As a Brit I've never understood why Americans generally have so little respect for trains, given that (i) they are in many respects the source of your nation's glory and (ii) taking a train across the US is basically a Greatest Hits of World Geography for all the senses.

My girlfriend and I took a long-distance Amtrak train a few years ago. The staff were on the whole fairly unsettling, we came reasonably close to dying in a derailment (the freight train in front of us flew off the tracks and, as the attendant for some reason thought it would be appropriate to say to us, "It's a good thing we were delayed or that would have been us!"), we were becalmed in rural Montana for 24 hours while they cleared the tracks and so had to become Murder On The Orient Express-level acquainted with all the other passengers while pretending not to notice that the food was slowly running out - and it was still one of the best journeys of my life.

You might like this unexpectedly unfrivolous and heartbreaking sketch from Mitchell and Webb's sketch show: "Old Holmes".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp02ubGuTIU