From Denver to California they treated it as this big novelty thing with announcements over the PA at least every half hour between 7am and 9pm. The conductor told me not to mess with the PA in my mini-room, but turning it off didn’t help because the PA in the hall and the rooms around me made it hard to tell the one in my area was off.

This was particularly annoying as I’d slept 2 hours the night before, in order to be able to catch the 6am bus to the train station for the trip.

Worse than the “Out the left side of the train you’ll see, you know, a mountain” announcements, at one point during the trip one of the staff started playing music over the PA, then someone came on the PA and told them to stop, and the other person came on and said “make me”, etc…

It was just sad. This was on Amtrak. And note that I’m talking about the sleeper cars where these announcements were being made. The observation car I could see, but the sleeper cars?!?

Oh, more recently my SO and I looked up pricing for a train trip, and it would have been more expensive than taking an airplane, I think they wanted $3100 for the “Mini sleeper” from Colorado to Toronto.

Sean