left at around 11:00 am
And got on the train to see fairly spacious seats and 2 120V power plugs. The seats are a mix between coach and first-class on a plane. Plenty of leg room but not much hip room. Seats are about as wide as coach, as much leg room as First class.
Was sad to find that my Amtrak train did not feature wifi... but I guess the future isn't here yet. Also realized I didn't have any good single player games, so I loaded up Guest Mode on Starcraft 2 and started playing through the campaign, beat 4 or 5 levels before the seat next to me got taken by a Jamaican woman by the name of Lisa (with 2 S's, Lissa?), more on her to come later.
If you've never ridden on a train, it's like going through constant turbulence on a plane (not as disconcerting since there's not a lot of up and down movement, all perpendicular to that). Didn't get motion sick.
However, most of the ride the view wasn't very good, just trees up and close and personal... Snagged a few shots of houses/buildings that looked interesting to me.
Eventually I got hungry and thirsty (I had brought some granola bars, but decided I'd review the food), so I bought a Turkey and Bacon wrap and ate in the snack car. The food was what you'd expect from a 7-11 quality food, but it cost me $9. Which for where I live isn't' that abnormal so it didn't make me too angry. I forgot I wasn't going on a plane, should have brought my own liquids on board.
Anyway, I was also spamming twitter updates for the first part of the trip, sadly this has since destroyed the rubber covering on my phone (OG Motorola Droid (Milestone))
Anyway, back to the most interesting part of the trip. A black woman sat next to me, eventually we started talking. She had a very interesting accent. I was tempted to ask to record her voice so everyone could listen to it, but I decided that our random commuting conversation was best left to just us (or maybe I was just to scared to ask). Anyway Lisa (with 2 s's) eventually revealed herself to be from Jamaica and she had learned English from someone that learned it in England. One of those experiences in life where you realize accents can be very interesting (hers was faint as she's been in the US for 30+ years).
She told me stories of her current job as a proctor and the most interesting cheating case. A guy had brought in a sheet of cellophane and overlaid it on to the paper they give you to write on. She only noticed because he kept glancing around every 2-3 minutes. If he had just not looked around he probably would have gotten away with it.
The train was only delayed about 20 minutes over the 5 hour train ride, so really not that bad.
Overall, I really enjoyed my train ride. Would buy again A+++++++++++
$40 well spent, and a good experience. Let's hope the $40 back is as well spent and the trip goes as smoothly.