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Track record: riding the rails from San Antonio to New Orleans introduced me to the pleasures--and pitfalls--of train travel in Texas. (on Travel).

Article Excerpt
YOU CAN SET YOUR WATCH BY AMTRAK'S TRAINS. You'll be late, but you can still set your watch by them. Of course, as every veteran train traveler will tell you, "If you're in a hurry, don't take the train." Yet this throwback to the days when travel and Xanax weren't inseparable has an undeniable nostalgic appeal. On the other hand, is such a leisurely mode of travel remotely practical here in Texas, where the tracks go on forever and trains are scarce? To find out, I decided to jump aboard the Los Angeles-to-Orlando Sunset Limited in San Antonio. And although my destination was action-packed New Orleans, the focus on this trip would be the (scheduled) fourteen-and-a-half-hour journey itself.

Boarding the train at five-thirty in the morning, half an hour before the departure time, wasn't as painful as I'd imagined. With no metal detector and no one inspecting my stinky shoes or ordering me to display my embarrassment of electronic doodads, my sleepy stupor was almost enjoyable. Besides, once aboard I could fall back into bed, since I'd reserved one of the smallest sleeping pods, called a Superliner standard, for my husband, Richard, and me. (Don't tell him, but I took him along because...

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