Amtrak fares, including top buckets, do not permit stop-overs. Amtrak's definition of a connection is taking the next available train that meets the minimum permitted connection time (connections to Acela are not considered). There may be some exceptions to that (Amtrak loves inconsistency), but in general that is how it works. The only way to book a stop-over on Amtrak is to stack one-way fares for the individual segments.
The old airline rule to define a connection used to be 18 hours. I haven't tried to book a long-duration connection in a while, so it may have changed.
In my experience with booking DL (the only airline I've actually attempted to do a mileage run on), stopovers are (what I would term) voluntary connections four or more hours. In other words, if it's six hours until the next available flight, that would be a connection, not a stopover. But if the next available flight were two hours, but you opted to stay in that city for six hours, that would be a stopover. Depending on whether the fare rules allowed a stopover or not, that could affect your fare.
From what I understand, international routings have a more generous 24-hour connection/stopover cutoff, but they have an additional limitation, called "maximum permitted mileage." In other words, a fare from MIA-SYD might be valid on a routing of MIA-SEA-SYD, if that fell under the MPM, but a routing of MIA-LHR-SYD might not, because it's significantly out of the way and above the MPM.
But this isn't FlyerTalk's Mileage Run Discussion forum, so I'll shut up now!
(Besides, I could be very wrong.)
I was really asking the wrong question before. Let me try to use a real-life example to illustrate what I'm trying to figure out:
Suppose I'd like to go from CHI to SAN. I have three options to book:
1. Book CHI-SAN and let Amtrak pick my connection from the SWC to the Surfliner. Total price for Oct. 17: $172
2. Book the multi-city function CHI-LAX and then LAX-SAN, but choose another Surfliner train on the 19th (the evening one, allowing me to stay in LAX for the day). Total price: $172
3. Book a ticket CHI-LAX for $143 and a separate ticket LAX-SAN for $29. Total price: $172
Based on that, amtrak appears to construct ticket prices for connections based on the sum of the individual fares. In other words, SDL-SAN is $310. I'll bet if I were to price SDL-WAS, WAS-CHI, CHI-LAX, and LAX-SAN and add up those fares, the total would be $310. Same goes for the multi-city option (to get them all on one reservation and force a certain routing), if I picked the same dates as the direct booking picks.
And so based on that logic, this means that I
should be able to do a two-day stopover in all three of the connecting cities for the same price as the straight-through booking, assuming I pick the same trains (e.g. the CL and not the Cardinal between WAS and CHI if the direct booking only offers the CL) and the same fare buckets are available on all of the trains.
I could, of course, be wrong on this. Unfortunately, I've had too much caffeine and too little sleep and can't focus enough to actually test this out with multiple possibilities, trying to figure it out. I may have a better chance tomorrow.
Now, I did test one thing out, and where things definitely change is if you make a stopover in a
non-connecting city--e.g., you get off in the middle of a route. If I book CHI-ABQ and ABQ-LAX, the price goes up a good bit from a direct CHI-LAX booking.
Am I making sense here? :blink:
