I caught a train from Chicago to Detroit in 2019. We had tickets to watch Hamilton at the Fisher Theatre on the afternoon of our arrival at Detroit, so we left Chicago very early (6am-ish) with a view to giving ourselves a few hours after arriving to catch up with our brother in law (who at the time lived in Detroit) before heading on the theatre.

At some point during our journey, the train slowed to a glacial pace. It stayed that way for the entire journey. There was never any explanation for why this was happening. It added literally hours onto our commute. In the end we headed directly to the Fisher Theatre from the Detroit station on arrival and managed to catch the second half of the musical. No explanation. No refund. The attitude was "you're catching Amtrak. This is the train working as intended". It was excruciating.

Are US trains notably cheaper or more convenient than airlines or buses?

It highly depends on route and geography, but the answer is usually no, and no. Boston-NYC (equivalent to Paris-Antwerp), or NYC-DC (similar)? Take the train--it's not much slower since it's such a pain to get to/from the airports, and it's more comfortable than flying. San Francisco-Los Angeles (equivalent to Paris-Toulouse)? Take a plane (or drive).

For some intercity travel (San Francisco - San Jose, for example, a similar distance to Amsterdam - Rotterdam, or San Francisco - Sacramento, a similar distance to Amsterdam - Antwerp), trains are a perfectly reasonable choice. For those distances though, many (most) will choose to drive.

The city pair equivalents that I just mentioned above may put into perspective how large the distances we're talking about in the US are, which contributes to (but is far from the only factor in) the relative convenience of train travel.

San Francisco-Boston, one of my other common routes back in the day? That's like from the top of Norway to the Strait of Gibraltar. No way I'd do that with a train.

Buses? For travel between major metropolitan areas? They're certainly not my favorite way to traverse routes of the above mentioned city pairs. They're longer, less comfortable, and smellier.

And even now that I live in the EU, there are still some city pairs where it makes more sense for me to fly than to take the train, unfortunately. I travel quite frequently between Brussels and Toulouse, and it's an 8 hour train ride at best (with having to change between Gare du Nord and Gare Montparnasse in Paris, on top of that), with a price that is usually (at least) double that of the corresponding flight (triple, if I'm willing to fly Ryanair to Charleroi, which is usually not worth the price savings), whereas the plane is only 1.5 hrs (3 even if you count travel to/from the airport)

Are US trains notably cheaper or more convenient than airlines or buses?

SOMETIMES

Are they seen as this rustic freighter of the past that ended the era of cattle drives you may indulge in Dollywood?

SOMETIMES

I'm asking because for us EU folk, the answers are unsurprising "yes, and I use them daily" and "no, they feel more modern and 'civilised' than most of the planes I flew."

kk about that

The first thing to know is that railroads in the United States were built by rich magnates through the abuse of indigenous and settler land rights.

The next thing to know is that the passenger rail network in the United States was deliberately destroyed by the next generation of rich magnates in favor of automobiles.

The next thing to know is that when the Cold War started, the powers that be figured freeways would be easier to rebuild than railroads.

The next thing to know is that passenger rail was nationalized under Nixon

So let's review: We have

- A rail network laid out 150 years ago

- Owned by private conglomerates

- Upon which a for-profit federal agency must operate

- At a profit against every other form of transportation

Is it any wonder it's often a clusterfuck?

To your first question, "are they notably cheaper or more convenient," the answer is "it depends." There are seven trips between Seattle and Portland today, each taking less than four hours, each costing less than $60. It's a lovely ride, I've done it two or three times. You can drive it as fast as 3 hours but it can also mushroom to seven depending on traffic... because once you've started down the freeway to Portland there are no alternate routes. Of course if you're my daughter that trip is free; anyone under 18 can get off in Vancouver, WA, a suburb of Portland, and be fully subsidized by the Washington State Department of Transportation.

On the other hand, there are two trips between Seattle and Vancouver today, each taking less than four hours, each costing less than $80. It's a lovely ride, I've done it twice. You can drive it as fast as 4 hours but it can also mushroom to seven depending on traffic... and there's the border crossing besides. Of course if BNSF, the freight operator, feels like running traffic you're fukt. You aren't taking a train. You're taking a bus. And now it's a seven hour ride. And the bus driver might get lost getting you to the station. And then you'll all vote on how to drive a bus through downtown Vancouver because none of you are going to fire up Google Maps while you're roaming in a foreign country.

NikolaiFyodorov's mysterious delays were probably just that - BNSF saying "who run Bartertown." Whereas Amtrak has to keep a schedule (ish), BNSF can, and will, tell you that freight will be coming through there sometime between Monday midnight and the following Monday at midnight. I say this as a certified railroad contractor - BNSF runs freight when they fucking well want to, it's their rails, eat shit. And if you're WSDOT you can say "hey bitch we're running this corridor at this time and we'll pay you not to fuck with it" but if you're Amtrak into Canada you're boned because you don't have the budget for that.

There's this idea that Amtrak is a national organization but it's more like the Hanseatic League or the United Arab Emirates. Each individual run has its own treaties and your experience sticking within one of those treaties is likely to work (Coast Starlight, Acela). Try to bridge the gap and you are exhorbitantly fucked. Amtrak knows you aren't taking a train from San Francisco to Denver because it's quick, you're doing it because it's romantic and they will charge you accordingly. You will get a sleeper car, it will take three days, and it will be priced like an ocean-going cruise. demure is absolutely right in that you aren't making a 34-hour journey you can do in two and there's no f'n way Amtrak is competing with that. Depending on how you jigger the ticket it's cheaper to fly than it is to take a bus.

To your second point, "are they seen as the rustic freighter of the past" the answer is "sometimes." As above, "let's ride the train it's romantic" has legs. Here's the hits you get if you search for "Dinner train":

"But wait!" you say. "I thought BNSF fukt wid all that!" Ahh, but grasshopper - what if you were a tiny shitty mountain town and the giant magnates gave no fux about you? Well, you built a narrow gauge railroad because it was cheaper, and you ran custom locomotives. And, coming as they do from the era of Singer sewing machines, they abso-fucking-lutely still run. Most of them have been converted from coal (not Dolly's). Most of them are effectively free. Nobody is going to build a road on a narrow gauge railbed and mostly they go to towns that have withered on the vine since the freeway system.

There are two other considerations here:

1) the United States is comparatively huge, as many have mentioned. I routinely drove two hours for car parts growing up. In college I dated a Serbian girl who drove two hours to the Adriatic coast once a year as her family's massive road trip vacation. "Road trip movies" are as American a phenomenon as Christmas movies; I can think of a couple set in Mexico and a few set in Australia but by and large, "giant desert culture" is America far more than Europe.

2) The United States rail system didn't suffer five years of targeted bombing. What's here has been here for more than a hundred years. Americans pushed European rail into modernity with the Marshall Plan; they pushed American rail into obsolescence with the freeway system.

I agree somewhat with cgod that American rail nuts tend to be kooky idealists who aren't particularly interested in how we get here, they're all about "I had a Eurrail pass when Daddy was paying for my summer abroad and it was badass why is it so hard to visit my long distance girlfriend in Poughkeepsie." Nonetheless the deprecation of rail in favor of freeways was and is a policy choice. There's a lot of money, history and ideology behind that policy choice, to be sure, but it remains a choice.