Amtrak? Yes! Note price, customer service

Amtrak passenger train arrives in Galesburg, Ill.

There we are, in our coach seats, for $90 total, round-trip

The bullett-shaped, silver engine and passenger train came around a bend en route to the railroad station in Galesburg, Ill., and this passenger was ready to record the moment.

It was the Baker's first "vacation" train trip in more than 30 years of marriage; we've been on metro trains in New York City, Minneapolis, St. Louis and Chicago, but this was a first for traveling from our home on a weekend vacation.

We are in good company. According to Amtrak, the publicly-funded network carried 31.7 million passengers in fiscal year 2018.

I started this process by buying the tickets. One initial challenge came with the website, Amtrak.com. I punched in "Princeton, Ill." as the station of origin, and nothing happened. After repeated tries, I called AAA Travel for help, and the advisor suggested using Galesburg, Ill., as the train station of choice.

(Frankly, we just wish the train came to Moline in the completed downtown station, but that's for the future ...)

That suggestion was a good one as "Galesburg," or "GBB" worked. In Amtrak lingo, that's GBB to CHI, and then CHI to GBB. It turned out husband Steve and I could travel to and from the Windy City for the weekend at a total cost of $90. That is less than it costs to park a car for two nights in the downtown area.

We happily drove to Galesburg on Saturday morning, as the train was to pick us up at 11:50 a.m. It was hard for us to separate train travel from air travel, and we got to the station early. Parking was free of charge and the parking lot was busy.

The train was delayed about 45 minutes, but Amtrak kept me informed, as did the station master. Finally, the Southwest Chief arrived in Galesburg, and dozens of passengers got on board. The train was busy on Saturday.

After making a few stops (including in Princeton, Ill.) we got into Chicago's Union Station at about 3:30 p.m. We quickly disembarked and toured the gorgeous railroad station before heading outdoors and calling up transportation to our downtown hotel.

On Monday, we also reached the station early for the return trip. It was so interesting to watch the other passengers! Trains were very full, and whole families travelled together, such as the Amish. We took the California Zephyr back to Galesburg with about 300 others on board. It was fun to know the Zephyr would travel through the night and end its westward trip in Emeryville, Calif.

Train travel is not so fast in the Midwest compared to other places, but it's not too slow either. The security is not like on airlines, and there are plenty of Amtrak workers on hand to answer any questions. We thought the customer service was really quite good, especially compared to most airlines.

Amtrak reports that on an average day, customers made more than 87,000 trips on 300 trains. The Amtrak service is particularly strong in the Northeast corridor, (think Washington D.C., New York City and Boston) where more people ride trains than take airplanes.

While train travel is not practical for some, it is a great, inexpensive, and fun alternative in many cases. Check online if you are interested in more user-friendly travel choices: Amtrak.com