offering by mistabulation i'm a pushover if you first put a free sandwich in my hands in general the hot food turned the train quite convivial and spirits gained a little flight at least as tall as a super liner off the ground did you call the restaurant well i'm gonna probably blast you over sure when i get right back just take me i know i drove a bunch of them well i know a bunch of the shirts i stepped onto the platform in chicago with the character i had brought on board in emeryville and the scenes and people i experienced on board found me walking toward union station with an indescribably bigger capacity for humanity than i could have ever predicted the kind of baggage you can't drag through life like a roller bag you have to carry it and you'd really regret forgetting it on the platform luckily that's the kind of baggage i like to travel with but there's always the empire builder it's all up this way yep made it well i don't technically need dinner back here for one night no more connections to make other than this bus kind of getting me close to the hostel that's the california zipper i think i'd do that again but not tomorrow thanks for coming along