10:45am Train departs Albuquerque, solid 5 bars of EVDO Rev. A signal. Speed tests drop a little bit once the train is in motion. Average downstream, 1.1Mbps. Average upstream, 300kbps. Latency, 250ms.

11:00am Still totally solid departing Bernallio. Speed remains constant, latency now at 300ms.

11:20am First network drop. We’re about here, just south of Santo Domingo pueblo. No signal for about a mile, then RTTx1 picks up.

11:21am Good signal, but 1xRTT speeds, so about 100kbps down and 30kbps up. Latency improves for some reason, now at 100ms.

11:32am About ten miles of 1xRTT later, we’re back in EVDO Rev. A territory. 5 bars of signal. Speed tests at 1.93Mbps down, 320kbps up. Latency drops to 190ms.

11:39am NM 599 Station. Rev. A still solid.

12:00pm We’re in Santa Fe now, South Capitol station. Rev A, 5 bars. Speed and latency remain good.

In conclusion, apart from the ten minutes around Santo Domingo, coverage looks like it’s almost all Rev. A. Color me impressed! Network speeds varied a little, but it was totally usable the whole time minus the one minute or so that it dropped. Looks like this is a viable alternative to AT&T’s non-existent 3G service and shoddy EDGE coverage along this route. Maybe someday they’ll actually get the promised WiFi up and running on the Rail Runner, but I’m not holding my breath.

Edited to add: On the way back to Albuquerque I was disappointed slight by the fact that I got only 1xRTT speeds for about a quarter of the trip, again centered around Santo Domingo pueblo. I’m not sure why it was different, but this time I wasn’t seated in the uppermost part of the train, so that might explain it. It might be worth getting a little suction cup or something to adhere the MiFi to the window or ceiling. That might solve it.