WHEN THINGS GO WRONG - All Aboard: The Complete North American Train Travel Guide - page 133

happens on a plane, most of us just suffer through it for three or
four hours. On a long-distance train, however, a chatterbox can
become a 48-hour ordeal. At the very least, you can get up and
retreat to the lounge car for a while.
But if your seatmate or someone nearby turns out to be some-
thing significantly more than just an annoyance—making sex-
ual advances or being drunk or quarrelsome, for instance—you
can and should ask for help. First you should notify your train
attendant, then the conductor. Amtrak personnel are more than
willing to take firm action against the occasional serious trouble-
maker—to the point of putting the person off the train, bag and
baggage.
The conductor is the ultimate authority in these matters. One
told me with a smile, “Occasionally there'll be a group in the
lounge car that gets rowdy from drinking too much. I tell 'em
pretty firmly to settle down and if they don't, I'll just put the
ringleader off the train. When that happens, his pals are like little
lambs the rest of the way.”
In extreme cases, the local highway patrol is contacted by
radio and a police car meets the train where the tracks cross a
major highway. I was once aboard the Desert Wind (a train that,
alas, no longer operates) when it stopped at a grade crossing
somewhere near the Nevada-Utah state line. An obnoxious char-
acter, who had staggered aboard the train in Las Vegas and had
been drinking steadily ever since, was suddenly confronted at his
seat by two state troopers and hustled off the train to the enthu-
siastic applause of several dozen of his fellow passengers. When
last seen, he was twisted around looking back at us through the
rear window of the police car, on his way to at least one night in
the Caliente, Nevada, jail. Incidentally, in order to avoid a loud
argument or worse, a disorderly passenger is told once to shape
up but is given no second warning before actually being put off
the train.