Years ago, I visited someone in NC. He looked at my car and asked me what that thing was on my windshield. I said it was an EZPass for paying tolls automatically. He said, "Oh, we don't have tolls in North Carolina." He didn't have to have a license plate on his trailer, either.

I got an email from EZPass this morning informing me that the tolls on NY City bridges will be increasing next week. When I started driving in 1960, the toll on the Throgs Neck Bridge was $0.25. It will be increasing from $6.55 to $8.36 each way, and that's the discounted price for using EZPass. The cash price is over $10 each way. The Verrazano Bridge will cost you $19 round trip, cash.

This extra information is very interesting. I've done the trip from Seattle as far south as Los Angeles, then to Phoenix, when my wife was ready to fly the rest of the way home to Dallas. Also have ridden the San Diegan from Los Angeles to San Diego and back. This will be a side trip for you. San Diego is not on the transcontinental route. We have not yet ridden the Empire Builder across the northern route, nor done a lot in the eastern US.

The Coast Starlight (Los Angeles - Seattle) is about 20 hours, as I recall. The key with all train trips is how they fit with daylight hours and then how they fit with daylight hours when they get behind schedule, which is not a rare thing. So it is good to have a plan, but it is somewhat likely that you will have to adjust that plan.

SLO is a good starting place. Even though the train is called the Coast Starlight, it doesn't spend a lot of miles really close to the coast, so you have to keep your eyes open. Looks like in the current schedule, it leaves around 3:30 and gets to San Francisco (actually Oakland, I think) just before dark. Morning comes somewhere around Klamath Falls, and arrival in Seattle is around 8:00 in the evening. So you get most of western Oregon and western Washington in the daylight, including the Tacoma Nrrows Bridge ("Galloping Gertie.")

The Sunset Limited leaves New Orleans at 9:00 AM, gets to Houston a little after 6:00, and to San Antonio around midnight. There is a mid-trip inspection & service there, and it departs just before 3:00 AM. Daylight comes somewhere around Del Rio, and it gets dark near Maricopa, Arizona, which is the Phoenix stop. (The train no longer serves Phoenix directly.) Arrival at LAUPT is about 5:30 AM, but in the past, you were allowed to stay on board a little later. The San Diegans depart from the same station where the Sunset arrives. I have to tell you that except for Port Arthur - San Antonio, you will not be crossing a particularly picturesque portion of our state. You will be between and among a lot of our best attractions, but they will be 100-200 miles away.

I hope you enjoy your trip. I'd like to do the same someday. Let us know how it goes. I have always found travel by train to be very comfortable and relaxing. Space is not unlimited, but it is also not at a premium, like on an airplane. If you don't decide to buy something new, you will have plenty of space to comfortably use what you have. Also...please take a picture of the tree at the SLO depot and post it for us. It is a very cool tree. (Is it still there? It was about 25 years ago that I last saw it, and I couldn't find it on Google Earth.)

Neither of these two train are daily trains. They run three days a week in each direction. So a layover is for a minimum of two days and could be for three days.