This reminds me of my trip to northern Honshu in Japan. I took the Shinkansen (bullet train) which was so smooth and quiet you literally had to look out the window to even realize you were moving. But then we switched to an old clunker that was shaking around and belching smoke and working so hard just to pull out of the station.

And the on-board experience was a huge contrast as well. The Shinkansen was full of people in suits minding their own business and it was clean and space-age-looking. The other train had a lived-in look and was full of chatty country folk who started asking me all sorts of questions and laughing because we could barely understand each other. My Japanese is a little iffy and they had this country drawl that wasn’t helping. But I enjoyed both trains for different reasons.