I haven't ridden Amtrak in years but folks I've talked to who have hated it. Trains here aren't at all comparable to the service that's available in Europe. Stations aren't conveniently located and schedules are spotty and make weird stops.

Amtrak is a federal monopoly, created to take the failing passenger railroads off the hands of the freight carriers. It has succeeded in doing little more than that.

I say this as a person who loves trains, especially French ones. But, as a pragmatist, I admit that our interstate road system and omnipresent airlines (crossing states which are themselves larger than European countries) make a lot of train travel less desirable in America than it is overseas.