I'm old enough to have ridden on the NYC "20th Century Limited", but sadly, it was only limited by the poor condition of the equipment by July '66. The food in the dining car was fine, but one of the ancient E units pulling the train started smoking and got shut down, slowing us down, then there was a derailment East of Cleveland, and they rerouted the train to go through Pittsburg, and we ended up being about 5 hours late pulling into NYC. Going back, one of the coaches flooded due to a water leak from the toilet supply, and another loco died and we ended up a couple of hours late back at Toledo. Other rail adventures included a trip to Washington D.C in 1967. Some dummy around Willard, Oh ran the gates and we hit him and his pickup truck exploded in a huge fireball. The lead loco was damaged from the hit and wouldn't hold air, so we had to wait at Willard for another loco to be brought in. They decided to combine two trains into one, and the second loco from our train became the third one in the new train. We ended up being about 4 hours late into D.C. The trip home was on time and the B&O equipment was much better than NYC and soon enough, Penn Central. There isn't much good to say about all the trips we went on from Toledo to LaSalle Station in Chicago. Flooded cars, no A/C, dead and crippled locomotives, and one time, a freight train derailed ahead of us, and we sat for hours, waiting for the repairs to be made to open the tracks. Another time we sat outside Chicago, with no A/C, and they would not let us get off the train, and refused to call a bus, so we sat there in a tin can in August. We did get a free ride voucher! In 1970, we went from Toledo to Chicago on PC, it was awful, then switched to a BN train to Lincoln, Nebraska that was fantastic. There was a dome car and I had a great time watching the tracks ahead. Of course, mom had to ruin it by making me come into the compartment to go to sleep. I scored a bunch of Burlington and BN collectable stuff, the old porter was on his last trip before retirement, and he gave me cups, all kinds of paper stuff, pens, etc. I still have most of it in a box someplace. The BN trip to Lincoln and back couldn't have been better.
