Amtrak’s City of New Orleans was packed when I boarded in Greenwood Friday, but I expected that. The ticket I had bought a few days before had cost almost $90. If I had bought it early enough or just waited until Saturday to travel, the ticket price would have been half that. But I would have missed the rockingest train ride yet.

It had been almost two years since I last rode the Amtrak. I haven’t been avoiding it, the logistics just haven’t worked out.

The Delta landscape was still in its winter funk as we left Greenwood, but as we neared Yazoo City more green from budding trees was noticeable as was pink from redbud blooms emerging on bare limbs.

Too soon I learned that I waited too late for a cup of coffee. As I walked the narrow aisle the lounge/observation car I met several people coming from the snack bar downstairs. They had been told that although there was coffee, the snack bar was out of cups. It was the trip’s only downside.

Before we had reached Jackson, two couples who said they had boarded at Memphis, Mike and Mena Roby and Mark and Stephanie Taylor, walked into the observation car, tuning two guitars, and started strumming. By the time we got to Jackson, they had warmed up on — “Jackson.” (As in, “We got married in a fever …”).

Once a car attendant passed through and warned them that if she had any complaints, she would have to ask them to quit. There were none.

A crowd who boarded in Jackson quickly found their way into the lounge car to start their New Orleans weekend. Soon the Memphis boarders had joined them and the rest of the trip from Jackson south turned into a lounge car hootenanny. (Again the car attendant passed through and issued the same warning; I realized that it was nothing personal, just standard operating procedure.) Far from complaints, the whole top deck of the observation car had erupted into what became a spontaneous sing-along with much hoopla and joie de vivre.

The snack bar’s supply  of beer was depleted somewhere between Jackson and McComb, but private stocks were generously shared. I made a couple of phone videos and posted them on Facebook, including the crowd getting into “Squeezebox.” That song played around in my head for the next three days.

One Facebook comment about how you’d never see this on an East Coast train, that the passengers just rode along in silence, reminded me that I’d seen something like this before. On Fridays.

Many Friday passengers who are riding the southbound City of New Orleans start their weekend party the minute they step onboard. Even though we would find pouring rain when we reached New Orleans’ Union Station, prospects for the weekend were bright.

I’ll return Wednesday but not by Amtrak. I plan to try the Megabus for the first time. Ticket price from New Orleans to Oxford? $4.50. Probably won’t include a party.