Barry D. Wood

Special for USA TODAY

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Back in the 1940s, the Southern Pacific Railroad described its Coast Daylight between Los Angeles and San Francisco as “one of America’s most beautiful train rides.” It still is.

Rebranded by Amtrak, the Coast Starlight leaves Union Station in Los Angeles at 10:10 each morning. Two hours later near Santa Barbara and lasting for 100 miles the train scoots along bluffs above the Pacific Ocean. Travelers are treated to stunning views — the sea on one side, the Santa Ynez Mountains on the other.

Traveling on a clear February morning, my recent journey was a wonderful reminder of the appeal of train travel.

My day began early, arriving at the remarkable Art Deco, mission-style Union Station in L.A. at 8 a.m. Amtrak’s Southwest Chief from Chicago had come in thirty minutes early and several of its passengers were already awaiting their connections.

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Crusty Bill Mead, a retired Detroit schoolteacher, had just come off the Southwest Chief, three days and two nights from Michigan. Bill loves trains and loathes airplanes. “Flying is terrible,” he tells me, “the food is bad, the seats too narrow, and people are packed in like sardines.” It isn’t travel, he says, only transportation. “You might as well put yourself in a box and send it Fedex,” he concludes.

The first call for boarding the Starlight comes at 9:30 a.m. I’m already on track 16 watching the Starlight arrive from the L.A. yard. I meet Mark Ludwick, the locomotive engineer who will guide the Starlight and its 200 passengers to San Luis Obispo, six hours up the line and half way between L.A. and San Francisco. Mark tells me that on the trip south, whales were jumping in the Santa Barbara Channel.

Exactly on time, a conductor calls “all aboard” and the Starlight departs.

In the Southern Pacific era, the Daylight covered the 471 miles from L.A. to San Francisco in 10 hours. Today the Starlight, which travels overnight all the way to Seattle, requires ten hours to reach San Jose, from which it proceeds along the east side of San Francisco Bay to Oakland. Then it is on to Sacramento, Klamath Falls, Portland and Seattle where it arrives at 8 o’clock the following evening.

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Early on I make my way to the lounge car in the middle of the train. It is available to first class as well as coach travelers. I quickly encounter interesting people including a ship ‘s engineer from Scotland, a retired couple from rural Michigan and two Australians heading for the Bay Area.

Alex McIndoe is an affable Scotsman delighted with the opportunity to see America’s backyards from Amtrak trains. He’ll be traveling for several weeks before rejoining his ship in Britain.

Tim and Martha Stutzman from Colon, Mich., have been visiting grandchildren in L.A. and are beginning their journey home.

North of Santa Barbara it’s time for lunch and community seating yields another group of interesting travelers. Jude from Sydney, Australia, is traveling with her son Chris headed for the Pacific Northwest. Our waiter has a difficult time with their accents, especially requests for tea with hot milk.

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My tablemate Elsa Rivera is just back from two weeks in Cuba assisting teenage girls on the intricacies of surfing with modern boards her group brought from California.

Elsa will get off in Salinas near her home in Monterey.

The train glides through Vandenberg Air Force Base, past the launch pads for military missiles and satellites. We reach San Luis Obispo at 3:30 p.m. From there the train travels inland heading towards Salinas. The scenery remains impressive, brown hills finally green from recent rains.

By the time the Starlight reaches King City it is nearly dark. For several miles we have traversed the rich agricultural land rightly called America’s breadbasket. From the Salinas Valley comes 80% of the country’s lettuce and much of its garlic and artichokes.

The Starlight arrives at San Jose in the Silicon Valley on time at 8:15 p.m. With a handful of others I detrain and watch the Starlight move on into the night.

I have experienced a wonderful ten-hour, 423-mile ride to San Jose for the price of a single coach ticket for seniors, $50. And those vintage ads were right, this is one of America’s most beautiful train rides.

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Economics journalist Barry Wood is based in Washington, D.C.