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Originally Posted by EdFNJ
One of our friends just took it last week as well. It was a trip from hell. They paid for an expensive room and it wasn't available when they got there so they put them up in a linen closet  . It takes up to 4 HOURS to get your car off the train unless you pay EXTRA for "priority removal." Autotrain has secondary track priority over Amtrak regular trains which means they might have to pull over to wait for a regular train to pass. You still have to drive to or from Sanford or Lorton VA. If the train has mechanical issues it's like getting stuck between exits on Rt 75. You can sit forever.
About 3 years ago another friend was taking it DOWN to FL from NJ and it was cancelled when they reached the boarding station at Lorton VA without notice so they ended up driving down anyway.
Edit: For us it's a 19 1/2 hr drive split into 2 days at a decent hotel to NJ from here. Otherwise it's ??hrs to Sanford and a bunch of hrs to (or from) Lorton then waiting for the car to get rolled off so the trip timewise is a LOT longer than driving. |
We were scheduled on that same train three years ago when we moved here. We were coming down for closing and needed to be here at a certain time and the AT would have worked out perfectly. After watching every day to make sure the trains left on time we were confident it would work out well so we booked a ticket. The night before we were supposed to leave Virginia the train didn’t leave so we called Amtrak and found out that there had been a derailment with the train coming out of Sanford and that’s why it was canceled. So we got up early the next morning and drove the 12 hours to get here. Since we still have friends in Virginia, I’ve considered taking the train back up at least one way just to say we did it because it sounds fun.