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Day 1:  New York - Chicago by Lake Shore Limited.

The first part of this epic 3,397-mile 3-night cross-country train ride is from New York to Chicago aboard Amtrak's Lake Shore Limited.  This is a 959 mile trip taking 1 night.  The Lake Shore has Viewliner sleeping-cars, Amfleet reclining seats cars & heritage dining-car.

The Lake Shore Limited follows much the same route as the fabled Twentieth Century Limited (1906-1967), once one of the world's most famous trains.  One big difference is that the Century would have left from track 34 or 35 of New York's beautiful Grand Central Terminal (pictured, right, with the Chrysler Building in the background).  Today's Lake Shore Limited leaves from the rival Pennsylvania Station.  An underground connecting line was built in the early 1990s, allowing trains to & from the Albany direction to access Penn Station, so that all Amtrak long-distance trains could be concentrated at the rather less beautiful Penn Station.  Only suburban trains now use Grand Central Terminal.

We booked our New York to San Francisco tickets in advance at www.amtrak.com, and collected the tickets from the self-service machines at Penn Station by placing the barcode on our booking printout under the machine's scanner, and these days you can just print your own ticket at home.  Easy!

Day 1, 3.00pm, Penn Station...  The journey starts at New York's Pennsylvania Station in the heart of Manhattan.  The original Penn Station was demolished decades ago and its modern replacement was the ugly, cramped shopping centre shown in the photos above.  However, the new Moynihan Train Hall opened in 2020, just across the road.  The Moynihan Train Hall accesses the same underground platforms, but from a magnificent new hall inside what was once the Farley Post Office Building, the original Penn Station's architectural twin.  All Amtrak trains are now accessed from the Moynihan Train Hall.

Checking in your bags.  You can check in your heavy luggage all the way to San Francisco, leaving you free to enjoy the journey.

3.30pm:  Boarding the Lake Shore Limited.  American stations tend to hide the trains away, and at Penn Station the trains are on underground tracks.  The Lake Shore leaves daily at 3.45pm.

The Lake Shore Limited heads out of New York's Penn Station and soon emerges into the daylight alongside the Hudson River.  It passes non-stop through suburban stations including Ossining, fictional home to Mad Men's Don & Betty Draper and the (very real) home to infamous Sing Sing prison.  The train then follows the scenic Hudson River Valley all the way to Albany in up-state New York, with the rails often right next to the river.  Wonderful!  Pictured above, Storm King Mountain. 

Film fans may recognise the scenery from the train scenes with Cary Grant & Eva Marie Saint in Hitchcock's North by Northwest.  Those scenes are set on the famous Twentieth Century Limited over this very route... Above right, Bannerman's Island with its ruined house is another local landmark.

5.00pm:  West Point Military Academy can be seen on the far bank of the Hudson...

You'll see a series of huge road bridges spanning the Hudson as the Lake Shore Limited heads along the river to Albany.  You'll also see small commuter towns, marinas, marshland and countryside...

6.45pm:  Crossing the Hudson.  The Lake Shore Limited crosses the Hudson at Albany, with great views of Albany to the left.

Dinner in the dining car...  Salad, main course and dessert.

7.00pm, Albany:  At Albany Rensselaer, a chance to stretch your legs.  The Boston-Chicago portion is attached here...

Chicken & rice for dinner, washed down with a nice half bottle of Merlot.  Although certainly not gourmet, food on Amtrak's long distance trains hits the spot...

Overnight in a seat or sleeper...  Sleep the night away in your reclining seat (above left, 40 degree recline, you can bring a blanket or buy one from the cafe car) or if you can afford it, a sleeper.  More about the sleeper options on the Lake Shore Limited.

Day 2, 8:20am:  The train crosses Ohio and enters Indiana.  Above right, as the Lake Shore Limited stops at Elkhart, an old New York Central diesel from the 1950s is seen at Elkhart's railroad museum.

Great, egg & bacon for breakfast in the dining-car!  You've an extra hour to spare - you must put your watch back an hour as you enter Illinois, shortly before arriving in Chicago...

9.45am:  The Lake Shore Limited arrives at Chicago Union station at 9.45am, in this case just 10 minutes late.

Union Station:  Chicago's Union Station is a historic landmark in its own right, perfectly located in downtown Chicago.  You emerge from the underground concourse into the great hall, a magnificent space with steps up to Canal Street.

The Untouchables...  Film fans will recognise these steps at Chicago union station from the famous pram scene in The Untouchables.  Actually, there are two identical flights of steps up to Canal Street.  After years of wondering, I now gather it is the southern steps which appear in the film...

The Sears Tower:  You've time to climb the Sears Tower (now the Willis Tower) to the SkyDeck (www.theskydeck.com) for great views over Chicago & Lake Michigan.

Metropolitan Lounge...  At Chicago, sleeping-car passengers may wait in the Metropolitan Lounge, with complimentary tea, coffee & soft drinks.

Day 2, 2.00pm:  All aboard the California Zephyr!  Boarding the double-deck Superliner cars for the 2,438 mile 2-night journey to the Pacific Coast, on one of the world's great train rides.

4.30pm: The California Zephyr stops at Galesburg.  You can normally stretch your legs at most stops, even if for only 10 minutes.  As far as Denver, the California Zephyr runs over the original Burlington Route tracks, after various mergers now part of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad.

5.00pm:  Passengers in the Sightseer lounge are literally on the edge of their seats as the California Zephyr rumbles slowly over the huge steel bridge across the Mississippi River from Illinois into Iowa.

It's official, you've crossed Ol' Man River himself, you're now in America's Wild West!

6.00pm:  3-course meals are included in the fare for sleeping-car passengers.  Meals cost extra for coach class passengers, but are not expensive.  There are several sittings from 5pm to 8pm, but everyone who wants gets fed.  More about food & dining car service.

6.55pm:  Another chance to stretch your legs, the California Zephyr calls at Ottumwa, home of fictional character Radar O'Reilly from M*A*S*H.  After Iowa, the train crosses the vast Nebraska flatlands, with stops at Omaha & Lincoln.  Remember to put your watch back an hour after entering Nebraska.

Overnight in your reclining seat or private sleeper...  Passengers settle down for the night, either in a sleeper or a coach class reclining seat.  Above left, Superliner coach seats recline 40 degrees.  You can bring your own blanket or buy one from the cafe car.  Pictured right, chaos in the Smith's family bedroom on the bottom deck of a Superliner sleeping-car.  More about the seat & sleeper options on this train.

Day 3, 7.15am:  The Zephyr stops for half an hour for refuelling and servicing at Denver's historic Union Station.  Once the station had many platforms, now it has just two.  A private car is attached to the Zephyr, perhaps the ultimate way to travel by train across the States!  The Mile High City, at Denver we're already 5,280 feet above sea level.

9.00am:  Now for a real treat!  The California Zephyr leaves Denver and starts the long climb out of the Great Plains into the Rockies.  On the exposed 'Big 10 Curve', hopper cars filled with sand have been placed alongside the line as a wind break.

Climbing, climbing, climbing, up, up, up, through a succession of tunnels carved from the rock...  In places, you can glimpse Denver's skyscrapers rising from the plain spread out below.  You may see deer or even elk on this part of the route. 

At times, you can look forward and see the front of the train snaking round the mountainside.  The train reaches a maximum altitude of 9,270 feet above sea level as it passes through the 6.2-mile-long Moffat Tunnel.  The tunnel opened in 1928, shaving 176 miles off the journey to the Pacific.

10.10am: Winter Park...  Just after the Moffat Tunnel, the California Zephyr calls at Winter Park for the nearby ski resort.

11.30am:  Now it gets even better.  The California Zephyr snakes for hours through beautiful Colorado canyons, right alongside the river and its many swirling rapids.  This is where you start to realise that Americans who fly across the States and never take the train are quite possibly insane.

12.30pm:  Lunch in Colorado, with scenery like this over your half-bottle of Californian cabernet sauvignon & (rather good, in fact) all-American cheeseburger in the dining car.  The Fraser Canyon is followed by the Gore Canyon...

Yet more Colorado scenery.  Mile after mile, it just keeps on coming...

After lunch, retire to the Sightseer observation-lounge car and put those wrap-around sightseeing windows to good use!

And yet more Colorado scenery.  The landscape changes as the day progresses, as you can see from the rock colour...

1.00pm:  Rafters on the Colorado river salute the passing train in the traditional manner.  The concept of 'mooning' needs to be explained to 4 year old Nate, after which he thinks it's the funniest thing ever.  He is very disappointed when another group of rafters fails to moon...

2.00pm:  Glenwood Springs...  The California Zephyr snakes through the 12-mile-long Glenwood Canyon, shared on the opposite bank with an interstate Highway, and arrives at Glenwood Springs.  A major recreational centre where the Colorado & Roaring Fork rivers meet, Doc Holliday of Gunfight at the OK Corral fame spent the last years of his life here.

The many Amish people travelling on our train get off at Glenwood Springs, see the bottom left corner of this photo.  Just for the record, the Amish people we talked to on the train were friendly, very real & down-to-Earth.  The photo shows the Sightseer Lounge car, with a cafe downstairs, an observation lounge above.

4.20pm:  Crossings the Colorado-Utah State Line.  After calling at Grand Junction, the train enters Utah, marked with white letters on the sandstone cliffs in Ruby Canyon.  These also feature steps carved by early native Americans...

4.30pm:  The scenery changes again.  At the edge of an open plain, the Zephyr runs along a range of arid hills.  The train calls at Helper ('helper' engines would be attached to eastbound trains here) and Provo, home town of Donny Osmond.

5.30pm:  Time for an early dinner with tasty salmon & white wine, with breathtaking scenery like this speeding past the window, a ground level tour right across the American Wild West.

7.00pm:  Overnight in a seat or sleeper. Pyjama time for certain small passengers (above right), the second night on the Zephyr.  The train calls at Salt Lake City (11.05pm) and during the night it crosses from Utah to Nevada.  Remember to put your watch back another hour, as you enter yet another time zone...

Day 4, 8.00am:  The California Zephyr races across the Nevada desert.  The train calls at Elko, Winnemucca (whose claim to fame is having its local bank robbed by Butch Cassidy in 1900) & Sparks.  At 8:36am the train calls at Reno, the Biggest Little City in the World.

9.30am:  The California Zephyr enters California and calls at Truckee, named after a Paiute chief called Trukizo and the Pauite tribe's word for hello, 'Tro-kay'.  Between Salt Lake City & the Bay Area, the California Zephyr travels over the Central Pacific Railroad (now part of Union Pacific), part of the first trans-continental line across the United States completed in 1869.  There's a commentary between Truckee & Sacramento by an expert from the Sacramento Railroad Museum.

10:30am:  The Zephyr has yet another scenic treat in store, as she climbs high into the fir-covered mountains of the Sierra Nevada.  The Zephyr passes the Donner Lake and heads through the Donner Pass, where the Donner Party were stranded in the winter of 1846-7.  Some of the party of 87 resorted to cannibalism, only 48 survived.

Even in July, there's snow on the highest peaks...

12.45pm:  Lunch - another glass of the merlot & I can't resist another classic Amtrak burger...

2.15pm, Sacramento.  The Zephyr calls at California's state capital and home to the California State Railroad Museum.

3.50pm:  We've done it, we've crossed America!!  The California Zephyr reaches the Bay Area, and for a short stretch approaching Oakland it runs alongside the glistening waters.  It's a sense of elation that airline passengers will never know.  We've done it, we've crossed a continent from coast to coast, from New York to California, from the Atlantic to the Pacific...

4.10pm, Emeryville, California:  Ten minutes ahead of schedule with its locomotive bell clanging, Amtrak train number 5 the California Zephyr pulls into Emeryville. Passengers for San Francisco board the transfer buses waiting outside the station.  And yes, we saw our checked bags being loaded safely onto the bus, checked through all the way from New York!

5.00pm:  San Francisco!  The transfer bus crosses the impressive 8.4 mile Bay Bridge, opened in 1936.  The San Francisco skyline appearing through the mist, with the prison island of Alcatraz visible on the right and the Golden Gate Bridge in the far distance.  The Amtrak bus drops us in the heart of downtown San Francisco.