Leaving items at seat when going to Cafe or Restroom?

[TaseMeBro]

I'm thinking in terms of the Pacific Surfliner, but there are certainly other routes where this would apply.

I take several short-ish trips on the Surfliner each month, in Biz. I pretty much always have a small hand carried bag, and almost immediately have my laptop out when I sit down.

Most trips, I make a quick run to the cafe car early on.

My current practice is to put the laptop in the bag, lock the laptop, and I have a small cable loop I use to attach the bag to the seat. It''s not foolproof, but I figure it's a reasonable balance between holding the seat while I'm gone, securing the laptop, but not having to pack everything up and then uppack again if I'm just going to grab a drink.

What do most others do? I can't recall hearing many (any?) reports of bag theft, but having my computer taken, even while locked, would be a major irritation.

 

[Bonser]

I'm thinking in terms of the Pacific Surfliner, but there are certainly other routes where this would apply.

I take several short-ish trips on the Surfliner each month, in Biz. I pretty much always have a small hand carried bag, and almost immediately have my laptop out when I sit down.

Most trips, I make a quick run to the cafe car early on.

My current practice is to put the laptop by in the bag, lock the laptop, and I have a small cable loop I use to attach the bag to the seat. It''s not foolproof, but I figure it's a reasonable balance between holding the seat while I'm gone, securing the laptop, but not having to pack everything up and then uppack again if I'm just going to grab a drink.

What do most others do? I can't recall hearing many (any?) reports of bag theft, but having my computer taken, even while locked, would be a major irritation.

I almost never hear of stolen items.

 

[zephyr17]

Leaving a bag is not a problem. I would not leave a phone, computer, tablet or camera that wasn't already in the bag.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

What do most others do? I can't recall hearing many (any?) reports of bag theft, but having my computer taken, even while locked, would be a major irritation.

Many years ago I bought a "vacation laptop" that cost around $200, knowing that if it went missing I could simply shrug it off. For many trips nothing happened but one day someone did steal the laptop out of my checked baggage. The joke's on them because it was barely worth any money when purchased new. After that rather than buy another new laptop I simply grabbed an old Macbook and made that my vacation laptop. It's not perfect but does everything I'm likely to need on a vacation and is old enough that if it goes missing, gets damaged, or is stolen it will not affect my trip.

*The theft was on UA, not Amtrak, and before the restrictions on checking laptops.

 

[TRA_Thom]

I just leave my bags at my seat to go to the lounge or cafe. What I normally do is stroll back to my seat when we reach a station stop, just to be safe and to stretch my legs.
Of course, I haven’t been on the Surfliner, but I assume the stops are a little closer together than on the Southwest Chief or Empire Builder.

 

[BCL]

On Capitol Corridor I would typically leave a jacket or other clothing item on the seat, but I was paranoid and would always take bag or electronics with me.

But when we were on the Pacific Surfliner a few weeks ago my kid would normally stay at the seat or I would. We also took the Coast Starlight from Emeryville to Santa Barbara, and we'd leave our stuff in the overhead racks, but it's a little different on long-distance trains.

The one thing that worried me was the buses where there isn't exactly a claim check and no means of preventing someone from just pointing at someone else's stuff. Of course there's the driver seeing everyone place them, but I don't expect a driver to have a photographic memory to correlate every bag with the owner. We were taking the overnight buses where a lot passengers slept during stops, although the driver was pretty loud at each stop since he didn't want anyone to miss a stop. But we did have someone who seemed to be saving a seat at a stop. Only he didn't seem to come back. Left his wallet and some stuff in a plastic bag. Last I saw the driver was in Emeryville handing over the wallet to a station agent. I think the driver looked up the manifest and matched it with the driver license. It was totally bizarre though that anyone would just ship in King City.