I've ridden Amtrak from Seattle to New York and back, and up and down the west coast, and on pre Amtrak lines all over the midwest. My experience is that it all gets funkier the further east you go. Trains run later, service is unpredictable, people are more friendly, more bizarre or more hostile, most certainly more interactive. Some poet said that the trains,then and now, run through the backyard of the U.S., I think it's true, and you can put any spin on that that your poetic muse serves up. East of Chicago, you travel through the remains of midwest industrial America. Nobody prepares you for this. Even though I grew up in Cleveland, I am still impressed by the images of the ruins of the places where once "they made stuff". But no longer do, so you see abadonded factories, railyards, pieces of the connective wiring of this country laying in the weeds by the trackside. Miles of it. Sad, but kind of fascinating too, particularly if you have someone there who can tell you "that used to be where they made Studebakers, Carling beer, or where the Cleveland Indians played" ( I know they knocked it down) I say check it out. It's the only way you get to see this partin scale. Planes fly over it, buses take the freeway built around it. Best luck.