Alexandria Nick
Lead Service Attendant
Later this spring, I'm taking a four day weekend to go back and visit family in Pittsburgh. I was planning on taking the Capitol Limited westbound. For the way back, I don't want to run the risk of getting caught with a late eastbound train for obvious reasons. I'm in no rush to get back and thought I'd treat myself to a trip I've wanted to do before as a birthday present.
I was going to take the Pennsylvanian to Philadelphia and then grab either a Northeast Regional to Alexandria or Acela to DC. Interestingly, its cheaper in total to take a Northeast Regional from Philadelphia to Alexandria than Philadelphia to DC and then taking the Metro to Alexandria (by $2.50). Here's where my questions come from:
1) Amtrak seems to want to make me take an hour and a half layover at Philly. There's a train departing for DC within half an hour of the scheduled arrival at Philadelphia. How is the Pennsylvanian for holding to the schedule if I wanted to book the closer time than what the Amtrak site wants me to?
2) Assuming its best to plan for the 90 minute-ish layover, how is the station there for hanging around that long? I've never got on or off a train there before. Just passed through.
I was going to take the Pennsylvanian to Philadelphia and then grab either a Northeast Regional to Alexandria or Acela to DC. Interestingly, its cheaper in total to take a Northeast Regional from Philadelphia to Alexandria than Philadelphia to DC and then taking the Metro to Alexandria (by $2.50). Here's where my questions come from:
1) Amtrak seems to want to make me take an hour and a half layover at Philly. There's a train departing for DC within half an hour of the scheduled arrival at Philadelphia. How is the Pennsylvanian for holding to the schedule if I wanted to book the closer time than what the Amtrak site wants me to?
2) Assuming its best to plan for the 90 minute-ish layover, how is the station there for hanging around that long? I've never got on or off a train there before. Just passed through.