When my boss asked if I wanted to ride the first run of Amtrak’s new Floridian train from Chicago to Miami, I immediately knew my answer.
“YES I WILL GO,” I messaged back. “I WILL MAKE SO MANY TIKTOKS.”
This would be the assignment of a lifetime for a casual rail fan like me. Right before I started at the Sun-Times in 2023, I took Amtrak from Chicago to Emeryville, California, and the experience changed my life.
Well, maybe not changed my life, but it got me back into reading and cemented my love of American passenger rail.
There was one caveat: We have the budget to send a photographer and me on the train, but not enough to get a sleeper. We’ll have to do the whole thing in coach. No showers, no dining car, for over 46 hours, from 6:40 p.m. Central on Sunday to 6:09 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday — and that’s if the train makes it on time.
What could possibly go wrong?
Sunday, Nov. 10
5:02 p.m.: I meet photographer Pat Nabong in the Great Hall of Union Station. We immediately realize that we got here way too early.
Pat asks why the train follows such a strange route through Washington, D.C., instead of heading south through Kentucky or another state to Florida. The original Floridian that Amtrak ran in the 1970s followed that more straightforward route.
The Floridian is a combination of two different Amtrak routes — the Capitol Limited from Chicago to Washington, D.C., and the Silver Star from New York City to Miami.
Amtrak is combining the two routes while there’s work going on in the East River Tunnel in New York, which was damaged by Superstorm Sandy in 2012. In addition to reducing traffic through the tunnel, combining the routes frees up the Superliner bi-level cars that Amtrak uses on the Capitol Limited for use on other western routes, where there’s a critical shortage of equipment.
It also frees up some electric locomotives for use in the Northeast Corridor, where the tracks have overhead wires to power the trains. A typical Silver Star has to stop in Washington, D.C., to switch locomotives for diesel engines that can travel south, but the Floridian is using diesel locomotives all the way.
Pat stares at me blankly as I keep talking about locomotives.
6:15 p.m.: An announcement comes on the loudspeaker in Union Station as Pat and I finish our subs. It’s time to board the No. 41 Floridian to Miami.
We race downstairs from the food court and are among the first people to board. An Amtrak representative gives us a commemorative tote bag. Someone has tied flamingo balloons along the railing of the platform.
Because we boarded quickly, we have a lot of open seats to choose from. I immediately look up the car number to find out when it was made — car 25104 is an Amfleet II built by The Budd Company in February 1983, according to TrainWeb.
Yes, I will be doing this the whole time.
6:40 p.m.: We get underway exactly on time. A conductor comes by and scan’s everyone’s tickets while we’re briefly stopped in the Union Station yard.
His face contorts in confusion when he sees that we're riding all the way to Miami in coach.
7:29 p.m. The initial excitement of the train has already started to fade. I pull out my computer to do some writing that I had promised my editor on Friday but had procrastinated.
Fortunately, we’re making decent time. Unfortunately, I think someone near us is hitting a weed vape pen.
Specifically, a Good News Friyay melon vape pen. Don’t ask me how I know that.
9:25 p.m.: As we’re approaching our first stop of South Bend, Indiana, I head to the cafe car with Pat for a bottle of water. The line stretches almost to the end of the car. When we finally get to the register, I try to pay with a $5 bill.
“We’re not taking cash right now,” the attendant says. The cash drawer is jammed shut.
On the way back, Pat leans on the wall to give a passenger space to walk, and her bag strap catches on the hand sanitizer's pump. She doesn't notice. It snaps and flies to the floor as she walks away.
10 p.m.: The crew switches off the overhead lights as we leave our second stop, Elkhart, Indiana. We’re running about 25 minutes behind.
Once the lights are out, I almost feel like I could sleep, even though a man in front of me is loudly watching TV on his phone with no headphones, and someone behind me is having a very emotional conversation on her phone. I head to the accessible bathroom at the back of the car to get ready.
I learned my lesson the last time I took Amtrak across the country in 2023. This time, I brought flip-flops and comfy pajamas to sleep in, as well as makeup removal wipes to clean my face. When I get back to my seat, I almost feel rejuvenated.
Now, if only the guy in front of me would wear earbuds.
11:05 p.m.: Eye mask: on. Medications: taken. “(10 Hrs) Relaxing Rain Sounds for Deep Sleep” playing on repeat.
All I have to do now is actually fall asleep. Any minute now.
2 a.m.: Somehow, I managed to properly fall asleep in Ohio between Toledo and Cleveland. Pat moved across the aisle since the car isn’t very crowded right now, allowing me to awkwardly curl up across two seats.
But it didn’t last. The sounds of people getting on and off the train was enough to wake me up.
Monday, Nov. 11
4:53 a.m.: I wake up just in time to see the train cross the Allegheny River into downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We’ve made up our delay since Ohio and are now back on schedule.
6:46 a.m.: We’re passing through the small town of Dawes, Pennsylvania, when I wake up again. The sun is just beginning to rise, and suddenly I’m remembering what is great about Amtrak.
The bends of the Youghiogheny River, the houses and trailers dotting the landscape as it whizzes by — that’s what train travel is about. Last night, I was questioning why I was doing this.
But seeing the small towns of Appalachia in the early morning sunlight reminds me of home, and why I love train travel.
8:40 a.m.: A attendant comes over the loudspeaker to welcome travelers aboard the brand-new Floridian, which they will “fine tune” in the coming weeks, and to commemorate Veterans Day.
Twice, he calls the train the No. 40 Floridian instead of the No. 41. After he ends the announcement, he walks by Pat and me, shaking his head and muttering to himself.
“I’ll eventually say it right.”
10:28 a.m.: I’ve never actually ridden in a sleeper in the United States, only in Italy when I was in college, which was a very different experience — four strangers in bunks to a compartment. I've always ridden coach since then.
After we eat breakfast in the cafe car, an Amtrak employee takes us on a tour of the train. They’re setting up the dining room for lunch as we walk through. The chef is chopping tomatoes in the kitchen.
The Floridian is the first train on this route in years to have a proper dining car, which is open to sleeping car passengers. The Capitol Limited had been using “flex dining,” pre-prepared meals that didn’t exactly get rave reviews from riders.
I sit down in one of the seats in the roomette and imagine how much better I could've slept last night.
11:30 a.m.: “Late cars get later,” a crew member tells us when we come back from the dining car, which is now set up for lunch. Our delays have been slowly increasing again as we run into other train traffic.
The tracks that we’re riding on aren’t actually owned by Amtrak, which pays freight railroads for the rights to use their tracks. There’s a lot of competition between freight and passenger rail, and sometimes passengers lose.
1:49 p.m.: Our stop at Union Station in Washington, D.C., is long enough to briefly get off the train and step onto the platform, which is bustling with activity.
Crews are moving through some of the cars, cleaning up behind the passengers who are disembarking here. The on-train crew will switch out here too; we'll have a completely different set of faces for the second leg of our trip.
The train is eerily quiet. Most of the coach cars are almost completely empty. Another Amtrak official tells me that she’s optimistic we’ll make up some of the 36 minutes we’re behind schedule.
2:45 p.m. We’re crossing the Potomac River to Virginia over the Long Bridge. It lives up to its name. As we passed over, we got a good view of a jet taking off from Reagan National Airport.
This part of northern Virginia holds a lot of personal significance for me. My partner lived in the area for years, and I often would go for long walks along the river when I visited them from where I lived in southeastern Virginia.
Seeing the river from this vantage point reminds me of how much my life has changed since then.
6:08 p.m.: Pat is calling it a night. It’s pitch dark outside already, so the photo opportunities are pretty limited.
“Maybe you should get some rest,” she says while I keep typing.
We were talking earlier about how we thought we’d be bored on this trip. I brought three books with me. This was supposed to be the trip where I finally finish Lauren Berlant’s "Cruel Optimism."
Instead, I’ve been writing the whole time, talking to people, taking notes, photos and videos. My phone has been blowing up the whole trip. As of writing this, my X thread about this trip has over 19,000 likes and 2.4 million views. My followers have more than doubled in 24 hours.
When you’re on the train, it feels like there isn't a world outside of it. My world has narrowed to a handful of Amfleet cars and a few thousand people who are liking my tweets. When I step off this train, what will I be?
I think I’m going to have an existential crisis.
6:56 p.m.: I crack open a half bottle of Pinot Grigio from the cafe car. Let's have this existential crisis.
7:05 p.m.: I should get a tattoo.
8:25 p.m.: We’re now arriving in Raleigh, North Carolina — the place where my Amtrak fixation began.
My first trip was from my hometown to Raleigh to visit some of the downtown museums when I was 9 or 10 years old. Despite the delays and mediocre food, I was immediately hooked. I could take the train to Raleigh? To Richmond? To New York City? My mind was blown.
Ever since then, Amtrak has held a special place in my heart. When I think of Amtrak, I think of my parents cursing the long delays and waiting forever in the little Raleigh station for an enormously late train.
Raleigh feels almost like home.
8:49 p.m.: And of course, Raleigh feels like a delay.
We’re delayed briefly while the crew tries to resolve a technical glitch with the train’s safety systems. The train was showing up as the No. 91 — which is the southbound Silver Star — instead of the No. 41, the number of the new southbound Floridian.
There’s been confusion among the crew about this glitch all day, one of many that they’ve had to deal with on a brand new train with cars that don’t normally operate together. I text my parents a photo from Pat of me while waiting for the train to start rolling again.
Meanwhile, the No. 91 Silver Star ahead of us is almost three hours delayed. Hopefully that isn’t in our future. We’re up to an hour and seven minutes now.
10:04 p.m.: They’ve turned out the lights in the train, but an older woman is still talking loudly on the phone in Spanish across the aisle. Eventually, an attendant comes by to shush her.
The train is much more crowded tonight, and Pat and I aren’t able to get rows to ourselves. I try to find a comfortable position leaning up against the wall of the car, but I’m not sure that one really exists. A few feet away, the flap to a trash bin keeps clacking open and shut with the jostling of the train.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
12:41 a.m.: We pull into Camden, South Carolina, running about an hour behind schedule. Despite the noise in the car, I’m finding it a lot easier to sleep tonight. Maybe I’m finally getting used to the motion? Maybe the motion of the train feels like home?
Tuesday, Nov. 12
6:15 a.m.: Guess who forgot to turn off her phone’s wake-up alarm?
It’s OK though. I get to catch a few glimpses of the sunrise over the Okefenokee Swamp as we pass through southern Georgia and into Florida.
8:13 a.m.: I finally have my coffee. My existential crisis is over.
Pat and I head to the cafe car after the train pulls out of Jacksonville, Florida. The state is surprisingly long — we will spend the next 12 hours at least riding south before we get to Miami. Twelve more hours to enjoy the train. Twelve more hours to finish writing this story.
An attendant comes with more of the leftover Amtrak tote bags we got at the beginning of the trip. He tries to give them to us and the crew sitting in the cafe car. Everyone refuses.
“I’ve never seen so many people deny something free,” he complains after returning from the coach cars.
10:45 a.m.: I buy a second cup of coffee as we arrive in Winter Park, Florida, an hour and three minutes behind schedule. That’s not too bad for a brand new train, all considering — I had been expecting us to get to Miami two hours late, based on recent train schedules.
I’m supposed to be finishing these stories, but I keep getting distracted by people in the cafe car: a musician, a man who rode the original Floridian in 1973, a woman trying to buy a tall can of beer at 9 a.m. And then there’s Florida passing by outside: strip malls, four-lane roads, SunRail stations, apartment buildings, golf courses, palm trees, blooming flowers.
I can see the towers of downtown Orlando approaching. The last time I was here was for the Education Writers Association conference in 2022. Is there a Train Writers Association? Should I start one?
12:48 p.m.: The cafe car continues to be a source of constant entertainment and jealousy. Earlier, I watched a woman get in an argument with another woman wearing a religious plain dress at the snack bar.
Some of the Amtrak crew is eating food from the dining car. The cheeseburger from the kitchen looks much better than the cheeseburger from a microwave, if only because it’s served on an actual plate.
We just left Lakeland, Florida. This leg of the journey is extra unusual — we’ll come through this city twice. From here, we’ll continue to Tampa, where the train will turn around and back into the station before returning to Lakeland and heading south to Miami.
2:24 p.m.: While I was on the phone with Cianna Greaves, a producer from WBEZ, the train jolted to a stop. All of the crew rushed through the cabin.
We didn’t get a clear answer at first, until another passenger showed us a photo he took from another part of the train.
As we slowly pulled out of Tampa, we clipped the bumper of a car on the tracks. The people in the car were unharmed, from what we have heard from the crew.
But while things get sorted out, we’re going to be stopped here on the railroad tracks alongside East Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Tampa. From the cafe car, we can just barely see a police car stopped at the intersection where the crash happened.
3:02 p.m.: Mercifully, we’re back on the move.
3:27 p.m.: And now we’re stuck waiting on a freight train to pass. The universe and Amtrak have decided to test my patience. Is this meant to be a lesson? That I need to slow down and be more patient? That there’s more to life than work? That deadlines and timetables aren’t everything?
Probably not.
We were scheduled to be in Miami at 6:09 p.m. So far, we are two hours and eight minutes late — and counting.
5:33 p.m.: As we pull into Okeechobee, I drop the remainder of my Greek salad on the floor of the cafe car.
We are two hours and 25 minutes behind schedule.
6:27 p.m.: We’re now pulling into West Palm Beach.
Less than a week ago, I was sitting in the Sun-Times and WBEZ office at Navy Pier at 1:30 a.m. Central time when former and now President-elect Donald Trump gave a speech here to declare victory in the 2024 presidential election.
The election has, to some degree, cast a pall over this trip. We’ve traveled through several states that went for Trump and several states that went for Harris. Yesterday, I gave an interview with another local news outlet over Zoom while a group of older people in Trump hats sat at the table next to me.
I’m a transgender woman, and I have a lot at stake in this political environment. Last year, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a bill that makes it a crime for me to refuse to leave a women’s bathroom in certain spaces if I am asked to by a government employee.
The law is admittedly vague and confusing, and I don’t realistically expect that I’ll have any issues here. There are many more laws that have a concrete impact on trans people who live in Florida, particularly trans youth, and their access to gender-affirming care.
But this has been at the back of my mind the whole train ride. As my tweets about the train ride have gone viral, I’ve been inundated with messages calling me a man, insulting me for choosing to wear a mask onboard and many more hateful things. It’s been funny to be recognized for the tweets by fellow passengers, but also nerve-wracking.
One of the reasons I stopped working as a reporter was I couldn’t handle the anti-trans harassment I was getting. As a Sun-Times audience engagement specialist, my job now is about ensuring other people's work reaches our readers. Now that I’m getting more attention, that’s all flooding in again. I don’t really know how to handle it.
I know writing about this probably won’t help. But it’s the truth — and my job is to tell the truth.
7:13 p.m.: The train feels like it's falling apart. I feel like I'm falling apart.
Pat and I spent all day working from the cafe car and returned to our seats as we approached Fort Lauderdale — only to find that someone had taken them, including Pat's travel pillow that she left on her seat.
"It's OK. I don't really want it anymore," she whispers as we find new seats elsewhere in the car.
In one bathroom, someone has left their jeans on the floor. In another, the door doesn't lock, and there are no paper towels.
Miami can't come soon enough.
8:03 p.m.: I think I'm going to cry as the train slowly pulls into the Miami Amtrak station.
I quickly do the math on my phone. It took 48 hours and 23 minutes from when we pulled out of Union Station until we came to a stop in Miami — 48 hours and 44 minutes if you include the time we were on board waiting for the train to leave in Chicago.
Pat runs ahead to snap a photo of me as I step down from the train for the last time.
"Let's never do that again," I tell her.
We walk inside the station, which is nothing like the grandeur of the Great Hall of Union Station. There are a handful of uncomfortable seats, a scale model of the station behind plexiglass, a mural of a train.
Neither of us is sure what to say or do. We've been inseparable for the last two days. At one point, I joked to Pat that "Nothing is real besides the train."
Now here we are in Florida. The last two days feel like a fever dream.
"The question is — do you feel like a real person now?" Pat asks as we look up rideshares to our respective hotels. I'm staying in Miami Beach; Pat is staying closer to the airport.
"I didn't feel like a real person before the train ride."
"Right. ... Do you feel like a new person?"
"If anything, I feel like an older person."
