Hello! Been surfing websites and watching videos and believe I’ve decided on the following trip. Would appreciate a sanity check before I dive in with reservations in case I’ve made a wrong assumption or two. TIA!
—Want to ride Starlight from SoCal to Vancouver BC in late Feb. —It won’t go all the way there, so I’ll need to xfer to Cascades at some point where I want to spend the night, because the xfer schedules do not match well. I pick Portland. — For both: Are there preferred/obvious good seats? I will keep searching. This just occurred to me.
Appreciate any advice. It’s been a long time since I’ve been on the train : )
r/Amtrak is not associated with Amtrak in any official way. Any problems, concerns, complaints, etc should be directed to Amtrak through one of the official channels.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
You won't get a choice of seat on the starlight, atleast in my experience. I had mine chosen for me going Emeryville > Portland, and they stuck me with someone who took up 1½ seats.
For the cascade, sit on the left side. You'll be along the columbia river until Longview and its pretty. After that its not too spectacular.
You'll definitely want to be on the left side north of Seattle. The train runs along Puget Sound between Seattle and Everett, then it's along the water again near Bellingham.
Depends when you want to get into Vancouver (or if you prefer to sightsee Portland over Seattle). Either way you need to spend a night in either city as the Coast Starlight arrives after the last train of the day to Vancouver. Northbound Coast Starlight gets into Portland around 3:30pm and Seattle around 7:30pm.
If you transfer in Seattle there are two trains a day to Vancouver (morning and evening). Transferring in Portland you can only take the evening Cascades train (~2:30pm departure out of Portland, Seattle arrival/departure around 6pm, arriving ~11pm Vancouver).