Car vs train across the United States

The Zephyr, at this point, is already in a place called Winnemucca, Nevada, 235 miles ahead of us. It made up just under an hour in the time we stopped and is now running just nine minutes behind schedule. The bastard. Our only saving grace being that the final leg of the Zeph's journey is much slower than tracking across the desert; it stops more in its final approach than anywhere else on the route. It's due in to Emeryville, California at 4.20pm.

We're 650 miles and 10 hours' solid driving from Emeryville, and it's 6am. If we don't stop at all, and keep to the speed limit, we'll get there at 4pm. We'll have to stop for fuel, so there's only one parameter we can reasonably bend... Nevada. Well, the less said about Nevada, the better. More gobsmacking scenery for sure, but strangely, I've almost become inured to grand geographic gestures at this point, simply because I've become obsessed with that bloody train. Also, it all got a bit blurry. I'll say two things, though: you can hold a conversation quite happily in a Bentley GTC V8 roof down, at speeds likely to have you banged up in Frisco's defunct Alcatraz, and radar detectors work a treat in the USA, as long as you hit the brakes really hard as soon as they start to bleep.