Since the Cardinal only runs three times weekly; if you do a fare search for a week; on the days that the Cardinal is not running the search seems to stop and not go on. However, your recent search shown a few posts up has proved me wrong.
Rail for Less: a fare checking site
- Thread starter phoenix
- Start date
Help Support Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum:
vap0rtranz
Train Attendant
1st, thank you for taking to chat with us -- your users!
I used your website to find a whole month's worth of searching and it found when prices are higher. So I'd say this is working.
In this age of instant gratification, many folks just give up waiting and think they can do it quicker. Can't help that. I like the graphics on your site telling users that it is still searching.
@Tod and I, as IT folks with decades of experience, know the pain that Amtrak has caused. Props to you for using Selenium -- nice piece of software to get around bot blocking. Shame on Amtrak for not providing a public API that would have made searching instantaneous. Whoever developed their website knows better.
P.S. grabbed you a coffee, thanks again!
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I appreciate the support! I started working on the next major update to the site last night and should be done by the end of the day, so far I have added a "Travelers" menu where you can select between 1-8 adults/seniors, got Auto Train working, and made some back-end tweaks that should make the site run a bit faster. Main thing (and most important) I have yet to do is figure out how to let users select specific routes and/or times when there are multiple options on a given day, working on that now.1st, thank you for taking to chat with us -- your users!
I used your website to find a whole month's worth of searching and it found when prices are higher. So I'd say this is working.
In this age of instant gratification, many folks just give up waiting and think they can do it quicker. Can't help that. I like the graphics on your site telling users that it is still searching.
@Tod and I, as IT folks with decades of experience, know the pain that Amtrak has caused. Props to you for using Selenium -- nice piece of software to get around bot blocking. Shame on Amtrak for not providing a public API that would have made searching instantaneous. Whoever developed their website knows better.
P.S. grabbed you a coffee, thanks again!
Just pushed the feature update! Now you can filter by route for station pairs served by multiple routes, filter by time of day, enter traveler information like quantity and type, search for Auto Train fares, and some other UI/efficiency improvements. I tried to test as many edge cases as I could think of but in the case I missed something let me know. With these new features you should be able to search for just about anything you can on Amtrak's site through railforless.us!
acelafan
Conductor
I like this a lot - nicely done and definitely a very useful tool! Thanks for your hard work.
joelkfla
Engineer
Not quite everything. Can't search for accessible room or wheelchair seats -- but that's probably not feasible considering the several additional screens required to describe the disability before getting to fares on the website.
But it's OK, I've gotten rather proficient at rapidly searching fares over consecutive days. And Amtrak seems to have loosened up their "Unknown error" rules; I was able to get thru about 2 weeks before it popped up, and switching to a different browser got me thru the return fares.
There's always room for improvement! I think on occasion I have seen an accessible room pop up in the private rooms section without having to submit any form, assuming its listed like a roomette/bedroom/family room I could add that functionality relatively easily. I just don't know much about it and which routes would offer it. I'm glad they've scaled back the aggressiveness of their CAPTCHA, but I really don't want to run the risk of rewriting my code to take advantage of this and all the sudden they change their site and I have to go through the headache of debugging why I'm getting blocked all over again. I'd rather err on the side of consistency at the expense of slightly longer scraping times rather than play cat and mouse with their software trying to adapt to every change they make. In fact just this morning the site was broken again because Amtrak reinstated a cookie pop-up they had previously removed, a very simple fix but proof they're constantly changing little things that cause me additional frustration every time I have to debug why the site isn't working that day.
trimetbusfan
OBS Chief
FYI, the accessible bedrooms are only available for general sale if there is unsold space within 14 days of departure. They are avalable on all trains with sleeper cars, but since there is a limited quantity of them they often don’t appear for sale.
The accessible bedrooms are otherwise reserved for ‘those who need it’ (those who have as having a disability and go through those steps indicating so on the website).
I am trying the site and I can’t get it to do anything
A 401 is an "unauthorized" error. Usually when you are trying to access a site without the right credentials. Perhaps the site author was testing and not accepting normal connections?
acelafan
Conductor
I did just try it now and worked for me, maybe it was a momentary glitch?
You'll see a 401 error if your request is rejected by reCAPTCHA, I've noticed this can be an issue if you've left the page idle and return after some time but from my experience can always be fixed by reloading the page. We've received a ton of feature requests and bugs to fix, I'll add this to the list!
Sean I would venture to say that many of us here very much appreciate your efforts ( and also Riley's) in trying to build the Railforless site into something that can be a reliable useful resource for the traveling Amtrak passenger. I only used it once before Amtrak hid their fare site behind reCapcha and tried to use it again and got shut out. I will probably have need again later this year. If it works I will gladly send you a donation.
Still a puzzlement why Amtrak’s web site can’t follow airlines and give a month or at least two weeks in advance fares for Coach and sleepers. Of course Amtrak did follow airlines by eliminating many perks and downgrading food on the five LD trains that still have flex.
Trying out the SWC for a specific date in September. Amtrak shows Coach, Roomette, Bedroom, Family available (with fares).
Rail For Less shows: "No options match your search". I have tried with "Any Class", "Coach" or "Bedroom" selected.
I have double-checked that I am using the same date, same train, same start and end stations, on both websites.
???
Rail For Less shows: "No options match your search". I have tried with "Any Class", "Coach" or "Bedroom" selected.
I have double-checked that I am using the same date, same train, same start and end stations, on both websites.
???
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trimetbusfan
OBS Chief
I just ran a search for LAX-CHI during the month of September and had no problem!
It appears that if you search for a single date, it will return "No options for your search". I guess that makes sense since it is easy to do a single day search on Amtrak's website.
I did a full month search and it returned what was shown above. If I search for two or three days, it will also return results but sometimes, it doesn't return all the days!
joelkfla
Engineer
Perhaps the additional processing would bust their server budget.
Apologies for posting the wrong address for railforless. It is www.railforless.us and it will work on Microsoft edge but on Firefox you may get errors.
What is most surprising and unpleasant is Amtraks resistance to providing good info on fares. They seem to want to punish their customers rather than encourage train travel.
Lets hope that Sean and Riley can keep their site operational.
What is most surprising and unpleasant is Amtraks resistance to providing good info on fares. They seem to want to punish their customers rather than encourage train travel.
Lets hope that Sean and Riley can keep their site operational.
So far, this has not been the case!
Searching for a single trip is bugged if Round Trip is selected, as it is impossible for Railforless to find a round-trip pairing for two LD trips on the same day (that is, it is impossible to leave CHI on the Chief on 09/04 and also return to CHI on the Chief on 09/04). This is something we need to improve on the UI side.
Don't recall if that was the case, might be though.
EDIT: Just tried again for one specific date. One-way was selected and it couldn't find anything for the SWC.
Tried on the app with same parameters and it returned the SWC with coach and rooms available
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- Joined
- Oct 28, 2018
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Just checked it on both Firefox & Edge. The site is down as of Saturday March 16th
