https://railforless.us/ appears to be working for me (today, Sat 3/16) on Chrome (with the exception I have been discussing above).Just checked it on both Firefox & Edge. The site is down as of Saturday March 16th
https://railforless.us/ appears to be working for me (today, Sat 3/16) on Chrome (with the exception I have been discussing above).Just checked it on both Firefox & Edge. The site is down as of Saturday March 16th
Just checked it on both Firefox & Edge. The site is down as of Saturday March 16th
You might need to delete cookies and site data for the site. Amtrak.com wasn't working for me on Firefox, and that fixed it.https://railforless.us/ appears to be working for me (today, Sat 3/16) on Chrome (with the exception I have been discussing above).
Just checked it on both Firefox & Edge. The site is down as of Saturday March 16th
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 paramaters and it returned the SWC with coach and rooms available
This seems to work:
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The Pacific Surfliner is probably for the itinerary that requires taking a Surfliner train to an overnight bus to the California Zephyr. It shows up if you want to do LAX-CHI.Odd:
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At any rate, this is a client-side display issue and not a fundamental flaw in the data we are getting from Amtrak (thankfully).
The route list is broken, however:
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This makes me wonder if @tikkisean is accidently caching the routes from past searches (the Pacific Surfliner makes no sense for these station pairs, for example).
Do you seriously think anyone here has the answers?Why can’t Amtrak put fares at a glance on their website? Why is this so difficult? Airlines do it.
Airlines do it because they need to compete with other airlines, but Amtrak seems to think they have no competition. When it comes to my trips Amtrak is competing with driving and/or flying, and usually falling way behind. I miss the Boardman days when Amtrak acted like they did have competition and even advertised inside airport TSA bins reminding people they did not have to remove their belts and shoes to ride the train. In my view the 2010-2015 period was the apex of travel on Amtrak.Why can’t Amtrak put fares at a glance on their website? Why is this so difficult? Airlines do it.
The Pacific Surfliner is probably for the itinerary that requires taking a Surfliner train to an overnight bus to the California Zephyr. It shows up if you want to do LAX-CHI.
I fixed an issue with the www subdomain, that might caused the issue you saw.Just checked it on both Firefox & Edge. The site is down as of Saturday March 16th
The owners/devs emailed me back this evening saying they got it fixed, and they have.Since yesterday (Monday, July 1st) railsforless.us seems to be having a problem getting responses from Amtrak's servers. I cannot get results from it on various queries for a few different trains. It makes repeated attempts and then posts a failed to connect with Amtrak message. I emailed then owners via their contact tab, so hopefully they can correct it. Amtrak may have closed whatever security hole that enabled them to access an internal Amtrak API. If so, I hope they find another way around.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the current solution, but I think we should be careful about implying the use of an unpublished API represents a "security hole" since these are distinct concepts that could be misconstrued by laypeople and give them the wrong idea.Amtrak may have closed whatever security hole that enabled them to access an internal Amtrak API.
Let me see if I understand this…are you saying that some people may think that Amtrak is purposely blocking what should be consumer helpful information about their fare comparison’s, but that third party consumer friendly websites are finding ways to “hack” that information?Maybe I'm misunderstanding the current solution, but I think we should be careful about implying the use of an unpublished API represents a "security hole" since these are distinct concepts that could be misconstrued by laypeople and give them the wrong idea.
Performance was good for my initial searches. Reminded me strongly of Google Flights. If you select Roomette it asks if you want Bedrooms, which I left unchecked since by Amtrak's naming these are different products. But that meant nothing was found and there was no output other than Cloudflare saying "Success." Seems like selecting Roomettes should automatically flip the switch to add Bedrooms if that is necessary to find anything. Maybe it's my ADHD acting up but I'm not a huge fan of the little train repeatedly zooming by. Maybe it could pass by once per search or have a cookie switch? Just a suggestion.
Amtrak's naming convention considers "Bedroom and/or Family Room" as distinct from a Roomette, leading to an answer of "No" in my case, which originally returned nothing (beyond a Cloudflare success message). When I restarted and selected "Yes" Roomettes showed up no problem. Now it returns Roomettes even if I select "No." Not sure if anything changed or if it was just a fluke. Seems a little slower now but still good and light speed compared to manual.The reason for the bedrooms prompt is that fetching bedrooms and family rooms takes additional time.
No problems with captcha. Maybe the success message was part of an opaque captcha check but I did not dig very deep into anything.Also, are you saying you never got past the captcha?
I think the train adds some whimsy to the experience, but I can see how it can be distracting. I added a "Search animations" toggle, which when unchecked disables the train and the spinning number animations.Performance was good for my initial searches. Reminded me strongly of Google Flights. If you select Roomette it asks if you want Bedrooms, which I left unchecked since by Amtrak's naming these are different products. But that meant nothing was found and there was no output other than Cloudflare saying "Success." Seems like selecting Roomettes should automatically flip the switch to add Bedrooms if that is necessary to find anything. Maybe it's my ADHD acting up but I'm not a huge fan of the little train repeatedly zooming by. Maybe it could pass by once per search or have a cookie switch? Just a suggestion.
I added some more common sense rules to make this more intuitive. The prompt only shows when it isn't obvious from the fare class you have selected if you want bedrooms and/or family rooms included in your search. There is also now a "Don't ask me again" checkbox in the dialog (also accessible in settings) if you understand this dialog and do not wish to see it on subsequent searches.Amtrak's naming convention considers "Bedroom and/or Family Room" as distinct from a Roomette, leading to an answer of "No" in my case, which originally returned nothing (beyond a Cloudflare success message). When I restarted and selected "Yes" Roomettes showed up no problem. Now it returns Roomettes even if I select "No." Not sure if anything changed or if it was just a fluke. Seems a little slower now but still good and light speed compared to manual.
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No problems with captcha. Maybe the success message was part of an opaque captcha check but I did not dig very deep into anything.
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