Zephyr Trip Review - Emeryville to Truckee

Sounds like a nice ride: Yahoo!UK

Riding this train through California's snowy mountains rules right now

The Zephyr goes all the way to Chicago over two days, but don’t be intimidated. I’m here to evangelize for this essential intra-California trip. I made the last-minute trip to Truckee from the East Bay after my wife and I realized we couldn’t all fit in her mom’s FJ Cruiser — our baby’s extensive gear and mom’s two dogs essentially claimed my seat. Taking two cars seemed like a waste.

No worries, for $62 I grabbed a coach seat on the next day’s train for the five-ish hour ride to Tahoe.

The train departs daily from Emeryville in the East Bay at 9:10 a.m. though the next stop a few minutes later in Richmond has the added benefit of an adjoining BART station for the true transit sickos among us.
...
Now it was time to grab a seat at an observation car table and wait for the approaching snow. Somewhere between the historic gold rush towns of Auburn and Colfax you can start to see the bright, almost blinding white peaks of the Sierras jutting out from above the tree line as the train climbs. After these weeks of storms you start to understand why John Muir described this range as “so luminous, it seems to be not clothed with light, but wholly composed of it, like the wall of some celestial city.”
...

I was fortunate in 2022 to have two trips to that area. On a lark I drove over Donner, found the Zephyr, had dinner in Tahoe, and back down the mountains throug Keddie and Portola.

Absolutely awesome. Loved every minute.