Amtrak's best train? We have a winner

And it is the Coast Starlight. Simply put, it has everything. The Empire Builder, California Zephyr and Auto Train, my runners-up, each have much to commend them. But the Coast Starlight just overwhelms the opposition and wins on points.

Let's start with what's outside the window. On day one going north you leave Los Angeles through the San Fernando Valley and cut through the coastal mountains at Santa Susana, then at Oxnard join the Pacific Ocean for roughly three hours. One of those hours you have the coast line all to yourself -- no parallel highways or public beaches. Leaving San Luis Obispo, over the coastal range you go again, on Serrano Grade. Spectacular! In late afternoon you're treated to the abundant Salinas Valley, always interesting to me. On day two you wake up in the Cascade Mountains and if you're lucky get to see Mount Shasta as the train nears Klamath Falls, Ore. You spend the morning ascending and descending the Cascades. Scenery of this caliber is as least as good as what you get on the Zephyr and better than you get on the others.

Next, equipment. Sleeping car passengers are really pampered. The Pacific Parlour Car, reserved for first class travelers, are the former Santa Fe El Capitan lounge cars reconfigured as an intimate diner with tables for two and lounge space on the top level and a movie theater on the lower level. This is the only train of the four to have a sleeping-car lounge, now that the one on the Auto Train has been taken off. 

Third, food. All four trains more or less operate off the same menu in the dining cars. But the Pacific Parlour on the Starlight has a separate menu that changes with each meal, if you are quick enough to get a reservation (it cannot accomodate all first class passengers on a busy trip).

Now to that hard-to-quantify quality called service. I give the Auto Train high marks for the espirit of its on-board people, but now that a senior manager of that operation has told the troops they really aren't very special any more and should get over feeling good about the job they are doing, those people are probably in a funk. And on the other trains, I admit it's the luck of the draw. But I drew a royal flush on this trip (yes, I'm en route from LA to Seattle as I write this). Greg in the Pacific Parlour I've ridden with before; I enjoy his wry humor and his commentaries during the wine tasting and blogged to that effect once. The folks in the dining car, in particular Monica, the lead waiter, are fast, efficient, and friendly. And Regina, the attendant in car 1431 this trip, is so sweet I want to adopt her as my fourth daughter. Maybe there's no clear winner in this regard, but the Starlight holds its own.

Finally, we have what I call railroad ambiance. One of the pleasures I get riding a train is observing a railroad at work around me. You probably aren't wired the way I am, but I enjoy freight train inferference and the extremes of weather, up to a point. They keep things from being boring. Well, as I write this we are waiting on the main track at San Ardo, Cal., in the Salinas Valley, for a UP freight train, and at Salinas itself we'll pause to pick up a private car, I'm told. Tomorrow, south of Portland, Ore., the freight train density will pick up, and north of there on BNSF Railway it will explode. I'm being entertained, in other words, although if you want to be entertained to death by freight trains, I guess you need to visit BNSF on the Empire Builder.

That's my take on things. Next week, from Canada, I'll pit the Coast Starlight against VIA Rail's Canadian. Don't assume the Canadian will win this match; you may be surprised. — Fred W. Frailey