Railroad romance: taking the train from Vancouver to San Francisco

Travel Sunday 31 March 2013 06.30 BST

A train journey from Vancouver to San Francisco gives you the chance to witness the epic scenery and vibrant cities of the Pacific Northwest at a more relaxed pace and rhythm

On the right track: Mount Rainier, America’s most dangerous volcano, at sunset from Tipsoo Lake. Photograph: Inge Johnsson/Alamy

Emma John

"You came on the train?"

The way the taxi driver spoke these words suggested I might, equally, claim to have arrived in San Francisco on a time-travelling DeLorean. Americans, as a rule, do not travel by rail. They drive, or they fly. When they're saving the dollars, they take the Greyhound bus, which has its own iconic place in the culture. But you don't see action heros emerging through a miasma of smoke at a train station, or romcoms that end with a climactic dash to stop someone leaving on the 10.42.

So the cabbie was surprised when I told him I had made my way 1,500km down the coast from Vancouver in a manner that most of his countrymen would consider a form of corporal punishment. Amtrak, the company that runs the rails, has not always enjoyed the public's confidence. It cannot offer speed of travel, as its passenger trains share the same lines (and delays) as the country's rumbling freight network; nor has it had much of a reputation for comfort.

How strange and wondrous, then, is its West Coast service. And how perfect an introduction to one of the less-visited parts of the United States, at least by Europeans.

The Pacific Northwest is an amorphous term that refers to the coastal region joining the US and Canada, via the states of Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. It's bounded on one side by the surf of the Pacific Ocean, and on the other by a long ridge of mountains known as the Cascades, which makes it the kind of place that brave, outdoorsy types love. I am not one of those, so a train journey that connected me between the region's cities, and gave me a chance to see the scenery without actually having to engage with it on any strenuous level, was ideal.

Depending on your view, the cities of the Pacific Northwest are models of progressive urbanity, or hippy towns. I began my journey in Vancouver, whose standing as one of the cleanest cities in North America must partly be down to the fact it is also one of the emptiest. Why did the town planners build such broad sidewalks – had they been anticipating a lot more folk? Or do Canadians just require more personal space than the rest of us?

Emma John on board the Coast Starlight en route to San Francisco. Photograph: Courtesy of Emma John

Either way, 24 hours of inhaling its wholesome air had me utterly relaxed by the time I boarded my first train. This was fortunate, as it was 6am and the brusque US immigration officials at the station did not foster a holiday spirit. Dawn had barely broken when we reached the 49th parallel, and our steel cage squealed to a halt outside the town of White Rock so that the customs men could speed down the aisles with sniffer dogs. We shunted slowly along through industrial and mining towns connected by the Great Northern Railway since the 1890s, and commuters began to fill what had been an all-but-empty carriage. No one spoke; at the table next to mine, a young couple slept, propped up against each other. Almost everyone disembarked at Seattle, me included.

It was mid-morning, and the bustle of the city came as a shock, but the people of Puget Sound revealed themselves to be an easygoing bunch. I first noticed it in the trendy Belltown area, where the city's young congregate in speakeasies and secret bars. The Spur Gastropub, a small, darkly wooded joint, had drawn me in with its happy-hour bar snacks, which included a Wagyu beef slider. When the barman saw me poring over a street map, he began impassioned recommendations of, and directions to, other local bars. "Aren't these your rivals?" I asked. "It doesn't matter," he laughed. "You don't get hung up on anything when you live somewhere it rains 363 days a year."

Spur served three local ales on draught, and that is but a drop in the ocean of Seattle's thriving microbrewing industry, which is becoming as famous as its near-perpetual drizzle. Downtown, having lost myself in the labyrinth of streets around the fish market, I stumbled across the Pike Pub and Brewery, which invites you in via a lift in an alleyway; inside, the place is a multi-floored shrine to the brown stuff, its steel brew-tank installed at the core of the building, like the heart of the Tardis. Drinking a golden ale called Naughty Nellie, I started chatting to a workman fixing a picture to a wall, only to discover he was the owner, Charles Finkel, the man responsible for Nellie and her dozen cousins (including the wonderfully named Kilt Lifter).

Charles had insisted that I taste a glass of everything on tap, and I left Seattle the next day with a hangover that gave the three-and-a-half hour trip to Portland a hallucinatory sensation. Mount Rainier, America's most dangerous volcano, flickered briefly in my vision, and the mountains of the Olympic peninsula were a mirage on the horizon, transforming effortlessly into a sequence of navy warships. Amtrak's morning journeys were, I was discovering, quiet affairs – the soft, capacious seating engendering a sort of lull – but while there wasn't much chat to be had, there were always plenty of announcements to keep you company, whether they were detailed instructions on how to keep your balance on a moving train (bend your knees), or words of wisdom to accompany the opening of the buffet car ("Remember, folks, Bud does not make you wiser"). I have no idea what prompted the stern warning as we crossed the state line into Oregon: "It is illegal to interfere with the conductors!"

Get the message: graffiti in Portland, Oregon. Photograph: Ian Patrick/Alamy

If there's one city in the States that wouldn't be surprised you travelled by train, it's Portland. Defiantly alternative, eco-loving, anti-commercial, this is the place that sports a famous piece of graffiti demanding "KEEP PORTLAND WEIRD". Its citizens pioneered the food-cart scene, invented egg-and-bacon ice cream, spurn cars for bicycles and treat the coffee bean with cultish devotion. Yes, it's ripe for satire – as evidenced by TV show Portlandia, which spoofs their earnest efforts – but there are people who like that sort of thing, and one of them is me.

I fell in love with the city in the 20 minutes it took me to wheel my suitcase from the station to the hotel, during which I passed two vintage shops, an arts cinema and Powell's, the largest independent bookstore in America. The cocktail scene in the evening sealed the deal – from flaming Negronis at the Driftwood Room to G&Ts at the Teardrop Lounge, where they make their own tonic water that looks like the BFG's magic potion. I could have stayed in Portland for ever.

Except I couldn't. Because the last leg of my train journey was before me, and it was the big one: Portland to San Francisco, overnight, on the Coast Starlight – a route whose very name evokes romance. And I would have my own sleeping berth, meals in the dining car, and an armchair-style seat in the observation car from which to watch the scenery slide by.

There's nowhere quite like America for rapidly changing landscapes. We pulled out of Portland past an immense Christmas tree plantation, the suburbs dwindling quickly into pumpkin fields and old-fashioned farmsteads. There were vineyards, fish farms and frontier towns laid out flat and low, as if John Wayne had only just ridden away. Every sight seemed to take on an epic significance: a bulbous water tower, like a huge opium poppy head, surrounded by bullet-shaped silos; a football crowd dressed in yellow and green, crossing a river while a plane tugged a "Rally Responsibly" banner overhead.

Onboard, the mood became increasingly sociable; I could hear a 15-year-old in the observation car teaching his grandfather video games and explaining to him that "war is human nature". The steward gathered us for a wine tasting and I met Julia, a volcanologist, on her way home to San José with her parents. We sat together, admiring sweeping lakes and the golden glow on the mountainsides as we climbed through the Cascades. "You've seen Mount Rainier?" she asked. "That's one of mine. I did my dissertation on that volcano, and I tell you something: the people round here do not have proper emergency response if that blows."

After six hours of travel, during which I hadn't picked up my book once, the light was dying, and it was time for dinner. Reservations are taken for the dining car, and you're seated with other travelling parties, immersing you in a bygone era when conversation was the only entertainment, and the tales of your trip were shared by word of mouth, not by tweet. And so to a comfortable bed, and a sleep broken only by the sound of the brakes, and a reverse manoeuvre into Sacramento.

Dawn broke over Northern California; for the last few hours of the journey the landscape was, frankly, having a laugh, lurching wildly from long flat plains to ruched, camel-coloured, furry grasses to marshland. I felt I'd crossed an entire continent. And, sure enough, here came the sea again, and the hint of a city on a hill, far away, across a bridge. Five days after leaving Vancouver, I was reaching San Francisco – and it hadn't taken a second too long.

Essentials

Emma's Virgin Atlantic flight was provided by netflights, which has flights from London to Vancouver from £617 including taxes. A one-way fare from Vancouver to San Francisco via Amtrak costs from $136; a two-person roomette on the Coast Starlight between Portland and San Francisco costs from $299. Emma stayed at the Loden Hotel, Vancouver, which has rooms from CA $160 (theloden.com; britishcolumbia.travel); the Hotel Five in Seattle, with rooms from $135 (hotelfiveseattle.com; visitseattle.org); and the Ace Hotel in Portland, where a single room with shared bathroom costs from $125 + tax (acehotel.com/portland; traveloregon.com)

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