If you tell someone in the U.S. that you’re taking a long-distance train trip on Amtrak, as Caity Weaver recently wrote in The New York Times Magazine, “their reactions will range from amusement at your spellbinding eccentricity to naked horror that they, through some fatal social miscalculation, have become acquainted with a person who would plan to cross the United States by train.”
Don’t tell that to Madison (“Madi”) Butler, though: She’s embracing the tattered reputation of America’s passenger trains and spending her summer riding the rails. An Austin-based consulting chef, Butler is participating in the fourth incarnation of the Summer by Rail internship, an initiative by the Rail Passengers Association, a passenger rail advocacy group. Over the course of 50 days starting in late June, Butler is hopping Amtrak routes from Portland, Maine, to San Francisco, stopping off at cities along the way to meet with local transportation advocates, highlight the modality around America’s national network (or lack thereof), and, of course, eat. Butler is cataloging her culinary adventures in words and videos. “You need to get a little bit outside of the station to find the local food,” she says. “But it can be found.”
