Amtrak has a good website with route maps and schedules. For short trips or those involving a limited number of stops, buying tickets for coach seats or rooms in the sleeping cars on the website is a fairly straightforward process.
For my trip, I used an Amtrak Railpass, which lets you travel for a set period of time and a set number of travel segments. In my case, I bought a Railpass for $689 which let me travel in coach for up to 30 days and up to 12 travel segments. (A travel segment is each time you get on and off the train, no matter how far it is between your starting and ending points.) There are also 15-day and 45-day Railpasses.
After you buy the basic Railpass, you make reservations for your specific travel dates, and you can then reserve a room in the sleeping car for the nights you're on the train for an additional charge for each night. The prices for the rooms in the sleeping cars are set using dynamic pricing, like airline fares, so they vary depending on the route, the time of year and so forth.
The rooms can be a pretty good deal since they include a bed made up by the sleeping car attendant and breakfast, lunch and dinner in the diner for as long as you're on the train. The price for a roomette is the same whether one or two people are in it. I estimated that I paid an average of about $185 per night for each night I had a roomette, which would include meals worth about $50-60 per day for each person in the roomette.
You have to call the Amtrak reservations center to buy the Railpass and make the followup reservations. My experience with the ticket agents was good, although it could take a little while to get an available agent on the line.
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| Ticket booths at Grand Central Terminal in New York City |
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