Trains have long been a great way to visit many national park sites around the country, and one advantage of train travel is the opportunity to enjoy the scenery on the way to a park. Although you can always take along a guidebook, there's an even better way to find out about the sights and stories along the route.

The Trails and Rails program provides NPS volunteers or staff on some train routes to answer park-related questions, and now the program is adding a new bonus for some Amtrak trips: audio podcasts highlighting the history and points of interest along the way.

The first podcast to be released covers the historic 2,000-mile route of the Sunset Limited between New Orleans and Los Angeles, and offers an audio guide to over one hundred points of interest, NPS anecdotes and fun facts about the route. The podcasts will be will be accessible via smartphones, computers and strategically placed "on board" display screens on key Amtrak trains.

Passengers can also download both a MP3 audio version and a printed version of the podcast, making the program useful for teachers and the hearing-impaired. That information is scheduled to be available for download by April 30 at this link. The audio programs were developed as a partnership between Amtrak, National Park Service, and the Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences at Texas A&M University.

The NPS Trails and Rails program is "an innovative partnership program between the National Park Service and Amtrak which provides rail passengers with educational opportunities that foster an appreciation of a selected region's natural and cultural heritage; it promotes National Park Service areas and provides a value-added service to encourage train ridership. It also renews the long tradition of associating railroads with National Parks."

The website for the Trails and Rails program includes a list of trains offering the service, a list of parks participating in the program, and a link to the Amtrak "Parks in Your Backyard" site that features 56 NPS sites in the northeast that are accessible by train.

The first podcast is being released just in time for the third annual National Train Day, which is being observed on Saturday, May 8. That event will include special activities at several stations around the country, including an NPS Trails and Rails exhibit at Union Station in Washington, D.C.

You'll also find some tips for visiting parks by train in a previous Traveler mini-series that highlighted rail trips to NPS sites in the east, the central and western U.S., and Alaska.