Overnight trains - when to arrive?

When do you like to arrive after an overnight ride? I prefer 8-10am, as I don't want to be hustled off the train at 5am, but I really don't want to be lagging on the train much longer than breakfast. I feel like if the ride goes past 10am, the day is toast.

I'm curious if this is similar across the board or if some like to board later, ride overnight, and ride all day.

One thing I dislike about the Meteor's SB arrival in Savannah is it's very early morning, so there's no time for coffee/breakfast. I definitely prefer anything post 8am.

I agree that detraining from 8 AM - 10 AM is ideal.

I used to enjoy breakfast and then detraining, on the northbound Coast Starlight, at Klamath Falls, OR. The train arrives around 8 AM. If the train is late you can still see Mt. Shasta from the dining car. If you don't get off at Klamath, Chemult, Oregon is about 1 hour from Klamath, with the possibility of a bus from Chemult to Sunriver. Or, a "Point" shuttle bus to Medford and Ashland. Otherwise, the Starlight gets into Eugene at 12:30 PM.

Another one, an early breakfast on the eastbound Empire Builder with a detrain at Whitefish around 7:30 AM. Either an early breakfast on the train or breakfast at the Buffalo Cafe, in Whitefish, which is a short walk from the train station.

I'm sure there are other examples on some of the eastern Amtrak trains. How about Charlottesville on the northbound Crescent? Maybe even Reno on the westbound Zephyr , although Reno is a pretty grubby city.

WS

An overnight train should be timetabled to leave its A Terminal between 5 and 8 in the evening and arrive at 730 to 10 AM the next morning. This allows most of a days work before departure, and 1/2 to a full day on arrival.

The Santa Fe originally ran the Super Chief on a 39 3/4 hour schedule (one full day out each way) , but it’s Chicago arrival was less convenient than its LA arrival. Amtrak, unfortunately, has let a fairly fast train become steam era slow.

Since the "Flexible Dining" breakfasts are horrible, I would prefer to be off the train before breakfast. If the train arrived at 6am, that would be ideal.

For a really long trip, I don't much care, except that boarding in Salt Lake City at 3:30 am is an argument for dropping off a sleeper and coach from Calif and picking up one for points east if there ever was one, to allow reasonable boarding times.

But that's on a multiday trip where many stops have lots of pax so the train can't serve most people at ideal times. I think that as a form of transportation for non foamers, the ideal overnight train is one that leaves sometime after supper and gets in to its final destination by around seven in the morning, but allows occupancy until about eight. No meal service and the beds are down when you board. Bos-Wash (to include Providence-Baltimore at reasonable times, too), for example, or Oslo-Bergen, or I imagine London-Edinburgh are like that. A trip like that is effectively faster and more pleasant than flying in the morning and cheaper than flying the day before and needing a restaurant dinner and a hotel.

There's all the talk and expense of hsr for California; I wonder if Amtrak could break even or better running an overnight train between Oakland and LA timed to get people to meetings and conferences in the morning. Just run with the general flow of the host RR's traffic. That's a really slow route anyway: 12 hours for 390 miles or so, so it's just the right length to board, read a little in bed, sleep well, get up, shower, etc.

I once rode Amtrak's now long gone New York Executive from Washington to New York which was an attempt to solve the problem of middle of the night arrivals. The Executive was in service between 1984 and 1994 and was a single sleeping car handled on The Night Owl which continued on to Boston. Departure from Washington Union station was around 10:30 PM with arrival at New York Penn around 2:30 AM where the Executive was uncoupled and set off. Passengers could board in D.C. at 10:00 PM and occupy the sleeping car until 8:00 AM the next morning. On my trip I slept wonderfully and had to be awakened by the car attendant at 7:30 AM whereupon I was offered coffee and orange juice. I dressed and shaved and then headed upstairs and on to a meeting I had scheduled later that morning. The Executive was full the night I rode it and I was the last passenger to detrain. The Executive was featured in a semi-humorous article on the front page of The Wall Street Journal which was entitled something like "Why I Spent $74.30 to Sleep in Penn Station."

For me, the schedule of the Crescent, NYP-ATL is great. Enough time to get breakfast.
Same with the LSL to Chicago.
That said, as some have suggested in the past, better use of the dining car would permit longer dining hours, and I'll admit it would be nice for earlier times (like when I did ALB-Toledo) to be able to grab something from the diner, in that case a warmed egg and bagel or something might be doable).

But yeah, larger terminals/destinations, I'd prefer just enough time to grab breakfast, maybe a shower and get off. So if the diner opens at 6:30, that's great for me.

As for the Coast Startlight, we just did the trip up to Klamath Falls last year. Beautiful.

The correct answer is 9-10 AM.

I would think it depends on local amenities at the destination. Waking up around 6:30a-7a to see the sunrise as you arrive is okay if there's a decent place to get breakfast once off the train. Otherwise, it's more like 9-10a.

NY Penn, DC Union, Chicago Union, and Boston South Station fit those descriptions.

Lets look at a little history. In the North east there were many sleeper lines that you could board at 8 - 10 PM and get off at 8 AM the next morning. What time the train arrived was not too important but of course as soon at destination you could get off. For the most part those sleepers did not have showers which are now in all Amtrak sleepers.
The problem now is NYP is so busy that there may not be a space to park an over night sleeper till 0800 ? If Farley is ever opened then maybe the terminating sleeper(S) can park at the old mail tracks ? This of course will require OBS to remain on duty earlier at origin and later at destination. Then you will need a switcher and crew assigned at intermediate sleeper terminating stations.

Arborwayfan wrote: ↑Wed May 20, 2020 3:24 pm For a really long trip, I don't much care, except that boarding in Salt Lake City at 3:30 am is an argument for dropping off a sleeper and coach from Calif and picking up one for points east if there ever was one, to allow reasonable boarding times.
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Couldn't agree more. The absurd CZ arrival and departure times, for Salt Lake City, do not make any sense, at least to me. What is the answer? Possibly a states-run overnight train from the Bay Area to Denver and from Denver to the Bay Area?

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There's all the talk and expense of hsr for California; I wonder if Amtrak could break even or better running an overnight train between Oakland and LA timed to get people to meetings and conferences in the morning. Just run with the general flow of the host RR's traffic. That's a really slow route anyway: 12 hours for 390 miles or so, so it's just the right length to board, read a little in bed, sleep well, get up, shower, etc.

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Bring back "The Lark"!

https://is.gd/SKDA0I

WS

The Lark it is! Thanks. It just seems like if there is any purely transportation reason for sleepers, it's on this kind of route.

If it's a terminal, I would use hotel free breakfast hours, 6:30-9:30am.

Early enough for those who have early obligations and connections to make it, but not so early that someone who might be joining a tour beginning at 8 or 9 has to wake up early and sit and wait in the terminal.

I think though, there's always going to be sucky departure and arrival times when trains are once a day, and in reality, there's always going to be some cities with sucky times. Trains are pretty much always going to be designed to service the largest number of people.

I used the NYP-WAS Executive Sleeper once. It was open at NYP at 10PM and departed around 2 AM. Unfortunately, the car was a "heritage" 10-6, with no shower! The main problem was that people were boarding the car at all hours, with ensuing banging of doors! Impossible to sleep before the train departed. BTW, this was the brainchild of the illustrious Graham Claytor!

Legend has it that the shortest US Pullman run was on the Lackawanna between Hoboken, NJ, and Scranton, PA, 134 miles. (Seems to me there might have been a NY - Philadelphia sleeper at one time.) It operated on No 15, The Owl. Sleepers were open at 9:30 PM, departing Hoboken at 1:25AM and arriving Scranton at 04:55 with only 1 stop, at E. Stroudsburg. An additional sleeper continued to Binghamton, NY, arriving at 06:30. The timetable allowed sleeper occupancy until 8 AM!