I found an open seat next to Hal, many decades my senior, who was on his way home to Montana from a family reunion in Vermont; and Peggy, also an Amtrak veteran of many more years than I've lived, who was headed to California to visit her son.
There are basically two types of people who ride these long distance trains, Roger Harris, Amtrak's chief commercial and marketing officer, said in an interview a few days before I set off on this journey.
"They have very, very different characteristics," he said. "People riding coach tend to travel a few hundred miles, while people in sleepers tend to be much more end-to-end. There are people who get on in Albany and get off in Cleveland, or get on in Cleveland and ride to Chicago."
Those intermediate markets, sometimes called "city pairs" by people in the industry, are a big focus for Amtrak going forward.