During the day, announcements are made throughout the train about upcoming stops, but no announcements are made during quiet hours (10pm – 7am). The final announcement is usually made about 9:30 pm. Quiet hours are more critical when traveling in coach class on the train. This ensures there are times when people can sleep with minimal interruption. For people who want to talk on the phone or carry on a conversation, they can move to the Observation Car. Of course, sometimes people don’t follow the rules, and sometimes train staff don’t enforce the rules making things less pleasant in Coach cars. Car attendants are supposed to make sure you’re awakened if your stop will be during quiet hours (but you have to be in your seat for them to find you).

Traveling in the sleeping cars, we tend to avoid these problems. The cars tend to be quiet, and we can engage in conversation, watch movies, or talk on the phone with little fear of bothering someone else. In roomettes, which have greater exposure to the aisle, we’ve been able to overhear phone conversations with someone who didn’t close their roomette door while our roomette door was open. Usually, if this bothers us, we can close our door and achieve relative peace.

Thank you for visiting for the April A-Z Blogging Challenge. Today’s entry is “Grand Tour”-themed, about our Amtrak trip we took last month. I’d love to hear your thoughts or questions in comments. If you don’t want to miss an entry, please enter your email address below, press sign-up, then check your inbox to click the validation link to get these blog posts in your inbox.