Yes, I could have flown from New York to Orlando in a tenth of the time. But where would be the fun in that? The overnight train journey has given me glimpses of nine American states (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, DC, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia). Waking up near the Florida state line revealed a tropical new landscape.

Amtrak’s Silver Meteor dining car provided a fine breakfast of ‘southern-style omelette’ (sautéed mixed peppers and onion with jack cheese) accompanied by sausage, fried potatoes, a freshly-cooked ‘biscuit’ and maple syrup.

On arrival at Jacksonville, Florida, a truck drove alongside the locomotives and started refuelling them. Not a procedure that I’ve witnessed on the east coast mainline in the UK!

The journey south continued, with palm trees and pampas grass being punctuated by the occasional small town or village. Being a Sunday morning, there was little going on – except at the little whitewashed churches along the route.

After lunch, the Silver Meteor pulled into Orlando station just a few minutes behind schedule. I, along with half the train, disembarked.

The temperature was markedly higher than in still-chilly New York… probably around the 25°C mark. I leapt into the air-conditioned comfort of a waiting taxi for the final leg of the journey to the hotel/conference centre I’d be working at for the next week. The driver was a typically gabby cabby, who appointed himself as tour guide and pointer-out-of-things. Should I wish to buy a gun in the greater Orlando area, I now know the best purveyor.

Mr Taxi was also strangely fascinated by the British ‘obsession’ with roundabouts. ‘We don’t have them here,’ he claimed as he weaved through 100 lanes of traffic on the burgeoning interstate highway. I bristled. And then we pulled into the hotel entrance, only to encounter… a roundabout.