> Be sure to allow an extra day at each transfer point as the trains are always late.
For example, I recently took the Coast Starlight from San Jose to
Seattle, which is supposed to take about 24 hours (according to the
timetable). We left SJ over three hours late. By the tine we got to
Sacramento (about 3 hours on the timetable), we were more than six
hours late. Twice, they just stopped the train in the middle of
nowhere for 1-3 hours. There was never any effort to make up lost
time. We had extra long stops at some stations. When we finally
arrived at Seattle, the train was more than 12 hours late. As far as I
could tell, all of the delays were due to mismanagement and bad choices
made by the railroad, and none were due to factors outside their
control such as track outages or mechanical failures.
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