Took an Amtrak train from Montana to ND, on trip that was supposed to take 12 hours... ended up taking 28 fucking hours due to mostly winter related delays... And another four hours of which was a surprise stop and search by heavily armed border patrol. It reached nightmare proportions when the food and beverage car ran out of EVERYTHING. No food. No drinks. This was about 15 hours in... first time I felt the pains of true hunger in my life. It was a very rural/scenic route (highline) and included only one stop. Which happened to be the one place they moved quickly. 15 min at three in the morning. The lone vending machine at that podunk station was bum rushed and empty before we even got within five feet of it. It was a specific kind of hell.
Even after the trip out ended, the nightmare didn't. Amtrak cancled the return voyage due to weather for SEVEN DAYS, which in turn caused the busses to sell out for the entire week, and every rental car in the region was taken. After desperately searching for two days, we found one luxury car available to go out west from the airport at $400 a day. We had to get back to work, and had no choice. The car was rear wheel drive and we spent the next 12 hours white knuckle drifting all over the hiway, because Amtrak hung a full train of people out to dry. The irony was the whole reason we took the train to avoid driving in winter conditions, only our cars were far better equipped than the sports car we got shafted with!
NEVER AGAIN.
