I'm with loconut2be. The "worst" trips are the most interesting. Why take the trip if you are planning to be miserable? The times I really wish I hadn't taken the train are because I'm traveling with someone who I wish would take their attitude someplace else. About that hard bed? I've slept on the Superliner H-room floor more than once because my travel companion was too weak to climb to the upper berth. Late trains? My first long-distance trip was a day-and-a-half late.
I never expect to be miserable anywhere, but sometimes it happens anyway. In fairness to Amtrak, I have also been miserable on planes, buses, and even my own truck, but just because other modes of transportation have failed me on occasion does not mean Amtrak gets a free pass.
It has been my experience that there are two fundamental types of Amtrak travelers--those who take the train because they need to go somewhere and those who take the train just because it's there. The expectations of the latter seem to be far lower than the former. I suppose if you're on a train for a joyride then an extra day and a half is just a better value for your money, but if you actually expected to get somewhere reliably it's an unmitigated disaster.
Amtrak is very rarely budget travel, so the acceptance of bad experiences as part of the adventure is baffling to me. I have been on trains where the heater wouldn't turn off and trains where it never turned on, trains that leaked water on the windowsill during every curve, trains that ran out of food, and trains with toilets that didn't work. And from what I've heard, I haven't even experienced the worst that Amtrak has to offer yet. The fact that people happily spend thousands of dollars on trips that are like as not to include some of these trials baffles me.
I don't mean to condemn Amtrak entirely, because in general they have served my needs well enough. And the vast majority of passengers I dare say are not on trains that the locomotive quits during or that see their promised sleeper car bad-ordered with no replacement. But the inconsistency in service is absolutely maddening and entirely within Amtrak's control, and I do not believe for a second that it should be excused as making the trip more of an adventure or exciting or interesting, as I have seen so many people say.