Recent content by sweet tea

the targeting seems to depend on how many AGR points you already have. i have around 10,000, while my wife has more like 2,500 (because i travel by train more but mostly because all our sleepers have been in my name). on the AGR page, chase offers me 18,000 points and her only 6,000.

my trouble is keeping track of the return tickets while traveling. nothing dire has happened yet, but i do wish amtrak would change its policy. except for onboard upgrades, i don't see why this has to be so different from airplanes -- someone in the station could scan the ticket before letting...

I beg your pardon -- it goes right to my house! ;) My understanding is that the Franklin shuttle is some of the oldest "subway" track in NYC, as it was originally part of the line that extends to Coney Island. It's most used by people traveling within Brooklyn -- you should see the swarms of...

...or © because what's on board only bears a passing resemblance to what's on the menu. That was the case on my recent CL trip, where the menu listed both glasses ($5) and half-bottles ($13). I tried to order a glass (as my wife didn't want the same kind and I didn't want to get schnockered)...

WAS>NYP There wasn’t much of a crowd waiting for 146, by the standards of WAS, and we had no trouble finding space for our suitcases and seats together. (We decided not to check our bags through on the LSL, since it only gets into NYP an hour before we would and we hated the idea of sitting...

Washington Interlude Despite our late arrival, we still had plenty of time before our Regional to New York at 4:25, so we decided to see if we could switch to the 3:25 and get home a bit earlier. We headed to the ticket counter, but found that it would be $100 to switch trains. I’m a little...

CUS>WAS on the Cap: Boarded early from Lounge — wish we’d waited, as we didn’t want to eat early enough to justify sitting around on the train for so long in the station, but we also didn’t want to miss the train. Unfortunately, we’re in roommette #11, so right by the door and the stairs...

Second Chicago Interlude: We checked into the Metropolitan Lounge at about 4:30 and made a dinner reservation for 7:30, reasoning that we were hungry enough to need a snack before the train boarded at 5:45 and that the snack would hold us for a few hours. With our bags stored in the lounge, we...

pictures one of these days, really, but in the meantime, here's the story of our trip home: BTL>CHI To save the in-laws a drive to Chicago, we arranged to ride the Wolverine from Battle Creek to Chicago, where we’d catch the Capitol Limited back East. The train was listed as on time when we...

he did get gypped, and so did my wife and i on one of the three sleeper legs of our christmas trip. same story -- never same an attendant at all, put up our own beds, nearly missed breakfast because the intercom didn't work in our car, etc. i've had better and worse service from attendants in...

wow. harsh, y'all. here, to me, are critical points from that article: i know we all walked 10 miles uphill both ways in the driving snow to get to school, but when was the last time you personally walked 2 miles out of your way to get somewhere? that's quite far when you're running late in...

for heaven's sake, gml, she was a CHILD. i'm sure you never did a single stupid thing as a child, but some of us did and don't think we particularly deserved to die because of it. not saying this is the train's fault, but i'd be interested to know what it would have cost to put up a fence that...

oh, i wasn't very clear. i meant the main waiting area. we couldn't use the metropolitan lounge, because we spent several days in chicago before this leg of the trip. believe me, we would have!

yes! i will add some once i have gotten them off my camera. SOME people around here seem to think there are things for me to be doing other than posting on train forums! go figure! ;)

thanks for explaining the derail, alan. i figured it was something like that, but it looked like a strange order. ("Derail! Now!") i will write to customer service and let you know what comes of it. i hope we will get a voucher of some kind. and now, without further ado... Train 364, the...