In America, if we want to travel with the last scraps of class, we’re left with the train. I’m on one right now: Amtrak’s Coast Starlight, which runs the western ridges from Seattle to San Diego.

It’s not fast. To get from Eugene, Oregon—my current wet home—to Petaluma, California, will take about 18 hours. That’s at least eight more than I’d need to travel by car and something like 14 more than it would take by plane, even with security screenings and travel to and from the airports.

But one doesn’t take the train for speed, at least not in America. You take the train for comfort. And despite the best efforts of my fellow train travelers, there’s still no more welcoming way to get around than by train.

Compared to the typical airline seat, even the coach-class seats on a train are miracles. I’m 6’4″—on some airlines I literally do not fit into economy seats—but here my knees have at least six inches to go before they would rest on the seat forward. If I push a knob that looks like the gear shift on an old riding lawnmower I can extend a leg support, which when added to the seat backs which can recline past 45 degrees, make it possible to sleep in relative comfort.

The attendants—I’m not sure what they’re called on the railways—provide pillows that approach normal size. That’s a miracle unto itself.

But you aren’t confined to your seat. A snack bar is open for several hours, complete with bottle of cheap wine and cans of beer. Entire sections of cars are dedicated to lounges, with diner-style booths or individual seats that face the bay windows. It would be beautiful if it weren’t night; the lines of the Coach Starlight enter territory so remote that there’s not a single light to be seen out either window of the train.

It’s a shame, then, that so many passengers have forgotten how to act in a shared space. Families crowd around expensive cans of beers in the lounge, bragging about how they have enough money to buy every can of beer on board, but that they simply choose not to.