I think many people fail to truly understand how much land the US has. Mrs. Wolfshade and I took the Amtrak from Chicago to Seattle one year. It's a 46 hr train ride.
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My mother refused to fly so my parents visited us twice. CA to NY = 3 days. It was exhausting for old folks, and expensive as hell because they went 1st class sleeper car (because again, old folks, 3 days, it was a necessity.) But they did get to see America.
sep 1, 2025, 12:49 pm • 1 0 • view
I’m going to the Bay Area next week. I’ve a late flight and overnight stay to avoid a 4am start. I’d love to take a sleeper. It’s 700 miles. That shouldn’t be a 20 hour journey.
sep 1, 2025, 12:46 am • 4 0 • view
That one is a smidge far for a train but it should be sub 15 hours even by mid 20th century high speed rail. By late 20/early 21 that should be 10-12 ish not 46 hours. 46 hours is 40mph average! Thats early 20th century rail.
sep 1, 2025, 12:44 am • 3 0 • view
Yeah, it should. 😔
sep 1, 2025, 12:50 am • 3 0 • view
from south Florida, it takes 8 hours just to get the georgia border, and thats in a car. a train is 10 hours and it only gets you to jacksonville. you're still looking at a ~40min drive to the border
sep 1, 2025, 1:08 am • 2 0 • view
That is 2000 miles. 2206 asm.transitdocs and about 40 stops in between.
sep 3, 2025, 2:36 am • 0 0 • view
thetruesize.com is super fun to visualize things like this. Here's an image of California superimposed over France for example:
sep 1, 2025, 12:05 am • 13 0 • view
And shockingly you can get the length of that distance by reasonably fast rail. Especially once through the tunnel.
sep 1, 2025, 12:45 am • 6 0 • view
Your post got me wondering about the comparative size of the USA vs Australia. The mainland USA is larger but I was surprised how close the east to west coast distance was.
aug 31, 2025, 11:54 pm • 72 2 • view
Woah Tasmania is big!
sep 1, 2025, 1:07 am • 1 0 • view
That's a cool visualization!
aug 31, 2025, 11:55 pm • 15 0 • view
You might get a kick out of thetruesize.com.
sep 1, 2025, 2:42 am • 24 0 • view
I just saw that earlier today. Super interested in playing with it. Thanks for sharing!
sep 1, 2025, 3:07 am • 3 0 • view
I use that image often
sep 1, 2025, 4:31 am • 1 0 • view
The main difference being that we only have a little bit of Texas to drive through in the US, but Australia is almost entirely Texas.
sep 1, 2025, 1:28 am • 7 0 • view
A few years ago I found an advertisement for the train between Chicago and Portland, circa 1914. It was a 24 hour trip. We of course have the technology to do it in even less time, but instead it takes nearly twice as long.
sep 1, 2025, 4:41 am • 2 0 • view
Shinkansen does almost that distance in 13 hours. (Japan North to South is slightly shorter by about 25% iirc)
sep 1, 2025, 12:41 am • 2 0 • view
It's partly the distance, but partly the fact that American passenger trains are embarrassingly slow. The reason for the snail-like behavior is that the rail network prioritizes freight and is single-tracked for a huge percentage. For "another way", see China...
sep 1, 2025, 1:24 am • 11 0 • view
It doesn’t just prioritize freight - the track network is generally owned by the freight carriers. This is a huge challenge in expanding and improving interregional passenger rail.
sep 1, 2025, 2:49 pm • 2 0 • view
My oldest is taking that route in a few weeks. Add ten hours for additional mileage and layover.
aug 31, 2025, 11:53 pm • 2 0 • view
Even people in the Eastern US don't always understand how far apart things are in the West. A vendor once noted my business was in California and said I should just pick up items from their LA warehouse. They thought I was lying when I explained LA is an 8 hour drive each way for me.
sep 1, 2025, 1:06 am • 19 0 • view
More a comment on how shit the US rail network is than on its land size
sep 1, 2025, 2:17 am • 4 0 • view
When our kids were 5 and 2, we took the train from StL to Boston. We got stuck in Alton, IL, literally minutes outside of the St Louis station, for a couple hours. I turned to my husband and said, "If we'd flown, we'd nearly be there by now." 1/2
sep 1, 2025, 4:16 am • 0 0 • view
We still had to get to Chicago, endure a layover, and THEN get on a much longer train ride to reach Boston. I love the train, but it's not at all convenient or expedient. 2/2
sep 1, 2025, 4:16 am • 0 0 • view