Moonlight Train Trip to New Orleans | Listen

A 24-hour train trip and why it was worth every minute

At 9 a.m., passengers were boarding the Crescent in Atlanta. I stepped onto the train and minutes later, we were off, gathering speed on the way to New Orleans. There’s a direct flight between the two cities, or a 7-hour drive. But I’m a nervous flyer, and I liked the idea of slow travel: taking a train or bus, budgeting more time, supporting local shops and restaurants. The idea is to be less harmful to communities and the planet while also getting more out of the trip. Often, travel is flying somewhere, rushing around until you need a vacation from your vacation, and then flying home, exhausted. But with remote work becoming so common, many people can take slower transportation and extend their stays, exploring their own corners of the world. I had the time, so I booked my first Southern train ride from Atlanta to New Orleans with a stopover in Birmingham, Alabama.

Next Stop: Birmingham

Outside Atlanta, the southern tip of the Appalachian Mountains slid by my window. I was riding coach, which was surprisingly comfortable, especially with rain coming down outside and the steady chugging of the Crescent.

I walked around the train for a little while, getting to know it. There were two rows of Amtrak-blue seats, most facing the front and over half of them full, passengers stowing bags overhead and in a cubby for large luggage by the door. The restrooms were compact, with a small sink and mirror inside, a lot like on a plane. The Crescent has sleeper cars with bedrooms and roomettes, a café car, and a dining car, which had reopened for consistent use just days before my trip.

This was a journey through the rural South, something I’d never seen before. For hours I watched green hills, deep rivers, miles of farmland, and dozens of small towns roll by the windows. I wondered who lived there and what they were doing at the moment we passed through.

There’s a certain romance to riding the train, a relic of a bygone era. The height of rail travel in the US was in the 1920s and ’30s, when private railroads transported passengers in style to cities across the country. In the ’50s and ’60s, railroads were losing money on passenger trains as highway and air travel became popular.

In 1971, Congress created Amtrak to preserve passenger train travel. More than 32 million passengers rode Amtrak in 2024, and while that’s an all-time ridership record, people just aren’t taking trains as often as cars and planes. In September 2024 alone in the United States, there were 81.5 million enplanements on domestic and international flights, and the annual number of miles driven in the US is in the trillions. This is a big country and train travel between cities takes time, but there are upsides. Riding Amtrak is 46 percent more energy efficient than driving and 34 percent more energy efficient than flying domestic. It’s often (but not always) less expensive. And no middle seats. Amtrak hopes to double ridership by 2040 in a new era of efficient travel and has invested billions in new infrastructure to support its goal.

After a four-hour ride, I arrived in Birmingham in the afternoon and headed to the Valley Hotel Homewood to drop off my bags before visiting the Birmingham Art Museum, which has free admission. I wandered the art of cultures across the world—sculptures, pottery, furniture, and paintings, to name just a few—then visited the ticketed special exhibit on Disney costumes and got to see Cinderella’s glass slippers.

Whenever I visit a new place, I get a book to remember the trip by—an unconscious habit at first, but now I scope out bookstores ahead of time. Just a short walk from the art museum was Jim Reed Books/The Museum of Fond Memories, a curiously overstocked bookshop with hundreds of old novels in charming disarray. I chose The Moving Finger from a precarious pile and brought it with me to dinner at Helen, which was just down the road. The restaurant has a dimly lit, moody interior, a large street-facing window, and a long bar. I sat near the window and ordered the angel biscuits, which were soft and salty-sweet and lived up to their name. My entrée was the half chicken, which I think I liked, but I was still in awe of the biscuits and don’t remember much after eating them.

The next day, I went to the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, which were also free to visit. I followed lush, winding pathways and explored a greenhouse with a waterfall, the air thick and floral. For lunch, I visited The Garage. The restaurant’s small bar opened into a courtyard dotted with pottery and antiques, stone tables, and ice cream parlor chairs, and trees growing throughout. It put me in mind of a secret garden. You can build your own sandwich, but I went with the BLT, which came with chips and a pickle spear, a bite of fresh tomato and lettuce perfect on the warm day.

While I waited by the door for my ride, luggage in hand, the bartender called over to me, “You flying in or out?”

“Train.”

“Where you headed?”

“New Orleans.”

Next Stop: New Orleans

The Birmingham train station was busy. After boarding and finding a window seat, I settled in for the eight-hour ride. There was plenty to do to pass the time—write postcards, work on my laptop, listen to music, watch movies, read. Unable to help myself, I had brought my copy of Murder on the Orient Express. Thankfully this train ride was a lot more peaceful than the one in the book, though no less full of characters.

I spoke briefly to Andy Sheppard, a young man from Huntsville, Alabama. He was headed to a Pokémon tournament in New Orleans for the video game competition. “If I do well enough at this, then I’ll qualify for the world championships,” he told me, adding that there was a $25,000 grand prize. I asked him why he’d taken the train. “Part of the lore of the Pokémon world is traveling to new places and going where you’ve never been before, and I figured the train would be a fun way to do it,” said Sheppard. “And because it was only a $60 round trip, it would be better for me than driving.”

A few hours later, I left my seat in search of food with my luggage in tow. The café car was lively compared to the quiet train. People were chatting and playing cards with strangers with many “so, where are you froms.” I ordered a hot dog (I heard the burger is good, too), chewy marshmallow bar, and a glass of Ryder Estate chardonnay from a small menu on the wall, then sat down to work on my laptop. A man saw my camera on the table and asked me what I was working on. His name was James, from Chalmette, Louisiana, a veteran who hauls cattle cross-country. He was a two-time world champion bull rider. “I got gored when I was 33, went up through my bladder. When they took me to the hospital, I had stage 4 bladder cancer. They said I’d have been dead within 30 days if that hadn’t happened. They said, ‘That bull saved your
life.’” It was his first time ever taking the train, headed from Birmingham to Picayune, Mississippi. “It was a short trip, and I said, well, for $27, and the plane was going to be like $512. And it’s three hours quicker, without the layover.” James was planning to take Amtrak’s train from coast to coast this Christmas, something he’s wanted to do for a while. He left me with some advice for New Orleans: “Go to Pat O’Brien’s and get you a hurricane.”

Sometime later in the café car, we came to an unexpected stop. An announcement came over the intercom: freight delay. Since “slow” was the whole idea, I didn’t have a care in the world. Months before my trip, someone told me the trains “don’t run well” in the South. In my experience, they run just fine as long as you can handle a few delays. Most tracks are owned by private freight railroads that control dispatching, often holding up Amtrak trains. I followed this advice on Reddit: “You must accept that you’re already delayed, only then can you truly become the Amtrak passenger you were meant to be.”

It was hot and dark when we arrived in New Orleans much later. It felt odd to be on solid ground. The city was in full swing, with jazz pouring out into the street and well-dressed couples coming and going. But I crashed early, anticipating the day ahead.

The following day was rainy and chilly. I took the St. Charles streetcar into town, a scenic and cheap way to get around that also offered cover from the drizzle. After visiting Café Fleur de Lis for a stack of pancakes and a side of bacon, I crossed the street to shop at Crescent City Books. I decided on a mystery novel set in Paris at the recommendation of the shop owner.

After an afternoon of wandering historic streets full of gothic homes and above-ground graveyards, I stopped at Verti Marte for an All That Jazz (ham, turkey, shrimp, veggies, and “wow sauce” on French bread) for lunch. I walked to the beautiful St. Louis Cathedral, a white castle against the gray sky, and ate my sandwich—which was good, but heavy—on a damp iron bench in the park. This turned out to be a great people-watching spot, with street performers playing trumpets and saxophones, and tourists dancing and taking photos. It was a short walk from there to Café Du Monde, where I tried my first-ever beignets, which were surprisingly cheap (three for less than $5). Warm and sweet, they reminded me of the funnel cake I ate at the fair as a kid. I walked to Pat O’Brien’s for a hurricane, as suggested, and then took the streetcarback to the hotel because I had an early train the next day. (If you want to do a longer trip on a budget, look for accommodations with reduced pricing for extended stays. You could also try a house swap or pet sitting.) I would have stayed longer if I could—I recommend at least a few days in the spirit of slow travel, and my bucket list includes dinner and drinks at Compère Lapin, the collard green melt at Turkey and the Wolf, and oysters at Fives—but I know I’ll be back someday.

Next Stop: Atlanta

I was riding straight to Atlanta on the way back and had a roomette for the longer journey. It costs more, and is worth it for overnight hauls, but I was just as comfortable in coach. The main perk of the private room was access to the dining car. My roomette had a bed, folding sink, and two seats; my room attendant, Alfred, offered me water and the “flex dining” menu as we pulled out of the station. The flex menu, as opposed to the traditional one (which was unavailable), offers ready-to-serve meals. The menu offered a continental breakfast, buttermilk pancakes, or a three-egg omelet with chicken sausage links. I ordered the pancakes and decided I would eat in the dining car.

As I made my way there, a boat cruised by the window. This was so bizarre that it took me a second to realize we must be crossing Lake Pontchartrain, something I’d read about before the trip. (It had been too dark to see it on the ride in.) All I could see around the train was the lake; it looked like we were gliding right across the surface. In reality, we were crossing the world’s longest continuous bridge over water, Norfolk Southern Lake Pontchartrain Bridge, which spans 5.8 miles of open water.

The dining car (also known as the Viewliner, with double rows of windows) was a gently trembling room with booths dressed with white tablecloths and place settings, each with a red rose in a vase. I lowered myself into the nearest booth, still in awe of the lake. When I saw a woman seated alone in the next row, I asked if I could join her. She was Ada Sadler, a teacher traveling from Georgia to New Orleans with the Lou Walker Senior Center, which offers vacations every year. Her husband had taken the trip to Egypt. I asked her why she’d opted for this one.

“Well, I don’t fly. It scares me,” she said. “I didn’t know I was anemic, and we flew out to the Grand Canyon, and I kept passing out.” She hasn’t gotten on an airplane since.

A staff member brought our breakfast orders, which were comparable to flight meals—hot and convenient, but I was glad that I could bring my own food on the train, too.

While I preferred the food in the café car, I loved the experience of eating in the dining car, like I was on an overnight train in an old black and white movie. The Crescent’s traditional menu with seasonal dishes may become available in the next year or so, and I look forward to trying it.

Sadler, now in her 70s, has taken the train since she was young. She recalled a more recent California train ride that was three days long. “But I enjoyed every minute of that trip. Oh, I got to read, relax, my husband and I got to chit chat [and enjoy] the scenery.” She said, “It’s just an escape from all the digital everything.”

Sadler was taking her time in life, too. She didn’t learn to swim until she was 53, and found she was good at it. “I just swam in the [DeKalb County, Georgia] Senior Olympics. And I got a gold medal for my age group.”

We lost track of time, and before we knew it, the dining car attendant was coming over to get our lunch orders. There were options like kofta kebabs, Asian barbecue glazed salmon, and chicken parmesan, plus coffee, beer, wine, and spirits. Sadler ordered the salmon and salad, pointing out the “Amtrak’s healthy option” label. I quickly ordered the same as the gold medalist. (Couldn’t hurt.) When the food arrived, she took her salmon to her roomette for lunch. I wondered where her life was headed next.

Somewhere between New Orleans and Atlanta, my dad called. He was riding a ferry in the Outer Banks of North Carolina on a work trip. When I asked why he’d taken the ferry, he told me it was nostalgic, the same one he rode as a kid to go surfing. He sent me a photo of the view. I realized that’s part of the appeal of slow travel, taking the time to enjoy where you’re going and how you get there.

Around 9 p.m., the train arrived in Atlanta, and I checked into Hotel Clermont, a stylish motor lodge built in the 1920s. I went to lunch with an old friend the next day at Breaker Breaker and told her about my trip over a shrimp po’boy and hushpuppies. I realized as we spoke that I had spent 24 hours on the train, all told, and had enjoyed every one of them.

If you need to be somewhere in particular on schedule, it makes sense to fly or drive. But if you have the luxury of time, and you’re flexible about where you go, try taking the long way there. Stay a little while. Get to know the community you’re in. It’s truly a memorable way to travel.

Track Snacks

Where to get snacks for the Crescent—don’t forget a lunch box cooler.

Krog Street Market
Atlanta
Stop by Fred’s Meat & Bread for a fried shrimp po’boy to go and Xocolatl for a chocolate bar when you need something sweet.

The Market at Pepper Place
Birmingham, Alabama
At this farmer’s market held on Saturdays, shop snacks like Cajun peanuts from Alabama Peanut Company and fresh berries.

Rouses Market

New Orleans
Grab muffulettas, seafood boil, and wine (if you’re in a private room) at this market that’s a short walk from the train station.

5 Ways to Slow Travel

• Take the train
  It’s slower but more energy efficient than flying or driving.
• Schedule less
  Focus on getting to know the community at a steady pace.
• Eat local
  This supports neighborhood restaurants, farms, and fisheries.
• Use public transit
  Explore the region with metros, trolleys, buses, and bikes (or on foot).
• Stay longer
  Extend your trips (and travel less often) to have more time to explore.

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