Over the course of seven days, I will explore seven cities along the East Coast of the United States – via train.
Atlanta Baltimore Greensboro New York City Raleigh Richmond Savannah
When booking travel arrangements for the Pelican tour in 2025, I thought a long train ride would be fun as I had never boarded a train for such a duration, booking a one-way ticket from Chicago to Boston. While on Amtrak’s website, I saw their Rail Pass offer and thought that was pretty nifty. The idea of a train-based trip of sorts stayed in the back of my mind ever since. In January 2026, I hopped onto their website and started looking around, and would you look at that… Amtrak slashed the price in half for a winter promotion. I had three days before it expired to figure out a trip to get the discounted rate of $250.
Most people use the pass to tour the country at a more leisurely pace, enjoying the views from observation cars and the window next to their seat, all while spending a few days at each destination before moving on. With being limited in time and not wanting to shell out for lodging every night, I thought, what if I used the train as transport AND lodging? Could I find a route with only single overnight rides? Do I try to go Coast-to-Coast or figure out a loop? While I found a lot of information on the Rail Pass and traveling via Amtrak from travel bloggers, tourism websites, Reddit threads, and YouTube channels, more precise trip planning details and specific routes were scarce – at least for what I was trying to do.
With the Amtrak Rail Pass, each individual train ride counts as one of ten segments, including transfers. It’s essentially a bulk order of train tickets at a fixed price. Once you purchase a pass, you have 120 days to use all ten segments. However, once you complete your first segment, or train ride, you then have 30 days to use the remainder. What makes it trickier is that you are restricted to two round-trips (four one-way trips) between the same two stations. This also includes all intermediate destinations on the route, preventing you from getting on and off a few times along the same route. Adding on top of that, some routes operated by Amtrak only have one or two trains per day, making it impossible to do the arrive-in-the-morning-depart-in-the-evening thing, even going in opposite directions.
Wanting to get the most out of the pass while contained to ten days was a tricky challenge. Figuring out how to navigate around all of their restrictions, getting enough time in each destination, and getting back home took a lot of mapping and some note-taking that looked more like an absurd maze; alas, came out with a plotted trajectory with all overnight rides. Putting more concentration on where the train can bring me rather than the ride itself, a city tour of the East Coast would work perfectly. Multiple train options, multiple city options, and things to do and see immediately after exiting the stations, with minimal transportation or accommodations needed.
Pushing to the very end of the four-month term, placing the trip in early May will hopefully help with warmer weather and flowers blooming. Mornings will be spent wandering arboretums, birding, and visiting museums, while afternoons will be for breweries, pizza, and record shops. I want to capture scenes of nature and culture that are more unique or at least reflect each location.
Maybe next time I’ll try to do a trip staying on the train as much as possible. Flip the script. We’ll see.
Full details of the trip and photos are on the way!
