RBW - surely the excuse to go to North Dakota is to complete all the States? no? maybe it's just not that big of a deal to some folk (going off a couple of the posts).

travelingdrsuz - yeah I noticed that with the Amtrak trains.

I've done a few of the journeys and whilst I enjoy them (and some of the scenery) they do seem prone to delays as cargo trains get priority on the routes, crossings, junctions etc. I've seen me on an Amtrak, stopped at a junction or light for 2-hours before whilst a cargo-type train literally miles long spends 15-minutes passing next to me. It's quite interesting if nothing else.

When I went to New Orleans summer of 24, I booked the Amtrak to take me across to Picayune in Mississippi to knock another state off. It was only an hour journey, but I slept in. It was the second last day of my trip and had spent 2-weeks being in a new city/state every day so it was probably everything catching up with me. I didn't want to miss out so booked an Uber (very reasonable price was only 60-dollars) and he took me across and my thinking was to spend the day and get the train back at night.

Had a great day in Picayune going round the little gang hut bars, browsing the antique shops etc. As it was a Sunday everything closed early but it was OK as my train was at 7pm anyway. A thunderstorm hit. The train that was due at 7pm arrived at almost 1am in the end, but long before this time I had no network data, then no battery in my phone, nowhere opened to charge my phone and then install data to check for updates.

The place turned into a ghost town almost within minutes when everything shut.

I was standing on the Amtrak platform, myself, in a thunderstorm, no taxi offices, no-one around, with no phone, no screens for updates and no ticket office open. Was starting to fear the worst as I had a flight back up to New York to fly back home to the UK at about 7am and then around midnight this little old man appeared on the platform - his grandkids and wife were on the train I was waiting on and he was phoning them on his old 1999 style mobile phone for updates and relaying them back to me and that put me at ease.

I didn't care about the delay anymore, I was just relieved that a train was actually going to show up haha.