Comment by bluGill

A large advantage of the train is all the places on the way. I don't actually want to get from New York to Los Angeles. However, I live in the middle of the country between the two cities and by stopping near me, I could get on that train and I could travel, probably not to either New York or LA, but to some other city also in the middle of the country.

Night trains sound like a good thing, but in reality they're not. They work well only in the cases where a city is just far enough that it's an overnight trip, but not much more. Which is to say you get on the train, you brush your teeth, you go to sleep, you wake up in the morning, and you have just enough time to get practice before you get off the train. If your train instead arrives at 4 a.m., that's way too early and so you're gonna be sleeping on the train or they're gonna have to wake you up early in the morning. The other one is particularly a great option. The other way is even worse though if you're on the train go to sleep and you get wake up in the morning and there's still several more hours to do while you're sitting on a train doing basically nothing - except thinking the whole time, you know what? I could have just flown. This would have been an hour to the airport, another hour in line, three hours of flight, and they'd be there. And then they could sleep in a hotel, the cheapest economy hotel room is still much larger than the best luxury train sleeper car.