This article is reprinted from a reader’s WeChat public account, 懒人 33 的吃喝玩乐. Original link.
Earlier this year, I came across a WeChat post introducing the Coast Starlight, a two-day, one-night train ride between LA <--> Seattle. In both directions, it departs early in the morning on day one and arrives the evening of day two. I had wanted to try train travel in the US for years (trains are the only form of transportation that doesn’t make me motion sick), and my kid just happens to be a classic train-obsessed little boy, so we booked this trip right away.
I bought the tickets directly on the Amtrak website. I looked around but didn’t find any especially good opportunities to transfer credit card points for an award ticket, so I paid cash for this trip. I booked the LA-to-Seattle direction so that in winter, even if the train runs late, we wouldn’t miss the scenery along Highway 1 after dark.
On departure day, we got to the station early in the morning. We returned our rental car first, and from Car Return it was just a short walk straight into the train station, which was very convenient.
The station felt somewhat similar to train stations in China, but also a little different. All trains use the same waiting hall, and the waiting hall is still a bit of a walk from the platform. There were no ticket gates and no security screening at all. You have to check the station screens to find which platform your train is on. At first we couldn’t find ours, so we walked all the way to the end, asked a staff member, and then doubled back.
After entering the station, we went straight to the platform. The official website says to arrive 30 minutes early, or one hour early for major stations. We got to the platform more than half an hour ahead of time, and there was literally no one there besides us.
People only started trickling in 10 to 20 minutes before departure. Around the scheduled departure time, the train finally showed up. The Coast Starlight is double-decker, so it’s quite tall, but overall it really doesn’t have that many cars. Including the dining car and the Sightseer Lounge, probably fewer than 10 cars total?
Right before departure time, a staff member came out to the platform, and you could ask which section of the platform to wait in for your car.
When boarding, they only glanced at the mobile e-ticket on my phone. There was still no formal ticket check.
The sleeper car has several room types. As a family of three, we booked a Family Bedroom. It’s also the only room type that can sleep more than 2 people.
Because there wasn’t much information online beforehand, opening the door to our room felt a bit like opening a mystery box. Once on board, we found that all the Family Bedroom rooms are on the lower level, because they take up the full width of the car. That means the lower-level cars are not connected to each other, and you can only pass through on the upper level. As a result, the lower level is very quiet, and aside from the passengers assigned to that car, hardly anyone comes through. Our car had one Family Bedroom, one accessible room for two people, and 4 two-person rooms.
The room was still quite small, about the size of a soft-sleeper compartment on a train in China. Inside were about 5-6 seats and two small tables. At night, the attendant makes up the beds: the lower seats convert into one long bed and one short bed, and the upper bunks fold down into another long bed and another short bed, so the room can sleep 2 adults and 2 children total.
There was a very tiny closet in the room, basically too small to hold much of anything. Suitcases all have to go on the luggage rack in the car, similar to the luggage racks on a rental car company shuttle. It was just a couple of steps outside our room, so getting things wasn’t too inconvenient.
In the photo below, the closet is on the left, and the small table pulls out. The partition design was actually pretty thoughtful. The room only had one tiny trash bin, similar to the kind in an airplane lavatory, so I brought adhesive trash bags and stuck one to the wall myself.
My kid building LEGO on the little table
Not long after we sat down, someone came by to check tickets by scanning the QR code in the app. After that, someone from the dining car came by to help reserve lunch and dinner times. Meals in the sleeper car are all included.
At the LA station, we were the only people boarding into our car, so we basically had the whole car to ourselves. The car had 3 restrooms, equipped similarly to airplane lavatories but a bit larger. There was also a changing room + shower room. We weren’t planning to shower on the train, but we took a look inside and it felt quite new and clean.
I had previously seen people on xhs mention that during holiday periods, if the dining car chef is on vacation, there may be no hot food at all, and attendants would have to buy sandwiches or similar food on the platform for passengers. We were on the train the weekend after Thanksgiving, and I was a little worried before boarding, but thankfully the chef had already returned from vacation.
With my kid constantly urging us on, we finally made it to lunchtime. The dining car staff would make an announcement when our reserved seating time was ready, but the speaker in our car was a little broken and the volume was very low. Since we didn’t hear the announcement, we just went upstairs at our reserved time. From there, it was two cars back to the dining car.
The menu had very limited choices. Basically, if you wanted meat, my husband and I ended up ordering almost the same things over the two days. But the dining car food was surprisingly good!
This sandwich was very well seasoned, and the toast was grilled just right. The dusting of powdered sugar on top was the perfect finishing touch. I’m not usually into sweet flavors, but even I thought that little bit of sweetness added another layer to the sandwich. The strawberries on the plate were also delicious and sweet.
By comparison, my kid’s hot dog was just okay, and the sausage was on the salty side.
The burger was also pretty good, and the ingredients felt fresh.
The cheesecake for dessert was good. The other two options were lemon cake and chocolate mousse, both very, very sweet in that classic American-dessert way. The menu is probably always the same, so you can use my review as a reference, XD.
One more thing: the ticket price does not include tips for the sleeper car attendant or dining car staff, so you should bring some cash. Since we didn’t have small bills, I asked the dining car staff whether I could pay the tip by card. He said there were only 2 servers in the dining car for the whole trip, so I could just tip one time.
After all the sleeper car passengers have finished eating, business class passengers can go to the dining car and pay out of pocket. I heard in an announcement that lunch was $25/person; not sure about dinner. Passengers in regular coach seats are not allowed to eat in the dining car and can only buy food and drinks downstairs in the Sightseer Lounge.
After eating, we kept walking toward the back of the train and reached the Sightseer Lounge. Seating there is first come, first served. We went twice. The first time, basically all the seats on the coastline side were taken, and the second time, every seat was occupied. Lots of passengers were sitting in the lounge reading, daydreaming, or looking at their computers.
You can get off the train at intermediate stops, but unlike in China, there weren’t any steaming hot local snacks on the platform here, which definitely made me nostalgic. Even so, it still felt refreshing to step off and stretch your legs.
While wandering around during one of the stops, we chatted with the attendant assigned to our car. He had already been working this route for 17 years. It made me reflect on how train travel really is a slower-paced way of life.
Before long, it was dinner time again. Dinner felt much more formal: the plates were upgraded from plastic to porcelain, the napkins from paper to cloth, and the utensils to stainless steel. The shrimp appetizer and the Mexican dish—whose name I’ve completely forgotten—were both pretty good. The Mexican one was quite spicy in a very satisfying way, but the puff pastry dumpling was not good. The bread was soft and pleasantly chewy, also tasty. The strawberries were still very sweet; I really wanted to ask where they bought them.
The steak for the main course tasted pretty good, except that based on our experience over those two days, the doneness was totally random. The green beans were edible, at least. The salmon was just okay and a bit dry. The pasta we ordered for our kid was good; we wanted to order it again the next day, but it was gone.
After passing the southern section of Highway 1, the train headed toward San Jose. That evening we got off at a stop—honestly, I don’t remember which one—to walk around a bit. Our train departed 6 minutes late, and pretty quickly that turned into about an hour behind schedule. It kept trying to catch up along the way, and an announcement said that if it wasn’t your stop, it was best not to get off. So after that stop, we obediently stayed on the train.
While we were out stretching our legs at a station, the conductor asked what time we wanted the beds made up, and he came right on time to do it. Once the ladder was set up, our kid was unbelievably excited and kept climbing up and down over and over.
Some passengers got on and off along the way, so we were no longer the only people in this car, but we were still the only ones riding it from start to finish. The soundproofing between rooms was excellent, though, to the point that I often felt like we had the whole car to ourselves. The restroom also seemed to stay empty most of the time.
Earlier I had seen people on xhs say they ran into bed bugs on the Coast Starlight, which definitely scared us. We brought a lot of Lysol disinfectant spray and went to town with it, and thankfully we slept fine all night.
That said, this train really is old. When we wiped things down with disinfecting wipes, it felt genuinely grimy—no matter how much we wiped, the wipes kept coming up black. It made the old planes on Delta and Alaska look better by comparison.
As shown in the photo, the upper berths all have safety straps across them. Our kid is four years old and has terrible sleeping posture, but still managed not to fall out of the upper bunk during the night.
The bed was reasonably comfortable, but I always wake up a lot when sleeping on a train, and this time was no different. When I woke up, we were back in the beautiful-yet-hopeless PNW. Since all we had been doing on the train was eating and not moving much, my partner refused to go to breakfast that morning, so I took our kid instead. Breakfast didn’t require reservations; it was first come, first served, but service ended a little after 9 a.m. Breakfast was good too. I ordered a quesadilla, though I’ve forgotten what I ordered for our kid. But I also forgot to take pictures. The dining car rules said that parties of fewer than 4 might be seated with others. The three of us were never paired with anyone, but when it was just me and the kid, we did get seated with another party. Our kid saw the person across from us eating a big bowl of strawberries and immediately wanted some too. Honestly, I wanted some as well, so I ordered a bowl. They were so sweet—we quickly split them between us.
Some people on xhs say the scenery in the PNW section isn’t anything special, but I disagree. The next two unedited phone photos were, in my opinion, the most beautiful views of the whole trip.
A mid-sized station: Eugene.
A major station: Portland. Americans really aren’t very creative with station names—LA’s station is called Union Station, and Portland’s is also called Union Station.
When the train reached the bridge over the river marking the Oregon-Washington border, the bridge broke down... We waited three hours for it to be fixed, and in the end our train arrived two and a half hours late.
For dinner, I swapped the salmon for chicken breast. Well, the steak was still better. On the second day, the steak was cooked well too—exactly the medium I wanted.
A little after 10 p.m., we finally arrived in Seattle. Getting out of the station was also incredibly smooth—we grabbed our bags, walked a few steps, and were there.
On the ride home, our kid said they wanted to take the train again next time. We told them train tickets are expensive, so they should wait until they grow up and earn their own money. Our kid replied, “When I grow up, I’m going to make lots of money, so I can ride really, really long trains!”
About the Author
This article is reposted from the WeChat public account of a reader from our WeChat group, 懒人 33 的吃喝玩乐. The account publishes original, high-quality articles, so if you’re interested, feel free to follow it.