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Let me tell you a story. On June 22, 2008, I was riding the Lake Shore Limited from NYP to CHI. Somewhere in upstate New York, around 11:30 pm, we made a scheduled station stop. It was getting late and I had to call my dad about my ride the following day, and didn't want to disturb the other...

I have a slightly related situation, so I'll just use this thread. I'm traveling from Glenwood Springs to Chicago next month. I want to use AGR points to book a sleeper. But DEN to CHI is only one AGR region. I would like to avoid burning 5,000 points just to go a few hundred extra miles from...

Steve, Oh, I understand your complaints about Chicago transit. It's just important to keep it in perspective. As annoying as the quirks and shortcomings you brought up are, transit in the Chicago downtown core is still better than anywhere else in the country save NYC, with maybe Boston and DC...

I don't know what constitutes a "decent" rail connection to an airport, but Chicago has to be unique in the USA in having rail connections to two airports that cost just regular fare to use. NYC has extra fare for Newark and JFK, LAX has none, several cities have one connected. In Chicago, $2.25...

Wow, neat quote. I've been kind of a news junkie this election cycle, and I am concluding that McCain is a black-and-white (as opposed to seeing the world in shades of grey) kind of guy. He is a crusader against corruption, graft, "pork", our enemies in the world, etc. There is good and evil...

Looking at BNSF's financial statements from last year, they did make massive capital investments in 2007, $2.2B, an amount larger even than their net profit of $1.8B. I have been reading around various places, including quotes from Alex Kummant (old UP railroader) that freight rail capital...

A few points. Trying not to get dragged too deep into this discussion. One, it is definitely not true that UP has a monopoly on freight rail as a whole in this country. But in fact, each of the freight railroads has a monopoly of sorts in the territory it operates. If I'm a farmer in the middle...

Very interesting. Someone with more on time on their hands than I have just at the moment ought to play with the reservations system and see what date is the threshold. I suppose we can't rule out yet that that date in May 2009 is just a horribly unlucky day to book that particular trip without...

Hey, I know it's no fun but remember it's the peak season. Our only hope for good specials is in the dead of winter. Let's just hope this winter works out way better than last winter. All I remember from last winter is lots of Empire Builder and a couple weeks of Palmetto. And of course all...

The farthest ahead you can book Amtrak tickets is 11 months. So this is the farthest out the reservation system will accept for quoting you a fare. If the calendar pop-up is giving you problems, just enter the date manually on the reservation page. If you enter a month that we has already...

Good call. It's not just a matter of the doors opening and slamming shut. The problem is that while the doors are open, there's a great racket that comes into the end of the car from the tracks and trucks just below - which that accordian thing between the cars does nothing to shield. This is...

No doubt this is a factor for these dates. But, though I have never been, my impression from reading about New Orleans is that there is a major festival or parade nearly EVERY weekend there. Some larger than others of course, but I think this one might not even make the top 5 (of annual...

Well based on your response, I would say we disagree on little then. We both agree Wikipedia is unreliable, the situation in Iraq is serious, and that the U.S. invaded Iraq despite U.N. inspections for Iraqi WMDs that were ongoing with the Iraqi government's blessing. The latter point is...

Guest, I understand how you feel about this, and your post was kind of witty. But do you really expect the other members of this board to take your recollections of what you thought at the time, as a more authoritative source than the BBC, CNN, United Nations and Guardian, etc? This is a...

Wanted to stay out of this one, but I can't let a falsehood go uncorrected. UN inspectors were denied access earlier in the decade, but in late 2002, Sadaam Hussein invited inspectors back into his country. And they went. UN inspectors worked in Iraq in from January through March 2003, had...

Dang, you're right, I got confused.

There is no smoke nor mirrors. $92.4 million in FY 2007, from the bottom of page 38 of the annual report. Amtrak is an arm of the federal government, so anybody who wants some other information they don't publish can submit a Freedom of Information Act request.

Yeah, but I was thinking of out of NYP. You can book BC on the LSL out of NYP, but only as far as ALB. I think the rest of this trainset continues on to CHI, but why no BC after ALB? So many acronyms!

Hmmm...I took a look at the Amtrak reservations system, and it looks like you can book LSL westbound business class if you're going no farther than approximately ALB. Do they lop off the car at Albany or something?

Ah, thanks for the response. I asked since I'll be on 30 tomorrow. I didn't think of heat restrictions! That makes a lot of sense. Forecast for D.C. and along the route for the next few days looks cooler (still 90 F highs) but still some T-storms...hopefully they're not severe and it can get...