A journey along the coast of California

Railroad used by the Amtrak route Coast Starlight

Views from the Coast Starlight are "cinematic"

(Image credit: GaryKavanagh / Getty Images)

published November 16, 2024

California's Pacific Coast Highway is the road trip of dreams, but there's a "smarter, more sustainable way" to travel along America's sunniest shoreline, said Mike MacEacheran in The Times. The Coast Starlight is a double-decker train that has been running between Los Angeles and Seattle for half a century. Sitting in its observation car with a cold beer in hand, you'll feel more relaxed than you would on the highway. You'll also see more of the passing scenery – the blue wild rye grass, the whaleback islands, the beaches "besieged by herons".

For those making the full 1,337-mile, 35-hour journey, there are "swanky roomettes and doubles", with "bench seats turned bunks and in-room showers". But I opted for the one-day trip from LA's "monumental" Union Station to Sacramento, in northern California. The views were "cinematic". First, the Los Angeles of La La Land, and then the "drama" of the California Coastal National Monument (as seen in numerous films including Point Break), followed by views of the Channel Islands National Park (which brought to mind the 1960s surf flick The Endless Summer). Next came the winelands of Paso Robles (which had a cameo in Sideways), and the dramatic oil fields of Monterey County, with their "seesawing" pumpjacks. San Francisco passed by in the evening – but before that, in "Barbie-pink light", I saw the chaparral town of Salinas, where John Steinbeck grew up (and where there is a museum called the National Steinbeck Centre).

I didn't spot breaching humpbacks or fin whales, as some passengers do – but I did enjoy the sight of the magnificent old leviathans at Sacramento's railroad museum, including the Gov. Stanford, the steam engine said to have formed the blueprint for Dumbo's circus train. And I liked Sacramento's old town, which grew up during the California gold rush in the mid-19th century, and "remains as rootin' and tootin' as an episode of Bonanza".