Nice and slow: Montréal to New York by train

Thursday morning saw me re-tracing a familiar route that I have taken several times in the last year or so. I was back in Montréal’s Gare Centrale (central train station) for the daily Amtrak train to New York City.

In the USA and Canada, taking the train is not the obvious choice. Distances are so great that flying is almost always faster, and rail lines are so poorly developed and busy with freight traffic that even the Greyhound bus can usually get there quicker. From Montréal to New York, the bus is indeed quicker by at least a couple of hours, but it can’t match the train in terms of price: US$59 adult / US$50.15 concessions for a one way trip.

The train follows a trajectory that is very roughly similar to the bus, heading south to the Québec – New York border and then down through the Adirondack mountains towards Albany and the Hudson River into New York City. The train, however, hugs the shore of Lake Champlain for a significant part of the trip, twisting and turning along a single track that was forged through the rocky shore between the lake and the forrested mountain region of the Adirondacks. When you combine this exceptionally scenic route with the competitive price, it’s no wonder that there is always a long queue in the airy hall of the Gare Centrale to board Amtrak train 68.

After recognising and saying hello to a previously helpful and memorably friendly VIA Rail agent, we are treated to the priority treatment and whisked down a separate staircase to the platform when the train begins to board. As usual for this busy time of year, train 68 is formed of four passenger coaches with an open plan café car in the middle of the train. Comparisons with the Greyhound continue to be favourable once you’re on board: the seats are vast and very comfortable (comparable with short haul airline business class at the very least) and the train is very spacious.

Travelling with Amtrak does require a certain skill though: that of letting go. The journey to New York City is scheduled to take just under ten hours, covering just 381 miles. The border crossing accounts for much of the delay, but so does incredibly sub-standard track. The journey from Montréal to the border takes ninety minutes – almost three times what a similar journey would take by car along the autoroute. And once you reach the border, the timetable becomes even more loose as the process of checking every passenger’s paperwork is labouriously handled by customs agents. Thirty-five minutes is allowed for this, and on our trip it takes twice as long. You can blame the awkward foreigners who require visa waivers for that (my apologies to everyone else on train 68 that day). Passengers who are joining the service (which is subsidised by the state of New York for providing service through the communities of the northern part of the state) further down the line know to check the service status service on amtrak.com or by calling 1-800-USA-RAIL. Since the train crew radio their position to a control centre after leaving most stations the information provided by this service is notably accurate and dependable.

Although today we’re not going all the way to New York City (we have a connection to make before then towards Chicago) I wasn’t too bothered by our delay. As the train pulls away from Plattsburg – the second station stop in the United States – the line pulls alongside the calm expanse of Lake Champlain, with the snowy mountaintops of Vermont visible across the lake in the distance. It’s very comfortable to kick off my shoes, recline the seat, and drift off as our shining silver train does the hard work, and carries us through this beautiful region of upstate New York.