Don’t expect any Japanese Bullet Train service or style on the New York to Boston Train. It’s an Amtrak “High Speed” Train called the Acela Express. Don’t expect it to take off and rocket along. It’s rather slow and takes over 4 hours from New York to Boston. The New York to Boston Train takes off from Penn Station. You get there and it seems rather unorganised. There’s no point showing up early as they don’t announce the platform the train is leaving from until about 5-10 minutes before the actual train departure.
There’s a waiting area but that was packed full of people. There’s some snacky fast food type places inside Penn Station but not much decent to eat. It’s old and looks a bit crappy. If you’re used to it it’s probably fine but the only trains I’ve gone on in the last 10-20 years have been in Japan and they’re far superior in every single way. But back to the New York to Boston Train, so you have hundreds of people lining up waiting to find out their platform, then because you only have 10 minutes to get through the gates, you have a mad rush. Luckily for us, one of the staff tapped me on the shoulder and said because you have a child you can go down another way.
There’s nobody checking tickets so if you’re in the know, you can take the same way. I’ve got no idea how we would have got through and made the train on time because there were at least 50-100 people lining up and there’s now way all of them would have got on as the normal line they were checking tickets. We bought Business Class seats on the New York to Boston Train thinking that would be similar to Business Class on planes. Wrong. You don’t even get seat assignments and because Penn Station is just a stop along the way , it was basically half full with people sitting all over the place. For the first 10 minutes, 2 ladies were standing because they didn’t have anywhere to sit.
You have dickheads leaving tiny little handbag size bags in the suitcase compartments and again it’s rather disorganised. Not sure exactly what the food was like. I was expecting at least a menu with something half decent but an announcement came over that it’s basically Dunkin Donuts in one of the carriages. Not much to see as far as scenery on the way, and not really worth staying up for if you wanted to have a sleep. You wouldn’t be missing much. Whether you get a window seat will be good luck, probably not based on this experience.
The seats are ok, not really comfortable and about the same amount of legroom as most premium economy class seats on planes. There’s not much “business” about this at all other than the fact there was a lot of business people on there with their laptops working. There’s a tray table which is apparently not in economy or normal class. The train is noisy. There’s messages flashing up saying don’t use phones but everybody does and by the volume, you’d think they’re the Wolf of Wall Street. One guy did some window installations and thought he was the wolf of window street. The train driver also absolutely fucking loved his horn, honking it what seemed like every few minutes most of the way. Apparently there’s a quiet carriage which we got on the way back and this was much quieter.
We booked the Boston to New York Acela Express on the way back First Class. You can read about that here. Update: Was pissing down in Boston and 12 degrees so decided to book an earlier train at 9a.m. For First Class, this was going to cost an additional USD$288 for 3 people, so decided to down grade to Business Class and got a refund of USD$225. Got to the station on time and discovered the train was delayed. They don’t tell you approximate time, just kept telling you every 5 minutes it was delayed and ending up being over 35 minutes late, which we discovered was because the snack car didn’t have enough stock.
Also, I was wrongly accused of playing music and given a right telling off. It wasn’t even me, I had my earphones in, and when the staff discovered he had made a mistake (it was some old bat sitting across from us that hadn’t plugged in her earphones properly), he did apologise to me but didn’t say a single word to the old bat who was actually “disturbing” the peace. There were other people around who all had earphones in and I presume because I looked Asian, he just automatically assumed it was me.
Anyway, nothing I haven’t dealt with before but I thought being 2018 things might have changed a bit, I guess not in Trump’s America. Overall I’d think twice before taking the Amtrak Acela Express again, it’s not efficient, the views are poor, service non-existent and the toilets are disgusting with piss all over the floor and tissue paper littered everywhere.
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