Booking the journey on line was easy - no complications.

I went to the ticket office the evening before my journey to pick up my ticket. Again, that was very quick, very efficient, very friendly, very easy. I had to show photo ID and sign the ticket. I was told that I had to be at the station at least half an hour before departure (8:10) next morning with photo ID.

Next morning I went to South Street Station for 7:45. The platform for the 8:10 was shown as "TBD": there were 3 Amtrak trains in the station. The platform for one of them was cordoned off with a ribbon barrier. I noticed that some people with large bags were using porters - Redcaps - who would escort them and their bags onto this train: there was someone by the ribbon barrier who would roll it back for the people being escorted and then replace it. Everyone else had to wait in the waiting area.

I've waited in worse waiting areas. There is a comprehensive news-stand: there are toilets and lots of places to eat. There are metal chairs, and the area is warm. A downside of all this is that people who have no-where warm to go tend to congregate on the seats at the station, so there are not many left for passengers.

At 7:54 - 16 minutes before departure and 14 minutes after I was told to be there - the platform was announced and a "Now boarding" message was given. A line formed in the bitter cold (minus 4 Celsius) outside the waiting area: we waited 3-4 minutes until boarding actually started. Tickets - but not photo ID - were checked.

The car nearest to the barrier was first class: the next was a Quiet Car, then an ordinary car, a cafe and 3 more ordinary cars.

I went into the Quiet Car - which was used as it should have been, with not a single use of a mobile phone.

There were comfortable seats with good big tables (large enough for 2 A4 pages to be spread out side by side: my table had old coffee stains on). The table lifted up and then tilted back (there is a diagram!): the space between it and the seat in front was fine for a small briefcase or shoulder bag. There was plenty of space for large wheeled cases - behind seats, or in the overhead lockers (which, like on aircraft, can be closed). The lockers are quite low, so leaving the seat without bumping your head is a challenge. The locker doors stick out into the aisle and, if not closed, can be dangerous.

In the seatback pocket there is a set of customer safety instructions, a magazine and a poster, "If you see something, say something".

The welcome announcement at each station was friendly but quite long - two and a half minutes. It included mention of the quiet car, and explained the ticket checking process (your ticket is examined by a friendly individual, most of it removed, and a coloured piece of card put behind you to indicate to the crew how far you are travelling). The direction was described as westbound - more southbound, surely? The announcer added that there were trash receptacles and bathrooms in each car!

Initially the route runs beside a freeway: there are 3-4 tracks. At Back Bay, the first station stop, there was a nice poster with historic (1920s) pictures of railways in the area.

Initially the ride was jerky, along tracks shared with commuter trains. In places it was single track, along a narrow formation with no room for widening.

Leaving the second stop, Route 128, the train was pretty full.

The route was through attractive rolling wooded countryside - very pretty in the snow and with a bright blue sky.

Car parks at commuter stations had been cleared of snow. The line was only fenced in places. Commuter station platforms were generally low level, but with a wheelchair ramp at the south end. Amtrak stations tended to have high platforms.

There was some evidence of closed stations along the route.

There were several freight sidings (in the British sense of the word) - some with freight cars with much graffiti on.

As we arrived at each station, the announcer said that, "All doors should open on one side": this was no doubt helpful to locals who expect to have to alight from a limited number of cars at some stations, but to me it seemed a pity that he didn't say which side!

Providence station is sub-surface and quite gloomy from inside the train, although the State Capitol building looked beautiful against the blue sky as we approached the station.

The new station at T.F. Green airport was visible, under construction and nearly complete - to open later this year?

Ride quality in Rhode Island was good, with some high speeds reached.

The absence of other traffic on the route - admittedly, on a Saturday - was noticeable. This wasn't the West Coast Main Line, with Pendolinos rushing past every few minutes!

The Connecticut countryside was very beautiful, especially the towns of Groton, New London and Mystic.

As we approached New Haven, there was an announcement about the likely number of passengers joining the train, urging people not to put bags on the seats beside them.

South of New Haven, there was an announcement from the Passenger Support Representative. He was going to ride with us to New York and come through the train to "freshen up the restrooms" (presumably the bathrooms didn't need it!) and collect trash. He actually came through twice - once for newspapers and once for other trash.

The variey of overhead line equipment supports along the route was quite noticeable - some appeared to be quite old and rusty. South of Bridgeport, bits of the catenary looked as if it was on its side - horizontal, not vertical.

The station at Stamford is big and modern, but with little on-platform shelter - one clearly does not wait on the platform for one's train.

There were sizeable quantities of scrap rail and other debris beside the track.

South of Stamford the formation widened out, generally with 4 tracks.

The cafe car was closed from New Rochelle (at 11:20) until after we left New York (with a new crew) at noon.

The New York area was obviously much more built up, much busier, although in places under-used and disused railway formation was obvious.

The approach to New York City was quite spectacular, on elevated route - in one place crossing subway lines.

There was a long tunnel under the East River into Penn Station, where lots of passengers left the train and several joined it. The train was less full south of New York, although all window seats and quite a few aisle seats were taken.

At Newark, some of the PATH trains had a new blue and silver livery - much nicer than the old and tatty grey. South of Newark the ride was very smooth.

At Metropark station, there was work going on on the northbound platform line (there are 4 tracks and a platform on each side of the right-of-way). To allow passengers to join trains, there was a wooden structure covering the unusable tracks with, in 2 places, a step up. One suspects that the arrangement would not commend itself to the UK Health and Safety Executive.

At another station, Metuchen, there was the same arrangement but also two temporary piers sticking out from the high-level platform. At stations further south, the design of these became obvious. They consist of a flat platform some 2 metres by 2 metres with rails along two sides and legs at one end: presumably the other end is fixed to the existing platform so that they cover one set of tracks and allow passenges to board the train on the next set. Curiously, there were some of these at stations on the 2-track section of line - why could passengers not be boarded from the wrong platform instead?

Baltimore Penn station was full of MARC suburban trains - curious: I thought that they didn't run on Saturdays.

We left BWI Airport, the penultimate stop, 5 minutes late, but arrived at Washington Union Station 3 minutes early - thanks to the wonders of recovery time. We'd run between 1 and 9 minutes late all the way - the two particularly late departures (Stamford and Metropark) seemed to be because of work on the track. Most station stops were 2 minutes.

The station in Boston was 15 minutes walk from my hotel: add to that the 30 minutes unnecessary check in time, the 6 hour 40 minute train journey and the half hour ride on the subway to my hotel and the overall journey time was just short of 8 hours. I got a substantial amount of work done.

If I'd flown, I'd have had a 5 minute walk to the subway, a 30 minute ride to the airport, a 60 minute check in, a 60 minute flight and a 50 minute ride to my hotel - just over three and a half hours. But I'd have missed the beautiful scenery, the leg-room, the working space - so I'm glad I did it!