South Bend, Indiana

"This place is beyond its service life. Parking lot pavement is old and crumbly, lot lines are so old you can hardly see the yellow anymore. The building itself has 30 year old shades all shut, hard to tell what door to use to enter- Is it front, the side, the back, what? It’s an eyesore in a not so good neighborhood that should tell you everything you need to know. It’s time for Amtrak to knock down and rebuild this entire station."

"Very disrespectful Amtrak worker telling me that I’m trespassing and threatening to call the cops on me screaming at the top of her lungs. Overall I still like the spot for watching trains. But she needs a new way to tell someone to stop what they’re doing instead of doing what she did when I got harassed and yelled at."

"Departing from South Bend on #48 at midnight on a Friday night…. There is supposed to be checked baggage service. The caretaker does the absolute minimum - not visible unless one wanders down various corridors and finds them - there is a “ring bell for service” bell but it is not answered. Once located, caretaker says they will not check bags (“I’m just the caretaker- the conductor will check your bags up at the train”). When train arrives, conductor refuses to check bags, and says sleeper attendant will take care of bag. Sleeper attendant says they certainly will not be able to put bag anywhere except “best I can do” is stick it in vestibule. Train still best way to travel by a mile, but coordination of service was dismal."

"This Amtrak station is very Michiana. If you're from here, you'll understand what I mean immediately. It is a very dinky station, basically a double-wide trailer. It is not super clean at all. Cigarette butts everywhere, trash in the parking lot. Everything is rusty. One of the first things I saw when getting off the train arriving back home, was someone's old crusty socks in the parking lot that had definitely been there awhile. If you are a larger party of people taking a trip together, like our group of six, there is not much room for you inside the building to wait for your train. Also, to be 100% honest, there are some not so great smells in the station, the ceiling has some paneling with black mold, and the building seems half abandoned. There is free parking there at the station, we left our truck for two nights without any issues, but I would definitely make sure there is nothing of value left in your vehicle whatsoever, and absolutely make sure it is locked. There seemed to really be only one woman who was actually working there, and she was so very nice. I wish I knew her name so I could give her a shout-out. We had four rambunctious 10 year old girls, and she was really helpful in telling us where to go and how to proceed. Train tickets were not crazy expensive and it gets you from South Bend to Chicago so quickly. It's so much easier than driving to and around inside Chicago. We would definitely take the train again, I just wish that some places in Michiana were better taken care of."

"This is the most inefficient train station I have ever experienced. Though as helpful as they can be, the staff are not Amtrak employees (rather contractors of an independent agency) and therefore do not have access to critical information about train status, cancellations, etc., causing poor communication with travelers (not ideal when traveling is already stressful enough!). There are no ticket sales or luggage storage at this location, and the luggage scale has been out of service each time I've boarded here. The station is small and dated with a dimly-lit parking lot located in an inconvenient part of town. Boarding requires hauling your luggage up an incline to the tracks without any accessibility assistance to do so. Amtrak could do much better for their customers by giving this station some desperately-needed maintenance and updates."