Amtrak Trains: A Retired Traveler’s Safe Haven Amidst the Pandemic

In the early hours of a cool morning in October 2024, the Cardinal traced a creek through the outskirts of Cincinnati and lumbered into Union Terminal. The enormous and echoing train station was nearly deserted.

For months, as death spread and the world watched desperately from homes, afraid to go outside and afraid to breathe, the Cardinal left Union Terminal at 1:41 a.m. as it always has.

On this particular night, a small woman with short, sawtoothed white hair walked onto the platform. She carried with her two heavy bags, more than she needed. She spoke quietly to an attendant, exchanging a few words before boarding the half-empty train. It was late, but she gazed out the windows as the Cardinal pulled slowly past boxcars and rails, gaining speed and spilling out into the world, pounding across the earth toward Chicago, Denver, and California.

Taking a Risk

When the pandemic hit Covington, Kentucky, Rita Carol Brooks believed she was going to die. She was 74 years old. She had already struggled with her health over the years. And she was losing her will to live.

Brooks, who used to work with children with disabilities, had been living in near total isolation for almost eight months when she made the decision to leave town. It seemed the only way to survive.

“I knew I was taking a risk, but at that point, it didn’t matter,” Brooks said. “I didn’t want to be the person I was becoming.”

Even before the pandemic, she could feel she was slipping deeper into herself. She had recently lost all her teeth, and her high school anxieties about her cleft palate were returning. She didn’t want to be seen in public, didn’t want to eat around others, didn’t want to talk to others. Her family had all passed away. She was becoming a recluse.

On the verge of touching a darkness she hoped she would never reach, Brooks bought an eight-day train ticket across the country. Years before, just after graduating college, she had taken a train to see the Grand Canyon. That memory felt like a lifeline — a feeling of possibility she wanted to claw back.

She wasn’t the only one who used the rails as a safety net. Other older adults who struggled with isolation and loneliness during the pandemic have turned to long-distance rail travel as a way to reconnect with the world. In contrast to planes and airports, which might still present a risk of COVID-19 transmission, trains feel like a viable alternative.

According to Amtrak data, seniors are major stakeholders in the long-distance rail network — they make up 24% of all people riding Amtrak’s long-distance routes. In some corridors, such as Virginia to Florida, they make up more than 60%.

Matthew Phillips, AARP’s director of travel, mentioned that long-distance bookings with the organization’s rail travel partners had already begun to rebound to pre-pandemic levels by summer 2021. For those who cannot drive or have difficulty navigating roads and airports, trains offer an excellent option. Additionally, with fewer European travel opportunities, older Americans are seeking domestic travel that fosters shared experiences and a way to meet people.

“For those looking for that romanticized ideal of a train journey, they do exist,” Phillips remarked.

Moreover, among older Americans, the pandemic appeared to accentuate a distinct feeling that time was running out. For individuals like Brooks, riding the rails provided a means to age with forward momentum. This aligns with travel being one of the top ways people say they want to spend time when they retire, as noted by Phillips. However, achieving that goal is considerably more challenging—especially now. Evaluating health risks associated with COVID-19 exposure can prove difficult. Furthermore, navigating the physical infrastructure linked with travel isn’t easy, particularly for those with medical conditions, making the experience even more fraught.

Watching the Country Wake Up

After a quick transfer in Chicago, Brooks found herself sitting alone in the observation car of the California Zephyr with a gin and tonic in hand. The plains unfolded before her. As night came, she returned to her coach seat, a drink in hand, and then slept sitting upright until the sun rose again.

In Denver, she experienced heavy snow for the first time in years.

In San Francisco, she watched the sun set over the Pacific.

In Portland, she saw the train wind through the deep green of the Willamette Valley.

As the days passed, Brooks found herself engaging more with others. Every morning she would return to the observation car to watch the sunrise, sparking conversations with fellow travelers. She found herself smiling again. When she first saw the Rocky Mountains lifting out of a thin layer of mist, she cried. It was the most beautiful sight she had ever seen.

“It saved my life,” Brooks said.

“Trains are actually the ideal kind of compromise,” said Dr. Dilip Jeste, the senior associate dean for Healthy Aging and Senior Care at the University of California San Diego. “You get to know people, but you can avoid those you don’t like. There are breaks you can take at every station, and if you form friendships, you can even play cards together. In a plane, you’re only talking to the person next to you.”

There’s a sense of eternal youth in how we perceive trains and cross-country travel. It’s as if, when we see trains barreling across the landscape, we can almost imagine a time when America was young again, a time when all that was left to do was watch it evolve into the place we all aspired for it to be. That romanticism is embodied in the names of the trains themselves — the Texas Eagle, the Heartland Flyer, and the Empire Builder. This nostalgia and sense of connection hold value for everyone. However, in the pandemic and post-pandemic context, it might be the older Americans who need it the most.

Nevertheless, traveling long distances on a train as an older person comes with its challenges. It’s expensive — a round trip on the Southwest Chief from Chicago to Los Angeles could run about $350. Sleeper rooms usually exceed $1,000. Amtrak offers only a 10% discount for those over the age of 65, and this discount is not applicable for sleeping accommodations or in the popular Virginia-to-Florida corridor. Brooks is managing, but she openly acknowledges she has spent far more of her savings than she should have on her two cross-country trips since last October. Furthermore, trains can be slow, sometimes facing long delays. For those with medical conditions, remaining stationary for days can be an insurmountable issue.

However, as these older individuals strive for travel, some medical professionals, such as Dr. Leah Witt, a geriatrician and pulmonologist at UCSF Health, are increasingly advising their patients to return to travel and visit family and friends. Their health may depend on it. Loneliness has been shown to increase the risk of diabetes, heart disease, depression, dementia, substance abuse, obesity, and even suicide. Additionally, research indicates that cognitive decline occurs faster in individuals who are sedentary.

The key is momentum. For Brooks, the train provided that.

Upon returning to Cincinnati after her last October trip, she almost immediately planned her next train excursion. However, that didn’t seem sufficient. She realized there must be others out there feeling just as isolated as she had.

“I always thought if I didn’t have this cleft palate, if I was pretty, then I would be happy,” Brooks reflected. “That’s not how it works. And it takes you a whole damn lifetime to figure it out.”

Brooks shares her experience whenever possible. She maintains connections with other individuals she met on the train and initiated a social media group to motivate other older adults to explore rail travel. In July, one of the women she met online, Danielle Withrow, visited her in Kentucky. They enjoyed dinner together, discussing trains, their travels, and Union Terminal. Through that connection alone, they have forged a friendship.

“She does a real service to help older Americans think, ‘Yeah, I could get on a train,'” Withrow praised. “And when you look out the window of a train, you see America.”

On October 7, 2021, Brooks boarded the Cardinal at 1:41 a.m. once again. She wandered through the quiet terminal and found her coach seat. She drifted off to sleep to the rhythm of the tracks, headed somewhere new once more.

“It’s up to you to find out what flips your switch, what makes you happy,” Brooks concluded. “I plan to keep moving until there’s a good reason not to.”

Will McCarthy is a writer with the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism. The IRP reported on this story through a grant from The SCAN Foundation.