A social occasion

Riding a train is like camping, it relaxes social barriers and makes everyone more friendly. Even a natural introvert like me becomes chatty with complete strangers. I think its because we are in a small space together and share a common experience. Moving through the train you encounter several people and must exchange excuse me's and thankyou's along the way. The train's rocking and occasional lurching sometimes causes us to bump into each other making us laugh.

Unless you board as a party of four you are going to be seated with other strangers at the four person tables in the dining car. Everyone I sat with was friendly and easy to talk to. It isn't hard to start conversations about train travel, destinations, etc.

I was seated with a family of three from Kentucky at breakfast Friday. Mom and Dad talked about their travel plans while their son (a third grader) asked some very direct questions in an interview style. :)

I met educators from Virginia (I think) and a Montana farmer at lunch, and at dinner two women traveling 10 days by train in a circle route across the country as a 50th birthday adventure for one of them.

All of these encounters made for pleasurable dining.

The food onboard is pretty good! I had French toast and sausage patties for breakfast, a delicious chicken salad for lunch with a decadent chocolate raspberry torte for dessert, and the flat iron steak with wine for dinner.

One side note about the dining car. The staff there work very hard, but as I learned from the Amtrak discussion forum (link provided below) not everyone thinks to tip them. I agree with the recommendations of some of the posters on that forum that dining car staff should be tipped 15-20% just as if you were eating in a restaurant. They earn it!