# Amtrak booking website/issues/timetables removed



## Bonser (May 31, 2020)

I've been away from the Amtrak site for a few months. Now I see that it's changed their booking format. It seems that on a multiple train trip you can't see departure and arrival times for individual segments while booking. Am I doing something wrong? I like to know how much wiggle room there is while changing trains before I actually book.


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## AmtrakBlue (May 31, 2020)

Tom Booth said:


> I've been away from the Amtrak site for a few months. Now I see that it's changed their booking format. It seems that on a multiple train trip you can't see departure and arrival times for individual segments while booking. Am I doing something wrong? I like to know how much wiggle room there is while changing trains before I actually book.


Under Arrive Times, there's a link for details. Click on that and a drop down will appear showing the segments, including connection times. (this is similar t what I see when I look for flights with connections)


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## Bonser (May 31, 2020)

AmtrakBlue said:


> Under Arrive Times, there's a link for details. Click on that and a drop down will appear showing the segments, including connection times. (this is similar t what I see when I look for flights with connections)


Thanks. Missed that arrow. It's still another unnecessary step. Used to just post the times.


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## AmtrakBlue (May 31, 2020)

Tom Booth said:


> Thanks. Missed that arrow. It's still another unnecessary step. Used to just post the times.


Though it saves space/scrolling on the website - at least for those who travel on the NEC to get to the LD trains.


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## Qapla (May 31, 2020)

AmtrakBlue said:


> (this is similar t what I see when I look for flights with connections)



Another attempt to turn Amtrak into and airline clone?

I preferred the old format ...


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## SanAntonioClyde (Jun 2, 2020)

On a similar subject, I'm a little upset with how long the Amtrak app takes to boot up on my phone, are others having similar experience?


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## Bonser (Jun 3, 2020)

Another thing about new site is that I can't get the train status to work. Every time I click on it a blue line appears but it's not interactive. When I try to enter a train it reverts to original default. Anybody else experience this?


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## AmtrakBlue (Jun 3, 2020)

Tom Booth said:


> Another thing about new site is that I can't get the train status to work. Every time I click on it a blue line appears but it's not interactive. When I try to enter a train it reverts to original default. Anybody else experience this?


I just tried both by train # and by stations and it worked fine for me for both. By Stations is the default. Were you by chance entering the train number instead of a station?


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## Bonser (Jun 3, 2020)

AmtrakBlue said:


> I just tried both by train # and by stations and it worked fine for me for both. By Stations is the default. Were you by chance entering the train number instead of a station?


It would't let me enter anything


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## Devil's Advocate (Jun 3, 2020)

This is what I currently see when I browse to amtrak.com on my laptop. Looks like they sell credit cards for Corona treatments? No mention of trains or schedules or transportation.


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## AmtrakBlue (Jun 3, 2020)

Here’s what I see.


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## Devil's Advocate (Jun 3, 2020)

If I scroll down I get this...


Floating toggles randomly covering other options and it looks like the only way to close the credit card advertising is to [Apply Now]...nope, even that doesn't close it. I'm sure with enough poking around I can find a way to work around this interface, but what about people who aren't already married to passenger rail and don't have much familiarity with the booking process? Expecting new customers to jump through a series of clumsy website problems just to price a ticket is not a rational path to success. I realize many of Amtrak's problems come from external factors beyond their control, but issues like this are self-inflicted.

ETA: It looks like some desktop browsers are receiving the mobile site by mistake. Or rather, they're all being directed to the mobile site initially and some are getting stuck there while others are redirected back to the desktop site. I don't recall seeing this specific issue in the past.


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## Qapla (Jun 3, 2020)

This is what I see when the site comes up





The credit card ad is a banner that stays at the bottom of the screen while I scroll


I would imagine that your screen resolution may have an impact on just how much of the main interface you see ... especially with the "Corona Update" being so large


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## me_little_me (Jun 3, 2020)

I have this sudden urge to get another credit card ... 

I wonder why?


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## Devil's Advocate (Jun 3, 2020)

Qapla said:


> I would imagine that your screen resolution may have an impact on just how much of the main interface you see ... especially with the "Corona Update" being so large


I'm using the standard recommended settings for this laptop and every other site displays just fine.



As I mentioned above I believe I'm seeing a mobile template being displayed in a desktop browser, but I'm not sure why that would be the case unless its a mistake. Or maybe we were all wrong and Amtrak is skipping the wannabe airline stage on its way to becoming another credit card portal.


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## Chey (Jun 3, 2020)

Tom Booth said:


> I've been away from the Amtrak site for a few months. Now I see that it's changed their booking format. It seems that on a multiple train trip you can't see departure and arrival times for individual segments while booking. Am I doing something wrong? I like to know how much wiggle room there is while changing trains before I actually book.



I'm wondering about the "multiple trains" too. If it's one of Amtrak's options for a trip on the results screen, doesn't Amtrak then guarantee the connections? I'm getting that option on a trip I want to book, connecting two trains, one arriving at the connecting station just over an hour before the scheduled departing time of the connecting train. If it's not a guaranteed connection then I may be better off booking the second train separately on the following day.


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## trainman74 (Jun 3, 2020)

I suspect any issues with the website that are occurring today, Wednesday, June 3, are related to this situation:







There's a major power outage affecting portions of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. I don't know how the power outage might directly affect the website (it would depend on where it's hosted and how traffic is being routed to it), but it could certainly be due to everyone having to temporarily use the website rather than calling.

Obligatory question, of course, is... what if they had a second call center location in a place not being affected by this power outage? Someplace like -- to pick a city totally at random -- Riverside, California.


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## Devil's Advocate (Jun 3, 2020)

If I shrink my fonts below 100% I can see something similar to what AmtrakBlue and Qapla posted, but holy cow the top banner is still a humongous waste of space and between that and the advertising bar you only get a tiny sliver of functional booking area to work with. I'm sorry but this is very disappointing and it's easily the least efficient website in my bookmark list. If you're trying to actually plan and book future travel Amtrak.com makes it feel like a clumsy afterthought. If you just want to view some static Pinterest style ads and nags on your way to signing up for another credit card then I'm sure it's fine.


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## AmtrakBlue (Jun 3, 2020)

trainman74 said:


> I suspect any issues with the website that are occurring today, Wednesday, June 3, are related to this situation:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


The issues reported above about the website and train status were made well before the storm came through (it hit Philly around 1 pm) that took out the power at the call center - and is causing major delays both east and west of Philly.


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## Qapla (Jun 3, 2020)

Devil's Advocate said:


> I'm sorry but this is very disappointing and it's easily the least efficient website in my bookmark list. If you're trying to actually plan and book future travel Amtrak.com makes it feel like a clumsy afterthought.



Well Said!


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## Mystic River Dragon (Apr 14, 2021)

I have just spent an hour trying to book a simple trip — first it said to add at least one passenger (with one passenger showing) — I fixed that by logging out and starting in as guest. Then I tried to add a gift card, but then I hit the purchase button and nothing happened.

Plus a few false starts in the beginning, and now it’s an hour later.

Instead of trying to use a website that obviously is set up to make sure no one ever travels by Amtrak again, I would like to go back to the old days when I could go up to a ticket counter and get a ticket from a real person.

I have not been near a train station for a year because of the virus, but I have gotten my vaccine and might chance it. Does anyone know if station agents are back to selling tickets in person? Or are they still not back yet because of the pandemic?

My nearest station is TRE (no phone number listed; otherwise I would call them). PHL is my nearest larger station.

Thanks as always for any information or advice.


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## Michigan Mom (Apr 14, 2021)

After becoming a reluctant convert, I use the Amtrak iPhone app almost exclusively. Whether it's my old desktop or the website itself, the app is so much more efficient. 
Another thought, you could always have Julie book the tickets


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## AmtrakBlue (Apr 14, 2021)

I have no problems booking my trips to Baltimore


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## Mystic River Dragon (Apr 14, 2021)

I figured it out—I had overlooked the step that asks you to choose a payment method.

I even was able to change my business car seat from the lazy computer offering (next one up and on the wrong side for any water view) to one in the middle of the car and on the water view side.

By the way, I chose seat 10F. One of our frequent travelers and posters has remarked that it is his favorite, so how could I go wrong?


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## TrackWalker (Apr 14, 2021)

Mystic River Dragon said:


> I have not been near a train station for a year because of the virus, but I have gotten my vaccine and might chance it. Does anyone know if station agents are back to selling tickets in person? Or are they still not back yet because of the pandemic?



I bought my tickets for next weeks trip at my local station from an agent last month.

I've always purchased tickets in person just to let Amtrak know an agent is needed at this station.


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## Mystic River Dragon (Apr 14, 2021)

TrackWalker said:


> I bought my tickets for next weeks trip at my local station from an agent last month.
> 
> I've always purchased tickets in person just to let Amtrak know an agent is needed at this station.



I agree with you. I have always done as much as possible in person, rather than on the phone or computer. This year of course was different— it will be nice to be able to get back to talking to an agent in person again.


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## zephyr17 (Apr 14, 2021)

Every iteration seems to make their POS website worse. Less information, fewer options.

Now it appears they are trying pretty hard to hide the breakout between accommodation charges and rail fares.

Plus fewer routing options without going into multi-city mode.


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## pennyk (Apr 14, 2021)

I just purchased tickets for an upcoming trip to NYC. I checked the price on the website, then called to speak to an agent (SE AGR) since I wanted to pick my rooms. I had an excellent agent who was willing and able to give me the rooms of my choice without charging more. I placed a seven day hold because I had a transportation voucher and thought I had to speak to CR to redeem it. Today I phoned back and before connecting me with CR, the AGR agent said she could apply my transportation voucher. My phone calls with the 2 agents went well and both agents were quite efficient. The fare on the website was what I paid. I am looking forward to my first overnight train trip in almost a year and a half.


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## Bob Dylan (Apr 15, 2021)

I've had the same Good expierience on both my AGR trips this past month, even had the 2nd Agent offer me a change in Rooms to a "Better "Room than I requested, and received the New e-mail with my pdf in 1 minute!


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## desertflyer (May 9, 2021)

Trying to book a Roomette OKJ-PDX round trip and paying Amtrak $648 each way for the pleasure, but the website keeps erroring out after the payment portion (i.e. the very last page). I have tried booking with points, with my partner's account, with oneway/roundtrip, mixing endpoints slightly (EMY-PDX) but nothing has been working. It's been 48 hours, tried to call Amtrak twice and gave up after 30 minutes.

I know a lot of people have trouble with the website and Arrow. Anyone else have this or similar issues?


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## Devil's Advocate (May 9, 2021)

Have you tried the phone app? Not saying it will work but it's an option you did not seem to mention.


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## desertflyer (May 9, 2021)

Thank you for the suggestion. I did try the app as well for all of the combinations I mentioned above. I think I'll try it again just to be sure. I have a feeling there are no roomettes available on either 11 or 14 for the dates I need and that the booking engine has a bug for whatever reason.


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## John Bobinyec (May 9, 2021)

It seems obvious that they did not put their upgraded website in front of a usability group for evaluation before they released it. The old website used to present more information with fewer clicks, but required more scrolling. Now more choices have to be made to get the same information, but it's not obvious what you are supposed to do next. Sometimes little onscreen instructions such as , "Choose one of these fares", would go a long way to guide the user to the goal line.

jb


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## PaTrainFan (May 9, 2021)

Unless I am missing something, it appears that ALL .pdf schedules are gone from the website, which is asinine. They are useful tools. When I am traveling, I want to keep up with the stop, even if the .pdf is stored on my phone.


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## AmtrakBlue (May 9, 2021)

PaTrainFan said:


> Unless I am missing something, it appears that ALL .pdf schedules are gone from the website, which is asinine. They are useful tools. When I am traveling, I want to keep up with the stop, even if the .pdf is stored on my phone.











Amtrak Routes & Stations


Choose from over 30 U.S. train routes and 500 destinations to get where you’re going with some of the most scenic views.




www.amtrak.com




click on the route you're interested in and then click on the schedule button


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## neroden (May 9, 2021)

Verified. I have written an angry letter to Roger Harris, Amtrak's supposed Marketing Officer, and cc:ed Jim Matthews of the RPA.

I am going to raise holy hell about this, one way or another. Everyone, make as much noise as you can about this. Complain to every Amtrak contact you have, and to your Congresspeople. ***Every other passenger rail operation in the country publishes their timetable***, including commuter rail and subways.

RPA's next Congressional ask may include a federal mandate that Amtrak publish its timetables, at this rate.

Edit: it may be under "routes", but ***it isn't under Schedules***. That's enough to justify an angry letter to the marketing officer. 

And "Valley Flyer" has no schedule. (If you're a genius, you'll figure out to look under "Vermonter"?!?!?)

This tells me this is probably part of a deliberate attempt to hide, conceal, and remove the schedules.


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## PaTrainFan (May 9, 2021)

AmtrakBlue said:


> Amtrak Routes & Stations
> 
> 
> Choose from over 30 U.S. train routes and 500 destinations to get where you’re going with some of the most scenic views.
> ...



Alrighty then. Thank you. A roundabout way to get to them, but they are there. I don't know why Amtrak can't use a direct link from the homepage.


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## Devil's Advocate (May 9, 2021)

desertflyer said:


> Thank you for the suggestion. I did try the app as well for all of the combinations I mentioned above. I think I'll try it again just to be sure. I have a feeling there are no roomettes available on either 11 or 14 for the dates I need and that the booking engine has a bug for whatever reason.


I've seen the website hang up when it was nearly out of rooms and was trying to merge two different compartments into a combined booking. The only way around this was to try to guess where the switch needed to occur and book it in two pieces or call and have the room switch merged into a single ticket by the call center. If that's the case and you're able to book it manually you'll want to alert the SCA on boarding so they can try to minimize the impact.


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## neroden (May 9, 2021)

PaTrainFan said:


> Alrighty then. Thank you. A roundabout way to get to them, but they are there. I don't know why Amtrak can't use a direct link from the homepage.


Because someone is either trying to drive away business or is grossly incompetent. As I say, I'm going to raise holy hell.

I was already answering multiple people per day on various Amtrak groups who couldn't figure out what their options were by pointing them to the page of all the PDF timetables. (It was already too well hidden.) With each PDF scattered behind other pages, I can't even do that anymore. 

Of the people who give up due to lack of timetables, only a fraction will go to railfan sites to ask more questions. Amtrak is clearly losing dozens of customers daily -- trips not taken, reservations not made -- because of this asininity. So I think it's time to raise a fuss about it.


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## zephyr17 (May 9, 2021)

Every iteration of the website gets worse. 

And they F'd with it yet again. Up until a few days ago you could get to the download all schedules link from the schedules tab. Now that is gone. As noted, you can get to the PDFs from the destinations tab in a roundabout fashion.

Now the old download schedule page since COVID actually had PDFs available only for the long distance trains and maybe the NEC (don't use the NEC much so never had a reason to click on it). Picking one of the state supported corridors gave you a message that the schedules had changed due to COVID and to use the schedules tab. Which was at least honest. For the Cascades (which I had ridden fairly frequently, pre-COVID), from Destinations, I do get a PDF schedule. An old PDF schedule from pre-COVID dated February 18th, 2020. which shows 4 Cascades between Seattle and Portland and Vancouver service intact. That does not reflect the current service levels at all (1 Seattle-Portland-Eugene round trip, no rail service north of Seattle. Moving to 2 Seattle-Portland-Eugene round trips and 1 Seattle-Portland round trip on May 24th. Still no rail service north of Seattle).

As bad as it is, no information and redirecting you to the schedule tab is better than wrong information.

The long distance PDF schedules I looked at still show 3 days a week. The Crescent still shows its current schedule, with the 7:00 am New Orleans departure. In the past with an upcoming schedule change, the old Schedules page typically would have links to both the current and the upcoming schedules, like with separate links for "until 6/4/2021" and "after 6/5/2021".

Amtrak has made yet another complete mess of this. Inaccurate schedules that are hard to get to. Whoever is in charge of managing their web presence is an imbecile. Good for you, Neroden, you are absolutely right.


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## pennyk (May 9, 2021)

MODERATOR NOTE: There were 2 threads on the topic of the Amtrak booking website. We have merged those 2 threads.


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## EchoSierra (May 10, 2021)

Under "Schedules" there was a link to downloadable timetables, but that link is now gone. Going directly to the schedules and timetables page also yields a page that isn't very useful.

What happened? Is Amtrak working on new timetables right now? Or are they not going to publish them anymore so that they can change schedules on the fly?


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## fdaley (May 10, 2021)

Weird. That link was there a couple of days ago, and now it's just gone. And for longer routes, there's no way to print or even display anything that would show you all of the intermediate stops at one glance.


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## EchoSierra (May 10, 2021)

If I search up the names of the trains/services on Google, it still brings me to a page for the train/service where I can click Schedule to get the 2020 timetable.

Reading one where it has "Will Not Operate" dates, I think they removed them from the front of the website until they can publish new schedules (probably in conjunction with the return of daily long distance trains) because the "Will Not Operate" dates don't make it clear that those dates are for 2020 only, and they don't want to confuse anyone, especially since a major holiday (Memorial Day) is coming up.


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## JontyMort (May 10, 2021)

EchoSierra said:


> If I search up the names of the trains/services on Google, it still brings me to a page for the train/service where I can click Schedule to get the 2020 timetable.
> 
> Reading one where it has "Will Not Operate" dates, I think they removed them from the front of the website until they can publish new schedules (probably in conjunction with the return of daily long distance trains) because the "Will Not Operate" dates don't make it clear that those dates are for 2020 only, and they don't want to confuse anyone, especially since a major holiday (Memorial Day) is coming up.


I think that is the most likely explanation. I don’t think - for example - that they ever got round to putting up the “Covid-reduced” timetable for the NEC, and you have to rely on the dreaded journey planners. Let’s hope they put them up again after the return to full service. There is no substitute for a proper timetable, as it contains information - distances and intermediate stops, for example - that are not otherwise apparent.


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## WWW (May 10, 2021)

May be down for housekeeping maintenance schedule refinements - check back later - - -

In the mean time I use an alternate method:

In lieu of a printed schedule
(I saved a copy of the paper bible once published)
I use this LINK:






Amtrak Status Maps - West


Amtrak train status displayed on an interactive map.



dixielandsoftware.net





In the upper right corner the country is divided into 6 sectors
Mouse onto one of the sectors and click
Brings all the current trains in that sector 
Click on one of the numbered trains

You will have three options to work with:

MAP (Blue Icon) - shows present position of the train and speed details

DETAILS (Red Icon) - shows the entire history of trip arrival departure timeliness
The three letter station code and stop identified with it.

Note the color graphics indicating that timeliness
Green - on time or within 30 minutes
Yellow - within 1 hour
Red - more than an hour
BLACK - certainly not in the red OVER 4 hours late

If you scroll to the bottom you can see the progress of that train click on one
of the circles to see the speed at that point.
HINT - zoom in to spread the circles apart

FORMATTED DATA (Blue arrow) - this is what you are presently looking at -
Click on the blue arrow for a different version of the data

Sadly the delays do not indicate the REASON !

AND this is only for the current day train NOT a schedule for a future date -
for daily trains not so much a problem - for those infrequent opts no train
in view not operating that day time.


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## neroden (May 10, 2021)

I'm going to be busy with paperwork because my girlfriend's mother just died. But I am following up on this with Rail Passengers Association, where I have contacts. If you want to help advocate for Amtrak to be Less Stupid, please join RPA if you haven't already. They've been more effective than anyone else so far. ( railpassengers.org )

If anyone else wants to put together a group signed letter about this, obviously, I'm in.


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## VentureForth (May 10, 2021)

I was able to find most of the PDF timetables (except for Acela between NYP and BOS) just last week. Today I can't find them online at all.

Not gonna lie. Really no desire to ride the train any more. Partly because I've moved to a city without a station, but mostly because of a complete lack of desire to subject myself to their self-imploding service.


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## Eric S (May 10, 2021)

neroden said:


> Verified. I have written an angry letter to Roger Harris, Amtrak's supposed Marketing Officer, and cc:ed Jim Matthews of the RPA.
> 
> I am going to raise holy hell about this, one way or another. Everyone, make as much noise as you can about this. Complain to every Amtrak contact you have, and to your Congresspeople. ***Every other passenger rail operation in the country publishes their timetable***, including commuter rail and subways.
> 
> ...


This has always been a frustration of mine. Looking for the schedule of the Wolverines? Check Michigan services. Lincolns? Check Illinois/Missouri services. And the different Northeast schedules have to be confusing to less-informed folks.


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## niemi24s (May 10, 2021)

This link will get you to the current Covid schedules... Amtrak Routes & Stations ... if you first click _View Details _and then _Schedule_ on the new page.

For the previous daily timetables, try this one... Train Schedules & Timetables | Amtrak ... after scrolling down past the three pretty pictures.

But who knows how long these will work or what will happen when daily service returns in a few weeks. I anticipate a genuine circle-jerk!


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## fdaley (May 10, 2021)

niemi24s said:


> This link will get you to the current Covid schedules... Amtrak Routes & Stations ... if you first click _View Details _and then _Schedule_ on the new page.
> 
> For the previous daily timetables, try this one... Train Schedules & Timetables | Amtrak ... after scrolling down past the three pretty pictures.
> 
> But who knows how long these will work or what will happen when daily service returns in a few weeks. I anticipate a genuine circle-jerk!



This works for finding pre-Covid schedules, which at least is way more than I can find by trying to navigate from Amtrak's home page. But when I follow this route to Michigan services, for example, I only get the full schedule from before the pandemic, not the current schedule.


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## John Bobinyec (May 10, 2021)

The online scheules are not gone, but Amtrak has made it so you really have to drill down into the website to find them.

Here's an easy place to see them all:






Amtrak Timetable Archives - Home


Amtrak Timetables Archive



juckins.net


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## zephyr17 (May 10, 2021)

fdaley said:


> This works for finding pre-Covid schedules, which at least is way more than I can find by trying to navigate from Amtrak's home page. But when I follow this route to Michigan services, for example, I only get the full schedule from before the pandemic, not the current schedule.


Same thing for the Cascades and Empire Service. 

The LD schedules all are 3 day/week and the new Crescent schedule is not posted despite going into effect in less than a month.

They clearly are not being maintained.


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## flitcraft (May 10, 2021)

I know that one should never ascribe to evil what is explicable by stupidity, but honestly, it's getting harder and harder not to go all conspiracy-theory on Amtrak's practices these days.


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## zephyr17 (May 10, 2021)

My opinion is the existing links to (some outdated) pdf schedules through the destinations path is due to an oversight by Amtrak's ace IT department. I think the actual intent was to eliminate them. And I think they'll likely clean up their mistake in the fairly near future.


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## John Bobinyec (May 10, 2021)

Another interesting problem is that the routing algorithm sometimes can't find the correct path. For example, I tried booking a trip from Chicago (CHI) to San Francisco (SFC) next September (when the trains are running everyday). The intent was to take the California Zephyr. But the website comes up with trips through Seattle or Los Angeles, but not on the Zephyr. However, then I tried going from Denver (DEN) to SFC, and it finds it.

The moral of the story is that you simply can't take what it gives you at face value.

jb


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## AmtrakBlue (May 10, 2021)

John Bobinyec said:


> Another interesting problem is that the routing algorithm sometimes can't find the correct path. For example, I tried booking a trip from Chicago (CHI) to San Francisco (SFC) next September (when the trains are running everyday. The intent was to take the California Zephyr. But the website comes up with trips through Seattle or Los Angeles, but not on the Zephyr. However, then I tried going from Denver (DEN) to SFC, and it finds it.
> 
> The moral of the story is that you simply can't take what it gives you at face value.
> 
> jb


Sounds like the CHI-SFC pair was not entered into Arrow. SEA-SFC and LAX-SFC apparently were entered. Give them a call and let them know (probably need to ask for a supervisor). Back when Anthony worked for Amtrak I came across a missing city pair and let him know and he got it fixed so I could book my trains.


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## zephyr17 (May 10, 2021)

John Bobinyec said:


> Another interesting problem is that the routing algorithm sometimes can't find the correct path. For example, I tried booking a trip from Chicago (CHI) to San Francisco (SFC) next September (when the trains are running everyday. The intent was to take the California Zephyr. But the website comes up with trips through Seattle or Los Angeles, but not on the Zephyr. However, then I tried going from Denver (DEN) to SFC, and it finds it.
> 
> The moral of the story is that you simply can't take what it gives you at face value.
> 
> jb


Oy veh!


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## WWW (May 10, 2021)

That CHI SFC when Amtrak is routing you via LAX or SEA are you getting the benefit of a through fare ?
Or that CHI DEN fare and then adding DEN SFC ?
The sum of the parts will always exceed the whole !
Go figure !


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## Triley (May 10, 2021)

John Bobinyec said:


> Another interesting problem is that the routing algorithm sometimes can't find the correct path. For example, I tried booking a trip from Chicago (CHI) to San Francisco (SFC) next September (when the trains are running everyday). The intent was to take the California Zephyr. But the website comes up with trips through Seattle or Los Angeles, but not on the Zephyr. However, then I tried going from Denver (DEN) to SFC, and it finds it.
> 
> The moral of the story is that you simply can't take what it gives you at face value.
> 
> jb



Can I ask what the day was in September that you were looking for?

I just looked at September 15th, and it came up with the following:


Train 5

Depart CHI @ 2pm
Arrive EMY @ 4:10pm (+2)

Connecting Bus 5005

Depart EMY @ 4:25pm
Arrive SFC @ 5pm


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## neroden (May 10, 2021)

zephyr17 said:


> My opinion is the existing links to (some outdated) pdf schedules through the destinations path is due to an oversight by Amtrak's ace IT department. I think the actual intent was to eliminate them. And I think they'll likely clean up their mistake in the fairly near future.


They are going to bring the schedules back. Because I'm going to make this an RPA campaign issue.

Join Rail Passengers Association. Write angry letters to whoever you can think of at Amtrak, and to Congress. Make a fuss. We're going to get this fixed before Amtrak manages to drive every customer away.


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## John Bobinyec (May 10, 2021)

Triley said:


> Can I ask what the day was in September that you were looking for?
> 
> I just looked at September 15th, and it came up with the following:
> 
> ...



Sept. 9, 2021


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## AmtrakBlue (May 10, 2021)

John Bobinyec said:


> Sept. 9, 2021


Interesting. It appears that #5 to SFC is only affected on Thursdays in Sept


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## zephyr17 (May 10, 2021)

neroden said:


> They are going to bring the schedules back. Because I'm going to make this an RPA campaign issue.
> 
> Join Rail Passengers Association. Write angry letters to whoever you can think of at Amtrak, and to Congress. Make a fuss. We're going to get this fixed before Amtrak manages to drive every customer away.


Already an RPA member, so on that.


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## Triley (May 10, 2021)

AmtrakBlue said:


> Interesting. It appears that #5 to SFC is only affected on Thursdays in Sept


I looked closer, and found it does happen on other days, and in October as well. What the issue looks to be, is that 5005 doesn't show as running daily.

I've passed it along to one of the best agents we have that does ticketing, and we'll see if she has connections to the right places.


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## Willbridge (May 10, 2021)

Triley said:


> I looked closer, and found it does happen on other days, and in October as well. What the issue looks to be, is that 5005 doesn't show as running daily.
> 
> I've passed it along to one of the best agents we have that does ticketing, and we'll see if she has connections to the right places.


I had to give up being nixed on Suisun-Fairfield to Denver as a two-train one-way ticket in August with a connection in Sacramento, even though both trains could be booked separately. I decided to stay in Davis instead of making an unprotected connection.


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## Bob Dylan (May 11, 2021)

Willbridge said:


> I had to give up being nixed on Suisun-Fairfield to Denver as a two-train one-way ticket in August with a connection in Sacramento, even though both trains could be booked separately. I decided to stay in Davis instead of making an unprotected connection.


Lovely little Cillege town,with a great ex-SP Mission style Station, as you probably know!


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## AmtrakBlue (May 11, 2021)

Triley said:


> I looked closer, and found it does happen on other days, and in October as well. What the issue looks to be, is that 5005 doesn't show as running daily.
> 
> I've passed it along to one of the best agents we have that does ticketing, and we'll see if she has connections to the right places.


I was wondering if it might be an issue with the bus, since booking to EMY seemed to work every day.


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## EchoSierra (May 13, 2021)

niemi24s said:


> This link will get you to the current Covid schedules... Amtrak Routes & Stations ... if you first click _View Details _and then _Schedule_ on the new page.
> 
> For the previous daily timetables, try this one... Train Schedules & Timetables | Amtrak ... after scrolling down past the three pretty pictures.
> 
> But who knows how long these will work or what will happen when daily service returns in a few weeks. I anticipate a genuine circle-jerk!



Damn, the links in the second link you shared are already gone!


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## acelafan (May 13, 2021)

EchoSierra said:


> Damn, the links in the second link you shared are already gone!


Yeah, I was looking for them too, to be sure I hadn't missed any updates for my archive.

I have PDFs available at: Amtrak Timetable Archives - Home


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## niemi24s (May 13, 2021)

EchoSierra said:


> Damn, the links in the second link you shared are already gone!


It's as if Amtrak is playing hide & seek with them. If it's any clue to finding them again, all their URL's had "aemtest" at the start. I recall them disappearing a time or two for a few days before and then seemingly coming back. Maybe they'll come back again.

But after the 3X Covid timetables disappear next month, what are the chances we may never see a normal timetable again?


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## neroden (May 16, 2021)

We're going to see timetables again. The only question is how many Amtrak officials we have to get fired in order to do this.

Look, every railroad in the world produces timetables. I am absolutely confident that if current Amtrak management fails to do so for long enough, I can get Congress and/or the Biden administration to fire them. This is something we can absolutely make happen at RPA, because Congresspeople are, on the whole, not idiots, and understand the importance of something every other railroad on the planet (including *all the commuter railroads in the US*) provides. 

I hope it doesn't require that. I'm not sure how long it will take. We are currently trying to convince existing Amtrak management of their error, and of how many customers they're losing by this foolishness. Some progress may be happening.


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## railiner (May 17, 2021)

neroden said:


> I am absolutely confident that if current Amtrak management fails to do so for long enough, I can get Congress and/or the Biden administration to fire them.


While I agree with your sentiments regarding timetables, that’s a pretty strong statement.
Didn’t know you possessed that power.


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## daybeers (May 19, 2021)

This is not a good sign. It's not even a part of the app, it just opens a web browser inside the app and goes to Train Schedules & Timetables | Amtrak I am temporarily using an iOS device but assume the Android app was updated as well.


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## zephyr17 (May 19, 2021)

I have an android and the new "schedules" option just links to the Amtrak mobile site...where there aren't any schedules


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## neroden (May 19, 2021)

railiner said:


> While I agree with your sentiments regarding timetables, that’s a pretty strong statement.
> Didn’t know you possessed that power.


Might take years. But I've got a pretty good sense at this point of when a bureaucrat has done something stupid enough to get the politicians to stomp on them.

Three-a-week service wasn't stupid enough. Awful food wasn't stupid enough. Dishonest accounting wasn't stupid enough.

This is stupid enough.

I -- and the rest of you -- can get (a) every state DOT which pays for service, (b) every state politician who supports their state DOT paying for service, (c) every member of Congress who supports paying for service, (d) people in federal DOT who are paying for service to go to Amtrak with the question "*** are you thinking? Where are the timetables?" Everyone who rides a train at all understands the importance of publishing the timetables for marketing, which is why this is going to be easy. Not necessarily *quick*. But it's remarkably easy to explain to pretty much anyone why it's a problem.


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## west point (May 19, 2021)

Just got the Microsoft notice that IE support will end next year. Is that going to cause some problems ?Are


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## zephyr17 (May 20, 2021)

Probably not. IE has be obsolescent for years and years. Website works okay on Chrome and Firefox.


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## daybeers (May 20, 2021)

zephyr17 said:


> Probably not. IE has be obsolescent for years and years. Website works okay on Chrome and Firefox.


Amtrak's Arrow reservation system has also been obsolescent for decades and decades. Their IT department is incompetent. Or is it management? We'll never know I guess.


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## zephyr17 (May 20, 2021)

daybeers said:


> Amtrak's Arrow reservation system has also been obsolescent for decades and decades. Their IT department is incompetent. Or is it management? We'll never know I guess.


Well, their core system is old, ancient, their implementation dating from the 70s and the core system older than that. ARROW is a customized one-off of the old Sabre American Airlines resevation system, which I actually think dated from the late 60's, early 70's at the latest. It is "mapped and wrapped" with interfaces that allow it to communicate with more modern technologies.

The core system is entirely unable to communicate with any browser. Or the internet. Such things did not exist when it was created.

So the age of the core system has nothing to do with IE, it predates IE by decades.

I also do not think that that Amtrak's IT is particularly competent. It actually scares me to think of the layers that old system is wrapped in and the fact that the wrapping almost certainly "just growed" especially because cash strapped Amtrak probably did not design for maintainability, just immediate functionality. That kind of development often winds up in an incredibly tangled hairball. Still Arrow's age and IE support really have absolutely nothing to do with each other.


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## daybeers (May 20, 2021)

Yes I know it's very ancient, that's why I said it was obsolete  I realize they don't have a connection, but just thought I'd point out a funny comparison as we were discussing updates to Amtrak's app.

Yes, one look at their IT department and you can see the problems of the entire company. Funny how that is with IT.


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## Anderson (May 20, 2021)

zephyr17 said:


> Well, their core system is old, ancient, their implementation dating from the 70s and the core system older than that. ARROW is a customized one-off of the old Sabre American Airlines resevation system, which I actually think dated from the late 60's, early 70's at the latest. It is "mapped and wrapped" with interfaces that allow it to communicate with more modern technologies.
> 
> The core system is entirely unable to communicate with any browser. Or the internet. Such things did not exist when it was created.
> 
> ...


I mean, the other side of this is that Amtrak hasn't needed to significantly alter functionality until "recently" (really, the last 2-4 years, when seat assignments started cropping up).


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## dlagrua (May 20, 2021)

Funny thing is that Flynn is a former airline executive and if you compare how easy it is to book a flight you would think that this kind of system would carry over. With airlines you can get all the prices in all the classes of service online in an instant. You can also see price options offered for dates of travel. Amtraks booking system seems as though they are keeping things a secret until you pry the info away after going though a number of steps. Proof of this can be seen in the way they blocked out Amsnag. One can only ask; is this the best system to attract ridership? I think not.


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## railiner (May 20, 2021)

zephyr17 said:


> Well, their core system is old, ancient, their implementation dating from the 70s and the core system older than that. ARROW is a customized one-off of the old Sabre American Airlines resevation system, which I actually think dated from the late 60's, early 70's at the latest. It is "mapped and wrapped" with interfaces that allow it to communicate with more modern technologies.
> 
> The core system is entirely unable to communicate with any browser. Or the internet. Such things did not exist when it was created.
> 
> ...


You've got the origin of Arrow right, but as far as the competency of Amtrak's IT department...not so sure...
Considering what limited means they have to work with, perhaps they should be applauded for making the ancient system still somewhat functional?


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## AmtrakBlue (May 20, 2021)

dlagrua said:


> Funny thing is that Flynn is a former airline executive and if you compare how easy it is to book a flight you would think that this kind of system would carry over. With airlines you can get all the prices in all the classes of service online in an instant. You can also see price options offered for dates of travel. Amtraks booking system seems as though they are keeping things a secret until you pry the info away after going though a number of steps. Proof of this can be seen in the way they blocked out Amsnag. One can only ask; is this the best system to attract ridership? I think not.


How long has Flynn been CEO? Not long enough to do what you think he should have done by now. It appears to me that they are setting up to show date ranges for prices. Currently you can see available trains over a range of dates. They may be planning to add the cost part too, but that will involve more programming.

Flynn has not worked for commercial airlines, so why would he would carry over their systems?
"has more than four decades of transportation and logistics experience, having worked in multiple modes of transportation, including rail freight, maritime and aviation. Most recently, he served 13 years as Chairman, President and CEO of Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings, Inc., which serves the global air freight, military charter and passenger charter markets. He also held senior leadership roles with CSX Transportation, Sea-Land Services, Inc., and GeoLogistics Corp."

Flynn comes from a RR family.
"Flynn comes from a railroading family. His father was a Conrail engineer; his uncle, an Amtrak engineer; and his brother, an Amtrak conductor and local union chair."









Transportation Veteran Flynn to Succeed Anderson at Amtrak - Railway Age


William J. Flynn will become Amtrak’s next Chief Executive Officer and President on April 15, 2020, succeeding Richard Anderson. Flynn’s appointment follows “a planned executive succession process undertaken by the Board of Directors,” Chairman Anthony Coscia said.




www.railwayage.com


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## WWW (May 20, 2021)

Just because Amtrak hired ex-airline CEO's doesn't mean these folks brought along the fancy airline computer technology.

Disgusting when you book an airline seat (an actual seat by number and class location) that the same can't be done on Amtrak.
You book on line and have to still call Amtrak for a specific Roomette Bedroom etc. 

Case in point I booked two roomette seats and not being terribly familiar with the bedroom arrangements noticed that the
two roomettes were staggered and not across the aisle - no way to change the seating - have to call Amtrak and it took a
supervisor override to do what I wanted. Fortunately caught this in time - would have perhaps been a worse off mess if I
had waited for the Conductor or Car Attendant to fix at the moment of departure.

A simple matter of showing a bedroom mask of available roomettes/bedrooms when booking and selecting one or more of those.
May be of more importance of single selection a roomette on one scenic side or another of a given train.
Once small consolation there are no middle seats bedrooms on Amtrak to foul the nest that one sleeps in !


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## Ryan (May 20, 2021)

dlagrua said:


> Proof of this can be seen in the way they blocked out Amsnag.


The demise of Amsnag has just as much to do with the developer ceasing to chase Amtrak's ever-changing website as it does anything perceived malice on Amtrak's part. Do you have any proof that Amtrak deliberately took action to stop Among from working, or is this just more arranging the "facts" to suit your predetermined conclusion?


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## me_little_me (May 20, 2021)

Ryan said:


> The demise of Amsnag has just as much to do with the developer ceasing to chase Amtrak's ever-changing website as it does anything perceived malice on Amtrak's part. Do you have any proof that Amtrak deliberately took action to stop Among from working, or is this just more arranging the "facts" to suit your predetermined conclusion?


I for one noticed that when I tried to book a trip for a certain date, then didn't like the prices and tried 5 or so more times changing dates and cities (e.g. going from Atlanta instead of Greenville, SC - both of which I have used as starting points), the site stopped giving me the train choices any more. That issue occurred multiple times over multiple days of searching for trips. That made me suspect that they are, indeed, blocking amsnag by not allowing a lot of requests in a short amount of time from a single site. So I would say it is likely true what *dlagrua said.*


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## Ryan (May 20, 2021)

Flooding queries is a way to execute a denial of service attack. Limiting the ability to do that has significantly more to do with preventing the site from being attacked by bad actors than it does trying to deliberately target Amsnag.

Yes, the end effect may be the same (depending on how many queries and how quickly Amsnag makes them), but the claim of intent is without merit and completely unproven.


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## me_little_me (May 20, 2021)

Ryan said:


> The demise of Amsnag has just as much to do with the developer ceasing to chase Amtrak's ever-changing website as it does anything perceived malice on Amtrak's part. Do you have any proof that Amtrak deliberately took action to stop Among from working, or is this just more arranging the "facts" to suit your predetermined conclusion?


I for one noticed that when I tried to book a trip for a certain date, then didn't like the prices and tried 5 or so more times changing dates and cities (e.g. going from Atlanta instead of Greenville, SC - both of which I have used as starting points), the site stopped giving me the train choices any more. That issue occurred multiple times over multiple days of searching for trips. That made me suspect that they are, indeed, blocking amsnag by not allowing a lot of requests in a short amount of time from a single site. So I would say it is likely true what


Ryan said:


> Flooding queries is a way to execute a denial of service attack. Limiting the ability to do that has significantly more to do with preventing the site from being attacked by bad actors than it does trying to deliberately target Amsnag.
> 
> Yes, the end effect may be the same (depending on how many queries and how quickly Amsnag makes them), but the claim of intent is without merit and completely unproven.


Well, I couldn't possibly do any flooding. Using two fingers to enter data even though I am pretty fast at it, would be more like a slop drip.


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## zephyr17 (May 20, 2021)

railiner said:


> You've got the origin of Arrow right, but as far as the competency of Amtrak's IT department...not so sure...
> Considering what limited means they have to work with, perhaps they should be applauded for making the ancient system still somewhat functional?


Well, whover is designing their UI is pretty bad at it. Normally, that would be its own team whose members know didly squat about the old technology underlying it.

I agree whatever team is maintaining the interface layer has its hands full and is doing difficult work. As to the core system, they are probably scared to touch the source code (assuming they still have it). Probably the seat assignment thing was existing functionality they gingerly turned on, since it was core functionality in Sabre, and they used the capability for sleepers all along.


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## zephyr17 (May 20, 2021)

Ryan said:


> Flooding queries is a way to execute a denial of service attack. Limiting the ability to do that has significantly more to do with preventing the site from being attacked by bad actors than it does trying to deliberately target Amsnag.
> 
> Yes, the end effect may be the same (depending on how many queries and how quickly Amsnag makes them), but the claim of intent is without merit and completely unproven.


I tend to agree, I also think the recent changes to the UI made the screen/HTML scraping methodology Amsnag used to gather data a lot more difficult. I doubt Amsnag was on their radar, it was likely just collateral damage from the UI changes and tightening security.

But if I want to do a fare search on multiple days, I'll make sure and flip between my native connection and a VPN though. That ought to give me a few more tries.


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## Ryan (May 20, 2021)

me_little_me said:


> Well, I couldn't possibly do any flooding.


Except for the part where you did and the website stopped returning results for you.


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## me_little_me (May 20, 2021)

Ryan said:


> Except for the part where you did and the website stopped returning results for you.


5-6 attempts over 5-6 minutes is not a flood.

As to the IT people, I don't blame them. My guess is that maintenance on Arrow is like maintenance on cars or engines - put off until congress comes up with lots of billions to do it. The $80B fantasized for Amtrak included lots of billions for "deferred maintenance"


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## Anderson (May 21, 2021)

You know what? Screw it, this is the last straw for me with Amtrak for a while. I don't think I'm going to bother looking them up again for most of this year. I'll see if my parents or my sister can use my upgrade cards. I'd rather drive than frak about with Amtrak's stupid games anymore. To hell with them.


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## Anderson (May 21, 2021)

dlagrua said:


> Funny thing is that Flynn is a former airline executive and if you compare how easy it is to book a flight you would think that this kind of system would carry over. With airlines you can get all the prices in all the classes of service online in an instant. You can also see price options offered for dates of travel. Amtraks booking system seems as though they are keeping things a secret until you pry the info away after going though a number of steps. Proof of this can be seen in the way they blocked out Amsnag. One can only ask; is this the best system to attract ridership? I think not.


Here's the thing: Amtrak's current functionality more closely resembles that over at an airline now than it used to in this respect. Airlines don't really publish "timetables" as I think we tend to think of them for the most part, because 99%+ of all flights are a simple A-to-B operation (the few exceptions usually being either rural service milk runs, fifth freedom oddballs, or "something wonky Southwest is doing"). Putting in two cities and getting a spit-out of times is standard.

Amtrak is wonky because there are times when knowing intermediate stops is _very_ useful (for example, managing connections around Washington...one can have a reason for transferring in ALX instead of WAS if a train is running late; or moving a pickup or dropoff to save a friend time/make a train because one was running late). None of this generally applies for airlines (the possible exception being making a tight connection or handling a blown connection).


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## west point (May 21, 2021)

About the reservation / arrow system.
I grew up on Sabre and the EAL system whose name that eludes me. The EAL system was better but for many reasons got lost in the dim past. The EAL system did a clean sheet change late 1970s that was what caused it to be better than Sabre / Arrow. They are now completely obsolete due to many new applications Expect that the IT persons who now work on Arrow are quickly retiring and not much institutional knowledge is able to be passed on ?

What Amtrak needs to do is a clean sheet change of their IT. That is of course subject to lost info. I have no idea how to do that but suspect that Amtrak would run the old system and the new system would be effective on a certain date. OLD Data might need to be located on a different site that might be left in operation for several years waiting for time to transfer the data. 

Another concern is hackers getting into the old system causing untold mischief ?


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## Ryan (May 21, 2021)

me_little_me said:


> 5-6 attempts over 5-6 minutes is not a flood.


My experience shows that it takes significantly more than that to trigger it.

At the end of the day, there is still zero evidence that Amsnag was directly targeted. With a little bit of work, one could figure out what the rate limits are and program Amsnag to not exceed it.


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## EchoSierra (May 21, 2021)

Just because ARROW is old (and possibly obsolete) doesn't make it useless. Someone said it's based on Sabre?

American Airlines and Jetblue both currently use Sabre. It's gotten facelifts, new interfaces, but the back end is still the old system. I had access a few years ago, and typing [[AMK still connects to ARROW.
United Airlines uses SHARES which is a similarly old system, and will be 53 years old as of May 30th.
Your local chain retail store may or may not use some flavor of IBM 4690 OS for their cash register systems, which was originally released in 1985 and have received many rebrandings and facelifts (currently being marketed as Toshiba TCx Sky).

As long as ARROW can do what Amtrak wants it to do, there's no reason to fix what isn't broken. If there's a way to add new functionality to old systems, it will usually be less expensive and less distruptive than switching entirely to a new system.


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## neroden (May 21, 2021)

ARROW cannot do what Amtrak needs it to do.

Amtrak's IT plan, a few years ago, involved rewriting it in C. It's mostly in machine language right now. If rewritten in C with coherent interfaces between modules, it could be upgraded to do what it needs to do.


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## PaTrainFan (May 21, 2021)

neroden said:


> ARROW cannot do what Amtrak needs it to do.
> 
> Amtrak's IT plan, a few years ago, involved rewriting it in C. It's mostly in machine language right now. If rewritten in C with coherent interfaces between modules, it could be upgraded to do what it needs to do.



And Sabre just had a major meltdown last night causing chaos for passengers on the airines that use it, including American.


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## railiner (May 21, 2021)

EchoSierra said:


> United Airlines uses SHARES which is a similarly old system, and will be 53 years old as of May 30th.


Didn't UAL begin with its 'Apollo' CRS?


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## railiner (May 21, 2021)

west point said:


> About the reservation / arrow system.
> I grew up on Sabre and the EAL system whose name that eludes me.


EAL's was called, "SystemONE"....which later evolved into SHARES. Continental inherited that, and subsequent to the merger, UAL adopted it.


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## me_little_me (May 21, 2021)

neroden said:


> ARROW cannot do what Amtrak needs it to do.
> 
> Amtrak's IT plan, a few years ago, involved rewriting it in C. It's mostly in machine language right now. If rewritten in C with coherent interfaces between modules, it could be upgraded to do what it needs to do.



Both of you miss the point. Arrow (and/or its web interface) does not do what the CUSTOMERS NEED it to do.

It needs to have every single city to city choice programmed into it and needs an AI system to do that.

It needs to provide alternative connections marking which ones are guaranteed and which ones are not.

It needs to provide multiple day choices with pricing.

It needs to provide alternative city choices and pricing for both the starting point and destination.

It needs to provide clear and accurate baggage, parking availability for same day/overnight and whether free or paid, station hours, restroom availability, food provided/available, etc - for any city shown prior to making selection of trains and on the same page directly (no changing pages) or as a popup.

It needs a reliability number - not just end to end - but for each station pair.

All of these except the last have been done - but not by Amtrak. Some are airline features, some were amsnag features, some are third party search engine (ala Kayak) features


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## Devil's Advocate (May 21, 2021)

PaTrainFan said:


> And Sabre just had a major meltdown last night causing chaos for passengers on the airines that use it, including American.


AA seemed to be having a meltdown all last week so I guess it's just more of the same.



railiner said:


> Didn't UAL begin with its 'Apollo' CRS?


I believe UA switched when they bought out CO. I wasn't a fan of either system's front end but apparently CO's setup was much easier to support on the back end.



me_little_me said:


> Arrow (and/or its web interface) does not do what the CUSTOMERS NEED it to do.
> It needs to have every single city to city choice programmed into it [...]
> It needs to provide alternative connections marking which ones are guaranteed and which ones are not.
> It needs to provide multiple day choices with pricing.
> It needs to provide alternative city choices and pricing for both the starting point and destination.


Agreed!


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## EchoSierra (May 21, 2021)

Devil's Advocate said:


> I believe UA switched when they bought out CO. I wasn't a fan of either system's front end but apparently CO's setup was much easier to support on the back end.



CO bought out UA, but kept the UA name. They kept SHARES because at the time, they figured that SHARES, which was designed to run on almost any computer, would be useful should they buy up more airlines. I'd imagine the idea that they're the top dog in the merger might have had something to do with the choice of SHARES over Apollo as well.

I don't think anyone's buying out Amtrak or vice versa anytime soon, so I think ARROW is here to stay until, as I mentioned earlier, ARROW no longer fits Amtrak's needs.


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## joelkfla (May 22, 2021)

The FY 2021-2026 5-Year Plan has the following in the Long Distance section:

*The next major enhancement, slated for release in early
2021, expands on the existing search result experience by
presenting a seven-day calendar of available fares: those
of the requested date as well as the lowest fare up to
three days prior and three days forward. In addition to
offering customers more—and potentially lower—fare
options with a single search, this solution will provide a
better path for long distance customers to find available
travel dates on trains operating less than daily.*

So I guess they're working on it.


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## Cal (May 22, 2021)

joelkfla said:


> The FY 2021-2026 5-Year Plan has the following in the Long Distance section:
> 
> *The next major enhancement, slated for release in early
> 2021, expands on the existing search result experience by
> ...


Are they actually working on it though, or just saying they are? Weren't they working on upgraded bedding a few years back?


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## AmtrakBlue (May 22, 2021)

The app now has the schedules. Click on more(...) at the bottom right.


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## jis (May 22, 2021)

Devil's Advocate said:


> I believe UA switched when they bought out CO. I wasn't a fan of either system's front end but apparently CO's setup was much easier to support on the back end.


UAL had sold off Apollo as a separate entity long before the merger. It was just a customer of Apollo at the time, whereas CO basically owned SHARES and had much lower overall cost of operations. So, UAL dumped Apollo and switched to SHARES. There is nothing remaining of whatever it had before the CO merger. One of the visible consequences of this to the United Mileage Plus members was that their membership numbers changed while those coming from the Continental Presidential Plus kept their membership numbers as is. Of course it also becomes obvious that unlike Amtrak both the reservations and the frequent flier program are managed by the same system, so they are much more closely coupled.

CO had evolved their legacy system derived from Eastern's System ONE to SHARES in a deal with EDS quite a while before the merger AFAIR. SHARES was evolved by EDS into what one would characterize as a modern distributed server-client system, where the interfaces to the backend server are well designed and documented in what today would be called Service Oriented Architecture. SHARES is much more than just a reservation system. It also deal with aircraft scheduling and dispatch planning (including F&B dispatch for folks here who are perennially interested in food) and a host of other things.

Here is some more about why United chose SHARES over Apollo at the merger (article from 2012, many issues mentioned about SHARES have been fixed since then).









SHARES vs APOLLO an in-depth look - Uptime!


As a number of United fliers are aware, March 3nd marks the day when United and Continental move to a single Passenger Service System or PSS for short. Over the las



upgrd.com





I got to see some of this evolution first hand as the guy who had his desk next to me in my pod at the HP office (Berkeley Heights) in NJ was on the SHARES maintenance team (before EDS was spun off again by HP). It was fun to play around with the system and watch them hive off pieces of it from the core server module into separate mini-server modules as they modified it to evolve to a more distributed and less fragile architecture. At least from a techno-geek perspective it was a fun thing to watch from the sideline.


----------



## John Santos (May 22, 2021)

me_little_me said:


> I for one noticed that when I tried to book a trip for a certain date, then didn't like the prices and tried 5 or so more times changing dates and cities (e.g. going from Atlanta instead of Greenville, SC - both of which I have used as starting points), the site stopped giving me the train choices any more. That issue occurred multiple times over multiple days of searching for trips. That made me suspect that they are, indeed, blocking amsnag by not allowing a lot of requests in a short amount of time from a single site. So I would say it is likely true what
> 
> Well, I couldn't possibly do any flooding. Using two fingers to enter data even though I am pretty fast at it, would be more like a slop drip.


That's exactly how a distributed denial of service attack (DDOS attack) works. It is common enough that it has a standard acronym. A common DOS attack method is to flood a site with many inquiries and never complete any transactions, which depletes resources on the server. The standard defense is to limit incomplete transactions from a given site, allowing transactions from other sites to proceed. The attacker's response is to take over a swarm of zombie systems (often previously hacked by one of the many strategies such as phishing and kept in reserve or sold on the Internet to other crackers), and have them each send as many bogus transactions as possible, while staying below the DOS limits. This is a DDOS attack. The only defenses against that are to filter incoming inquiries and transactions against lists of known compromised systems, and to even more severely restrict the number and type of transactions from any given site. Also, to keep running statistics of such connections and alert someone if an attack is detected, but really the only things they can do is shut down the site or attempt to manually attempt to block the attacking addresses, both responses being at least a partial victory for the attackers.

A better solution for the AMSNAG problem would be for Amtrak to publish an API to its scheduling system that returned (in very low overhead text or CSV format) the current schedule and availability for a route and date. AMSNAG (and anyone else who is interested, such as Travelocity or other travel booking sites) could create a web interface to this data with all the fancy bells and whistles needed. This would be much less overhead for both Amtrak and the site than the current, broken, screen-scraping method, and being a published API, would involve much less maintenance. If Amtrak was really interested in growing their business in the 21st century, this would be a no-brainer. However, implementing it on top of the existing scheduling system would be a huge amount of work. If they create a new scheduling system, adding this would be trivial.


----------



## me_little_me (May 22, 2021)

joelkfla said:


> The FY 2021-2026 5-Year Plan has the following in the Long Distance section:
> 
> *The next major enhancement, slated for release in early
> 2021, expands on the existing search result experience by
> ...


Wait a second! It is May 22nd! Early 2021 is LONG PAST!

As I said, the Soviets came out with a new 5 year plan every year because the last one never worked. So what day this year will Amtrak come out with their next 5 year plan which will show new dates for the "next major enhancement" and why didn't they announce that they couldn't meet their timetable and how and when they are going to meet the real one? Or is this going to be one of those "next enhancements" like the new bedding which was promised 2-3 years ago?

They lie like rugs.


----------



## jiml (May 22, 2021)

jis said:


> UAL had sold off Apollo as a separate entity long before the merger. It was just a customer of Apollo at the time, whereas CO basically owned SHARES and had much lower overall cost of operations. So, UAL dumped Apollo and switched to SHARES. There is nothing remaining of whatever it had before the CO merger. One of the visible consequences of this to the United Mileage Plus members was that their membership numbers changed while those coming from the Continental Presidential Plus kept their membership numbers as is. Of course it also becomes obvious that unlike Amtrak both the reservations and the frequent flier program are managed by the same system, so they are much more closely coupled.
> 
> CO had evolved their legacy system derived from Eastern's System ONE to SHARES in a deal with EDS quite a while before the merger AFAIR. SHARES was evolved by EDS into what one would characterize as a modern distributed server-client system, where the interfaces to the backend server are well designed and documented in what today would be called Service Oriented Architecture. SHARES is much more than just a reservation system. It also deal with aircraft scheduling and dispatch planning (including F&B dispatch for folks here who are perennially interested in food) and a host of other things.


This is entirely accurate with the addition that CO sold SHARES to Amadeus, but kept their own license so they could develop and rapidly deploy enhancements or updates from within without paying a developer thousands of dollars.


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## niemi24s (May 24, 2021)

Just in case it's been lost in the fog of discussion, the pre-COVID (daily) timetables are still available here... Amtrak Tickets, Schedules and Train Routes .... after clicking on Destinations, then See All Routes>, then View Details under the specific route, then <pant, puff> Schedule.

Most seem to be the pdf's available about March, 2020.


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## JontyMort (May 24, 2021)

niemi24s said:


> Just in case it's been lost in the fog of discussion, the pre-COVID (daily) timetables are still available here... Amtrak Tickets, Schedules and Train Routes .... after clicking on Destinations, then See All Routes>, then View Details under the specific route, then <pant, puff> Schedule.
> 
> Most seem to be the pdf's available about March, 2020.


The key thing is to click on Destinations, not Schedules. Naturally, most people would assume Schedules was the link to use.


----------



## zephyr17 (May 24, 2021)

niemi24s said:


> Just in case it's been lost in the fog of discussion, the pre-COVID (daily) timetables are still available here... Amtrak Tickets, Schedules and Train Routes .... after clicking on Destinations, then See All Routes>, then View Details under the specific route, then <pant, puff> Schedule.
> 
> Most seem to be the pdf's available about March, 2020.


And they are quickly becoming outdated. When the Crescent's posted PDF schedule is updated to show the revised schedule and the other long distance trains are posted to show daily service, I will believe that they are maintaining them. As long as only outdated schedules are there, my opinion is they are leftover artifacts of incomplete website updates, which will, over time, become less and less useful even to those who manage to find them.


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## Ryan (May 24, 2021)

You say that like they are hidden away. They're painfully easy to find, and I'm not sure why this myth of "they stole mah timetables!!!11!!!!" continues to live on.


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## Ryan (May 24, 2021)

This isn't rocket surgery:


Ryan said:


> Click on "Destinations".
> Click on "See All Routes".
> Click on "View Details" underneath the Cardinal.
> Click on "Schedule".
> ...


----------



## fdaley (May 24, 2021)

Ryan said:


> This isn't rocket surgery:



When you go the home page, you get five choices across the top:
* Destinations
* Experience
* Deals
* Schedules
* Guest Rewards

Which of these would a person click on to find schedules? Most people would probably guess the "Schedules" tab, which is indeed where schedules could be found until the past couple of weeks. 

So now, printable timetables are nowhere to be found at the "Schedules" tab. Instead, you can go through a multi-step process by first clicking on the counter-intuitive "Destinations" tab, which ultimately leads you to timetables that in many cases are badly outdated. So yeah, I'd say Zephyr17 is showing a healthy skepticism about Amtrak's handling of this.


----------



## zephyr17 (May 24, 2021)

Ryan said:


> Click on "Destinations".
> Click on "See All Routes".
> Click on "View Details" underneath the Cardinal.
> Click on "Schedule".
> ...


That isn't how any rational web UI designer would design the primary navigation path to the schedules.

Especially since one of the top level tabs is "Schedules"


----------



## AmtrakBlue (May 24, 2021)

I suspect most people would be satisfied with the "new" schedules web page. They may not be familiar with the old paper versions. Here they can put in their start and finish cities and a range of dates and see what's available for those city pairs and dates. For city pairs that have multiple options, you can even see the stops between the city pairs. And, though obscure, there's a print button (3x3 squares).
Here is Washington DC to Chicago. I did have to print two versions as it would not show all stops at once (there're "buttons" to click to show the missing stops).


----------



## jebr (May 24, 2021)

AmtrakBlue said:


> I suspect most people would be satisfied with the "new" schedules web page. They may not be familiar with the old paper versions. Here they can put in their start and finish cities and a range of dates and see what's available for those city pairs and dates. For city pairs that have multiple options, you can even see the stops between the city pairs. And, though obscure, there's a print button (3x3 squares).
> Here is Washington DC to Chicago. I did have to print two versions as it would not show all stops at once (there're "buttons" to click to show the missing stops).



At the same time, it wouldn't be difficult for them to add an option under the "Schedules" tab that'd go to a page that would list the PDF schedules for those that prefer that option (maybe something that says "See all schedules.") Amtrak has the PDF schedules anyways, so why not make them easy to find as well under the "Schedules" tab where people would expect to find them?


----------



## zephyr17 (May 24, 2021)

jebr said:


> Amtrak has the PDF schedules anyways, so why not make them easy to find as well under the "Schedules" tab where people would expect to find them?


I would not count on Amtrak having PDF schedules going forward. The ones accessible through the convoluted current route are almost all outdated (triweekly LDs, pre-COVID state-supported corridor schedules, Crecent schedule that is going away June 5).

The navigation path you describe is pretty much the one that was there until a couple of weeks ago.

I am pretty firmly of the opinion it was an incomplete website update. They shut down the primary access path but left an obscure alternate path there. They didn't bother to take the old PDFs down, but aren't maintaining them.


----------



## Cal (May 24, 2021)

zephyr17 said:


> I would not count on Amtrak having PDF schedules going forward. The ones accessible through the convoluted current route are almost all outdated (triweekly LDs, pre-COVID state-supported corridor schedules, Crecent schedule that is going away June 5).
> 
> The navigation path you describe is pretty much the one that was there until a couple of weeks ago.
> 
> I am pretty firmly of the opinion it was an incomplete website update. They shut down the primary access path but left an obscure alternate path there. They didn't bother to take the old PDFs down, but aren't maintaining them.


The Texas Eagle, which is daily, no longer has a PDF schedule.


----------



## zephyr17 (May 24, 2021)

Cal said:


> The Texas Eagle, which is daily, no longer has a PDF schedule.
> 
> View attachment 22624


The other shoe drops.


----------



## Cal (May 24, 2021)

Same goes for the California Zephyr


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## niemi24s (May 24, 2021)

Cal said:


> The Texas Eagle, which is daily, no longer has a PDF schedule.


It does for me: https://aemtest.amtrak.com/content/...ts/timetables/Texas-Eagle-Schedule-030820.pdf

Same goes for the California Zephyr: https://aemtest.amtrak.com/content/...etables/California-Zephyr-Schedule-031620.pdf

But try again, post, try again, post, etc, etc . . . . Good way to build up your already impressive post count!


----------



## Cal (May 24, 2021)

niemi24s said:


> It does for me: https://aemtest.amtrak.com/content/...ts/timetables/Texas-Eagle-Schedule-030820.pdf
> 
> Same goes for the California Zephyr: https://aemtest.amtrak.com/content/...etables/California-Zephyr-Schedule-031620.pdf


HOw did you get that? Did you have the link already or what?


----------



## niemi24s (May 24, 2021)

Cal said:


> HOw did you get that? Did you have the link already or what?


Followed the directions given previously in Post #114.


----------



## jebr (May 24, 2021)

niemi24s said:


> It does for me: https://aemtest.amtrak.com/content/...ts/timetables/Texas-Eagle-Schedule-030820.pdf
> 
> Same goes for the California Zephyr: https://aemtest.amtrak.com/content/...etables/California-Zephyr-Schedule-031620.pdf
> 
> But try again, post, try again, post, etc, etc . . . . Good way to build up your already impressive post count!



Tell me - how would I get to that from *www*.amtrak.com (instead of the virtually unknown *aemtest*.amtrak.com?) I would bet approximately 99.99% of people who ride Amtrak (including 95%+ of people who at least would like a PDF timetable) do not know about *aemtest*.amtrak.com, while most know of amtrak.com or *www*.amtrak.com. There should also not be any reason for most customers to know of what appears to be Amtrak's test site just to access a PDF timetable.


----------



## niemi24s (May 24, 2021)

jebr said:


> Tell me - how would I get to that from *www*.amtrak.com (instead of the virtually unknown *aemtest*.amtrak.com?)


I've no idea how to do it that way. I stumbled across that "aemtest" URL many months ago and I've no recollection how I did it. Anyway, I've posted that link here several times since that discovery and have it bookmarked on my browser (or whatever the hell Chrome is called). Must confess there was a brief period of about a week during the first part of May when that link quit working for me but it started working again.

Both links (to 7X and 3X timetables) are also in Post #43 here: Long Distance Train Coach & Sleeper Fares (Buckets) Guess there's not enough bazanga in my posts to attract much attention, eh?


----------



## Devil's Advocate (May 24, 2021)

John Santos said:


> That's exactly how a distributed denial of service attack (DDOS attack) works.


Pick any common carrier website besides Amtrak.com and try to get it to respond as if it is being attacked using nothing more than a single mainstream browser while clicking links with your own two hands. This is nothing like a real DDoS attack.


----------



## daybeers (May 25, 2021)

Ryan said:


> This isn't rocket surgery:


Those schedules are nowhere near up to date.


AmtrakBlue said:


> I suspect most people would be satisfied with the "new" schedules web page. They may not be familiar with the old paper versions. Here they can put in their start and finish cities and a range of dates and see what's available for those city pairs and dates. For city pairs that have multiple options, you can even see the stops between the city pairs. And, though obscure, there's a print button (3x3 squares).
> Here is Washington DC to Chicago. I did have to print two versions as it would not show all stops at once (there're "buttons" to click to show the missing stops).


This way doesn't allow you to view all the times for all trains on a route at once, which is the whole point of a timetable.


Cal said:


> The Texas Eagle, which is daily, no longer has a PDF schedule.
> 
> View attachment 22624


I don't know why people are pushing back against the theory that Amtrak doesn't care about PDF schedules anymore. Isn't this proof?


niemi24s said:


> It does for me: https://aemtest.amtrak.com/content/...ts/timetables/Texas-Eagle-Schedule-030820.pdf
> 
> Same goes for the California Zephyr: https://aemtest.amtrak.com/content/...etables/California-Zephyr-Schedule-031620.pdf
> 
> But try again, post, try again, post, etc, etc . . . . Good way to build up your already impressive post count!


As said above, this is a vastly unknown website and those schedules are not current anyway.


----------



## AmtrakBlue (May 25, 2021)

niemi24s said:


> It does for me: https://aemtest.amtrak.com/content/...ts/timetables/Texas-Eagle-Schedule-030820.pdf
> 
> Same goes for the California Zephyr: https://aemtest.amtrak.com/content/...etables/California-Zephyr-Schedule-031620.pdf
> 
> But try again, post, try again, post, etc, etc . . . . Good way to build up your already impressive post count!


And those are old timetables. The latest timetables, before they disappeared were dated Oct 2020 (when they went to tri-weekly).

For anyone wanting to see past timetables they can check a more reliable website - 





Amtrak Timetable Archives - Home


Amtrak Timetables Archive



juckins.net


----------



## acelafan (May 25, 2021)

I'll also keep Amtrak Timetable Archives - Home updated as best I can. I did like Amtrak's page that had all the PDF timetables together....one-stop shopping.


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## niemi24s (May 25, 2021)

daybeers said:


> As said above, this is a vastly unknown website and those schedules are not current anyway.


Vastly unknown and not current. What more could an Amtrak foamer ask for besides something else to ***** about?

But Acelafan's extensive collection of pdfs is the bees knees. A dozen or more for each route dating back twelve years and twenty six of the most recent system timetable books. I've got that bookmarked too - it's my BUG when it comes to this sort of thing,if you know what I mean. 

But is that collection current in the sense that it has the timetables trains are using this very day? Of course not.

And will that collection _ever_ be current and include the type of timetables we've come to know and love? Uh . . . . . . . . .


----------



## daybeers (May 25, 2021)

niemi24s said:


> Vastly unknown and not current. What more could an Amtrak foamer ask for besides something else to ***** about?


I'm not an Amtrak foamer, I just want a half decently-run passenger railroad and that includes publishing current timetables.


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## me_little_me (May 25, 2021)

And here we thought that PDF timetables files were the best thing since sliced bread since they eliminated printed material and could be updated more easily and circulated instantly.

This new system must finally be one of Amtrak's "improvements".


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## zephyr17 (May 25, 2021)

I had a conversation with an individual purporting to be an Amtrak employee with contacts in IT on another forum. He said he had been specifically given permission to discuss the timetable issue in some groups he was already active in. He stated that the new "electronic" timetable, a sample of which was posted by AmtrakBlue in post #121 here, is the way they are going and their intention is to no longer maintain the PDF timetables.

While I cannot vouch for his bona fides, everything I have seen on the Amtrak site is consistent with that interpretation. I did request that he suggest they improve them by providing a download option that would give the entire timetable without paging in a PDF format, so they can be saved and more easily referenced offline. That should not be at all difficult, since it is just a matter of dynamically rendering the data already underlying the UI in a different format. He said he would pass it along.

At this point, I am pretty sure the PDF timetables are almost as dead as the Sunset East.

Amtrak's terrible "upgrades" just keep on coming.


----------



## jis (May 25, 2021)

An example of my favorite live timetable provided for Indian Railways can be seen here:





__





02302/New Delhi - Howrah Rajdhani Special (Via Gaya) - New Delhi to Howrah ER/Eastern Zone - Railway Enquiry


COV-Reserved Train. Rake maintained by ER/Eastern Railway Zone. Coach Position/Composition: LOCO EOG A6 A5 A4 A3 A2 A1 H2 H1 PC B10 B9 B8 B7 B6 B5 B4 B3 B2 B1 EOG HCPV. Rake Sharing Arrangement: RSA with 02305 -- 02306. 3 Refurbished Swarna Rakes. Primary Maintenance at Tikiapara Coaching...




indiarailinfo.com





It includes passing times for all interlockings on the route, which also often happen to be a passenger station.

It is actually so live that a train that is currently enroute not only shows its current status and projected status (times) but if it is route diverted it shows passing times on its diverted route! Admittedly that is a lot to ask for, but it is something that is doable if you have a capable IT infrastructure underneath with single source of truth about the system


----------



## jruff001 (May 25, 2021)

While we are geeking out on timetables, here is a good one. It is the UK's National Rail master timetable site (not the cutesie public timetables that have been published by the individual operating companies since nationalisation and the demise of British Railways in 1997).

Check out especially the "Working Timetable" section and associated maps for a behind-the-scenes perspective that the public is probably generally unaware of and doesn't care about.





__





The timetable - Network Rail


We create the timetables for passenger and freight services. There are two timetables, the Working Timetable and the Electronic National Rail Timetable.




www.networkrail.co.uk


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## neroden (May 26, 2021)

zephyr17 said:


> I had a conversation with an individual purporting to be an Amtrak employee with contacts in IT on another forum. He said he had been specifically given permission to discuss the timetable issue in some groups he was already active in. He stated that the new "electronic" timetable, a sample of which was posted by AmtrakBlue in post #121 here, is the way they are going and their intention is to no longer maintain the PDF timetables.
> 
> While I cannot vouch for his bona fides, everything I have seen on the Amtrak site is consistent with that interpretation. I did request that he suggest they improve them by providing a download option that would give the entire timetable without paging in a PDF format, so they can be saved and more easily referenced offline. That should not be at all difficult, since it is just a matter of dynamically rendering the data already underlying the UI in a different format. He said he would pass it along.
> 
> ...


This is unacceptable and I am pretty sure we can get Amtrak management fired for this, though it may take a few years.


----------



## neroden (May 26, 2021)

Complaints now showing up in NUMTOTS, "New Urbanist Memes for Transit Oriented Teens", which has *219,000 members*....

"Hi, question, is there a way to browse Amtrak tickets without a destination in mind? I know Google travel did this with airlines, but can't figure it out with trains."

He follows up by explaining:
"So google travel has a mode called explore where you can say this is where I am, I want to find the cheapest rate in the next six months, then a map comes up with the cheapest flights in the next six months at each location. it would beat ass if it weren't planes. "

Still getting about two complaints a day in other Amtrak fan Facebook groups about the lack of timetables.


----------



## fdaley (May 26, 2021)

The Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority, which runs the Downeaster, has printable timetables at its site (amtrakdowneaster.com) and also hands them out at stations. California has printable schedules at pacificsurfliner.com, capitolcorridor.org and another site for the San Joaquin trains, and as of 2019 when I was last out there they were still requiring Amtrak to print schedules that were available at stations. 

But other state-supported corridors that were relying on Amtrak to provide timetables now have nothing. I've written to both the NY and Wash state DOTs to complain.


----------



## neroden (May 28, 2021)

Thank you, fdaley.


----------



## me_little_me (May 28, 2021)

fdaley said:


> The Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority, which runs the Downeaster, has printable timetables at its site (amtrakdowneaster.com) and also hands them out at stations. California has printable schedules at pacificsurfliner.com, capitolcorridor.org and another site for the San Joaquin trains, and as of 2019 when I was last out there they were still requiring Amtrak to print schedules that were available at stations.
> 
> But other state-supported corridors that were relying on Amtrak to provide timetables now have nothing. I've written to both the NY and Wash state DOTs to complain.


NCDOT has schedules but the through train ones (Meteor, Star, Palmetto, Crescent, Carolinian) show last updated in 2018 and mention nothing of cutbacks.
The Piedmonts are more current showing (and stating) some trains have been restored in April so it appears to be up to date. It is dated April 13, 2021.


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## acelafan (May 28, 2021)

I noticed Amtrak Cascades has an updated PDF timetable on their website, effective May 24, 2021:





__





Our Train Schedules | Amtrak Cascades







www.amtrakcascades.com





I did phone and write to RPA/NARP requesting they ask Amtrak about the PDF timetables going missing for some routes as noted in this thread. Also that some TT are very out of date, like the California services. 

To me it is a head-scratcher why Amtrak would pull or at least be careless/clueless that some of their PDF timetables are missing. It just leads to more prodding and micro-management from the outside. "OK, here is a best-practice for running a business..."


----------



## fdaley (May 28, 2021)

acelafan said:


> I noticed Amtrak Cascades has an updated PDF timetable on their website, effective May 24, 2021:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Oh, progress. The Cascades pdf wasn't there earlier this week. Although the new schedule had taken effect, Washington state still had Amtrak's outdated pdf from early 2020.


----------



## jis (May 28, 2021)

Since they recently added the "Schedule" feature to the App, which BTW works only marginally on the iPhone, just being barely usable, it could possibly indicate that at some point they do have the intetion of populating the timetables to current ones, since that is one of the things you can access through this feature. Or of course, it is possible that they forgot to turn that part off, and it is visible entirely unintentionally.


----------



## Willbridge (May 28, 2021)

fdaley said:


> Oh, progress. The Cascades pdf wasn't there earlier this week. Although the new schedule had taken effect, Washington state still had Amtrak's outdated pdf from early 2020.


It looks as if the WSDOT people gave up and had a temp type the public schedules, as there are several typos that leap off the page. However, it's better than nothing!

Amtrak Cascades Train Schedule Effective May 24, 2021


----------



## dcipjr (May 29, 2021)

Are timetables still available in stations and onboard?


----------



## jis (May 29, 2021)

dcipjr said:


> Are timetables still available in stations and onboard?


Printed timetables even as posters? No

I was just looking at 49 CFR 700.3, where timetables are mentioned in clause (b).

Maybe someone should file an FOIA request asking for a copy of the National Timetable which is supposed to be published in April and October and see what happens. 

Maybe RPA should take this on if it can get over its fears of pissing Amtrak off.


----------



## Ryan (May 29, 2021)

I think it would be absolutely amazing if Amtrak was buried in requests for copies of the National Timetable.

Edit: This sounds like pretty goood reading as well:


> (c) Also available to members of the public at most staffed Amtrak stations, and usually maintained in the offices of travel agencies authorized to sell Amtrak tickets, is a copy of the Reservations and Ticketing Manual (RTM) which constitutes a compendium of information governing Amtrak employees in furnishing transportation to the travelling public. It contains substantial segments dedicated to the following topics: Amtrak's computer system and its communication codes; interline service agreements; passenger and baggage services; customer relations functions; reservations policy and procedures; acceptance of checks and credit cards; refunds; missed connection policies; ticketing; accommodations; employee pass travel; location maps for Amtrak stations; and intermodal state maps.


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## PaTrainFan (May 29, 2021)

National timetable not necessary anymore, but up to date route schedules should be available.


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## saxman (May 29, 2021)

Wish I could find this again, but another Amtrak employee was posting in social media about getting rid of PDF timetables. He said they were very time consuming and since they are constantly changing its very difficult to keep up with, but it's now better because we can just type in the city pair.  

Of course we all know every city pair isn't entered into Arrow, so when someone that knows nothing about Amtrak is looking to travel from some small town to another small town, it'll just return service not available, even though it is.


----------



## AmtrakBlue (May 29, 2021)

saxman said:


> Wish I could find this again, but another Amtrak employee was posting in social media about getting rid of PDF timetables. He said they were very time consuming and since they are constantly changing its very difficult to keep up with, but it's now better because we can just type in the city pair.


Found it. Alan's reply to John Humphrey ("Here is an idea, that just came to me.....") . Facebook Groups


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## acelafan (May 29, 2021)

jis said:


> Printed timetables even as posters? No
> 
> I was just looking at 49 CFR 700.3, where timetables are mentioned in clause (b).
> 
> ...


Well isn't that an interesting little gem. I will contact RPA again next week and ask them about it. I will also call Amtrak Customer Relations. It's a little aggravating we have to beg for updated timetables, or timetables at all.

Also, making the National Timetables PDF is easy - all you do is concatenate the individual TT together and add page numbers. There is probably a macro or script that could do it if someone was savvy enough.


----------



## PaTrainFan (May 29, 2021)

For goodness sakes alive, it is not hard at all. Constantly changing? How much have Amtrak schedules changed over the last few years? Minimally. Maybe tweaks to the NE Corridor. And yes there may be details that in a schedule like connections, etc. need to be kept up on. You just go into the program that created the document, edit, save as .PDF and you're done. I'll do it for them for crying out loud!


----------



## jis (May 29, 2021)

saxman said:


> Wish I could find this again, but another Amtrak employee was posting in social media about getting rid of PDF timetables. He said they were very time consuming and since they are constantly changing its very difficult to keep up with, but it's now better because we can just type in the city pair.
> 
> Of course we all know every city pair isn't entered into Arrow, so when someone that knows nothing about Amtrak is looking to travel from some small town to another small town, it'll just return service not available, even though it is.


Well, if he does not like PDF, how about HTML or XML, just to be more modern  and incidentally, much easier to automatically generate?

Actually, in this day and age they should be able to on the fly generate route timetables, automatically from the working timetable that they must have somewhere, though it may be too much to expect that their antiquated museum piece IT provides a JSON or XML interface for such information for such documents. Afterall their advanced way of interfacing appears to be screen scraping in some cases too! 

Producing multi-leg connecting time tables would be just a bit more work admittedly.


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## me_little_me (May 29, 2021)

PaTrainFan said:


> National timetable not necessary anymore, but up to date route schedules should be available.


You, like everyone else, is entitled to his/her opinion.


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## me_little_me (May 29, 2021)

saxman said:


> Wish I could find this again, but another Amtrak employee was posting in social media about getting rid of PDF timetables. He said they were very time consuming and since they are constantly changing its very difficult to keep up with, but it's now better because we can just type in the city pair.
> 
> Of course we all know every city pair isn't entered into Arrow, so when someone that knows nothing about Amtrak is looking to travel from some small town to another small town, it'll just return service not available, even though it is.


Did the employee offer to provide his/her phone number for those that need that information?


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## zephyr17 (May 29, 2021)

jis said:


> Well, if he does not like PDF, how about HTML or XML, just to be more modern  and incidentally, much easier to automatically generate?
> 
> Actually, in this day and age they should be able to on the fly generate route timetables, automatically from the working timetable that they must have somewhere, though it may be too much to expect that their antiquated museum piece IT provides a JSON or XML interface for such information for such documents. Afterall their advanced way of interfacing appears to be screen scraping in some cases too!
> 
> Producing multi-leg connecting time tables would be just a bit more work admittedly.


Looked at the source on the website. The data underlying the UI are JSON objects. Arrow itself is at least one services layer away, probably more.

It would be easy enough to dynamically render a PDF from the JSON using a template on user demand. There are industrial strength commercial apps that can do it.


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## jis (May 29, 2021)

zephyr17 said:


> Looked at the source on the website. The data is in JSON.


Oh cool! Then what is the hullabaloo about. It should be relatively simple to scare up something that generates a displayable and printable version of a table with appropriate fields extracted and collated and then made to look like a timetable using facilities available in the JSON/XML platform. This makes it doubly weird.


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## zephyr17 (May 29, 2021)

jis said:


> Oh cool! Then what is the hullabaloo about. It should be relatively simple to scare up something that generates a displayable and printable version of a table with appropriate fields extracted and collated and then made to look like a timetable using facilities available in the JSON/XML platform. This makes it doubly weird.


Yep, worked on acquiring a tool that would render a nicely formatted fancy PDF from structured data (JSON, XML, DB table) codelessly. The only code you needed was to call the object with the right parameters and the run time rendered the document. You'd only need to set up a timetable template once.


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## jis (May 29, 2021)

zephyr17 said:


> Yep, worked on acquiring a tool that would render a nicely formatted fancy PDF from structured data (JSON, XML, DB table) codelessly. The only code you needed was to call the object with the right parameters and the run time rendered the document. You'd only need to set up a timetable template once.


Exactly. I have done so many of these sorts of things before I retired, mostly as a side thing to explain to programmers what I was looking for. My day job of designing systems did not include the coding part per se, but it is always good to do POCs before foisting the thing on someone else, and the coders loved to get the POC, since they could typically start with the skeleton code and fill it in with the bells and whistles. Saved them time.


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## saxman (May 29, 2021)

PaTrainFan said:


> For goodness sakes alive, it is not hard at all. Constantly changing? How much have Amtrak schedules changed over the last few years? Minimally. Maybe tweaks to the NE Corridor. And yes there may be details that in a schedule like connections, etc. need to be kept up on. You just go into the program that created the document, edit, save as .PDF and you're done. I'll do it for them for crying out loud!



Maybe not the actual timetable part, but with all the stations losing and then gaining back staffing. Checked baggage coming and going. Now some trains have walk up bike checking available. I understand it's a monumental task. As, Jis said, it should be easy to do a quick revision and issue it when there is a change or mistake made in a previous. I understand national timetables not being printed anymore, but it should be fairly easy to make a change and then put it out to the masses in whatever format they like.

With the likes a biketrain and Amsnag out there, if Amtrak doesn't want to have printed timetables, hopefully someone out there will keep up their own version. Someone with dedication and time on their hands. As AmtrakBlue pointed out, here is the relevant Facebook post where an Amtrak employee was asking for feed back about timetables. It looks like he's pretty receptive.


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## neroden (May 30, 2021)

jis said:


> Printed timetables even as posters? No
> 
> I was just looking at 49 CFR 700.3, where timetables are mentioned in clause (b).
> 
> ...


Oh my goodness. Nice catch, given that that is a *federal regulation*. Yeah....

49 CFR 701.3 (a) seems relevant. I'll keep that in mind.
____

I don't really care how hard it is to keep the station information and timetables updated -- literally every other railroad in the US, and nearly every other railroad in the world, manages to do it. It's just part of doing business, and can can certainly be done. As I pointed out, *they have to provide this information to the conductors*, so they have it in a complete, tabular format already.


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## neroden (May 30, 2021)

jis said:


> Oh cool! Then what is the hullabaloo about. It should be relatively simple to scare up something that generates a displayable and printable version of a table with appropriate fields extracted and collated and then made to look like a timetable using facilities available in the JSON/XML platform. This makes it doubly weird.



I currently think that Amtrak's last round of idiotic "buyouts" of non-union employees lost all their competent IT people, and quite likely all their competent marketing people. That's my current working theory. Pity they didn't buy out Gardner, though.


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## daybeers (May 30, 2021)

Also never understood how you can run a passenger railroad without more station information, such as about local transit connections and parking. It’s always just “short-term” or “long-term” parking available. It’s really not that hard to maintain how many spaces there are and how much it costs or just to link to the town’s page on it for example if they operate it.


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## AmtrakBlue (May 30, 2021)

There are currently 25 IT positions open at Amtrak. I think some of y'all need to apply. 






Information Technology Jobs


View Information Technology Jobs at Amtrak




careers.amtrak.com


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## fdaley (May 30, 2021)

saxman said:


> Wish I could find this again, but another Amtrak employee was posting in social media about getting rid of PDF timetables. He said they were very time consuming and since they are constantly changing its very difficult to keep up with, but it's now better because we can just type in the city pair.
> 
> Of course we all know every city pair isn't entered into Arrow, so when someone that knows nothing about Amtrak is looking to travel from some small town to another small town, it'll just return service not available, even though it is.



This seems so funny to me. I mean, it's very time consuming running a railroad too. If we could all just travel virtually, we wouldn't need to worry about having schedules and keeping them up to date.


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## jis (May 30, 2021)

Someone claiming in this day and age that maintaining a database for the timetable to too time consuming to be do it is merely expressing the high level of incompetence involved I am afraid. 

It is sort of like a Restaurant saying that it is too time consuming to keep track of food inventory.... Oh wait Amtrak does have that problem too I suppose


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## railiner (May 30, 2021)

AmtrakBlue said:


> There are currently 25 IT positions open at Amtrak. I think some of y'all need to apply.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


IT positions are always open at Amtrak...there must be a reason for that 'revolving door'. Or is it that way for other businesses as well?


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## railiner (May 30, 2021)

neroden said:


> *they have to provide this information to the conductors*, so they have it in a complete, tabular format already.


And they certainly have to provide it to their host railroads as well...


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## acelafan (May 30, 2021)

Reading this thread, and that Facebook thread, is extremely aggravating. 

Does someone really have to hand-hold their IT department and teach them how to pull info from a database and reformat into table form? If they are currently overworked updating timetables as claimed in that FB thread then obviously they need to modernize their processes. 

The PDFs don't even have to be as "pretty" as they are now - just list the train #, days it runs, stations and times. They obviously have the information; it's just a matter of making it available to passengers. 

I knew printed timetables were not likely to ever be seen again, but now all timetables? Jeeeesh.


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## fdaley (May 30, 2021)

jis said:


> Someone claiming in this day and age that maintaining a database for the timetable to too time consuming to do it is merely expressing the high level of incompetence involved I am afraid.
> 
> It is sort of like a Restaurant saying that it is too time consuming to keep track of food inventory.... Oh wait Amtrak does have that problem too I suppose



I think it's more like a restaurant not having a printed or displayed menu and instead telling you that, if you feel like chicken, just punch that into our app and we'll show you all the chicken entrees. It works fine if you have a pretty good idea in advance of what you want, but you don't have the ability to survey all the options and perhaps be inspired to try something unexpected.

So the point-to-point offering on the website is OK if I'm going from Albany to New York and back or between some other pair of stations that I do all the time. And no doubt for many customers that's all the information they need, because that's the only kind of train travel they do. But if I'm planning a three-week cross-country trip with several stopovers, I really want to see what's covered in daylight, the connections between LD and corridor services, whether the connecting schedule's different on Friday or Sunday, and all kinds of other details before I'd even know whether it works better for me to take the Zephyr eastbound or westbound, for example. I don't think I'd have the patience to try to dope that out by punching in an endless bunch of city pairs and days of the week. So in a very real way, it becomes a disincentive to attempting that kind of travel.


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## zephyr17 (May 30, 2021)

acelafan said:


> Does someone really have to hand-hold their IT department and teach them how to pull info from a database and reformat into table form? If they are currently overworked updating timetables as claimed in that FB thread then obviously they need to modernize their processes.


They don't need to get it from the DB. As I mentioned in an early post, the requisite data is already available as JSON objects, which could easily rendered as a PDF codelessly with commercial software.

BTW, a presentation layer directly accessing database is not current best practice. A data layer, with possibility a business service layer, is preferred. That there are JSON objects available indicates they have already implemented at least a data layer.


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## acelafan (May 30, 2021)

zephyr17 said:


> They don't need to get it from the DB. As I mentioned in an early post, the requisite data is already available as JSON objects, which could easily rendered as a PDF codelessly with commercial software.
> 
> BTW, a presentation layer directly accessing database is not current best practice. A data layer, with possibility a business service layer, is preferred. That there are JSON objects available indicates they have already implemented at least a data layer.


Thanks. Regardless of how the data is stored, retrieved and presented it can obviously be done. The hard part seems to convince them to do it or get RPA after them.


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## Brian Battuello (May 30, 2021)

I skimmed this thread, so apologize if this has been said...

You can still get a decent timetable from Dixieland Software's Amtrak Status maps.

Go to Amtrak Status Maps , navigate to the train you want, and voila!




They get the info from the Amtrak status page, so should be right up to date. Note the button labeled PDF schedule, which still links to the last version of the printed schedule. 

Hit the "Details" and "Formatted Data" for even nicer formats.


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## fdaley (May 30, 2021)

Brian Battuello said:


> I skimmed this thread, so apologize if this has been said...
> 
> You can still get a decent timetable from Dixieland Software's Amtrak Status maps.
> 
> ...



I don't think that has been mentioned in this thread, but I was thinking that site would be a good place to get all the current data if I wanted it for the LD trains. For the multi-frequency routes, though, you'd have to print out or copy the data for each individual run and then somehow compile them into a timetable. As others have suggested, perhaps some third party would do that work and make it available online somewhere, but it seems like it ought to be Amtrak's job -- and that it would be in their best interest to have this be available to potential customers.


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## Brian Battuello (May 30, 2021)

Hmm. You are quite correct. Nothing like a northeast service schedule with 20 trains a day from Washington to NYP.


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## west point (May 30, 2021)

Multiple train routes need timetables for those persons who cannot know what time they will be free to travel until the last minute. The more you travel under those conditions the more you need a timetable. Virginia timetables to NEC certainly need timetables. Example a person living half way between NS and CSX might need to know where to go for the next train

25 open IT positions ? No wonder things are so screwed up. Will take another 5 -10 present IT to train new hires.


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## dcipjr (May 31, 2021)

It seems that the timetable link on the individual train pages (as an example, the Capitol Limited, click on "Schedule") has stopped working.


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## neroden (May 31, 2021)

AmtrakBlue said:


> There are currently 25 IT positions open at Amtrak. I think some of y'all need to apply.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Riiiight. Confirming my suspicion that the "buyouts" lost essential employees. Oh boy. Amtrak is a complete shambles.


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## niemi24s (May 31, 2021)

dcipjr said:


> It seems that the timetable link on the individual train pages (as an example, the Capitol Limited, click on "Schedule") has stopped working.


That may be because the Capitol Limited was scheduled to have returned to a daily schedule yesterday. The old daily timetable/schedule dated March, 2020 is still available here: Amtrak Tickets, Schedules and Train Routes and the one dated October, 2020 here: Amtrak Timetable Archives - Home

Looks like you'll have to do your own sleuthing (by making 15 separate test bookings on Arrow) to see if either of these reflects todays reality as using the Schedules button on the home page seems to be of no use now. Wunnerful - simply wunnerful!!


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## Barb Stout (May 31, 2021)

AmtrakBlue said:


> Found it. Alan's reply to John Humphrey ("Here is an idea, that just came to me.....") . Facebook Groups


It sounds ok, but it didn't work for me at all. Here is what I posted to Alan Burnstines post about timetables/schedules: 
"It didn't work for me at all except for the initial input. I entered a city pair and a date in December and the longest range (Sunday to Sunday in my case) and then "schedule". The only thing that happened is that the word "Schedule" greyed out, but no schedules revealed themselves. I am using Chrome on a Macintosh computer. Are there particular computer/browser combinations that this doesn't work with? Oh, I tried it a 4th time and got this message which I hadn't gotten the first 3 times I tried:
"We've experienced an unknown error. Try again later or call us at 1-800-USA-RAIL." So I guess I'll try another time. Maybe the site is taking a day off as it is Memorial Day." Did anyone one else on here try it out and was your success better than mine? I had tried various city pairs just in case it didn't like some pairs, but nothing worked.

Edit: I also tried it in Safari on my Macintosh, but same with only it didn't give any error messages.


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## AmtrakBlue (May 31, 2021)

Barb Stout said:


> It sounds ok, but it didn't work for me at all. Here is what I posted to Alan Burnstines post about timetables/schedules:
> "It didn't work for me at all except for the initial input. I entered a city pair and a date in December and the longest range (Sunday to Sunday in my case) and then "schedule". The only thing that happened is that the word "Schedule" greyed out, but no schedules revealed themselves. I am using Chrome on a Macintosh computer. Are there particular computer/browser combinations that this doesn't work with? Oh, I tried it a 4th time and got this message which I hadn't gotten the first 3 times I tried:
> "We've experienced an unknown error. Try again later or call us at 1-800-USA-RAIL." So I guess I'll try another time. Maybe the site is taking a day off as it is Memorial Day." Did anyone one else on here try it out and was your success better than mine? I had tried various city pairs just in case it didn't like some pairs, but nothing worked.


I was getting that error yesterday with using just one date.

I would not be surprised if they’re doing updates to the system since it is a holiday weekend. That’s a popular time for updates to be made at many companies.


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## zephyr17 (May 31, 2021)

It's gone in and out for me over the last few days. It is also pretty slow even just retrieving one day on one route even when it does work.


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## acelafan (May 31, 2021)

Barb Stout said:


> It sounds ok, but it didn't work for me at all. Here is what I posted to Alan Burnstines post about timetables/schedules:
> "It didn't work for me at all except for the initial input. I entered a city pair and a date in December and the longest range (Sunday to Sunday in my case) and then "schedule". The only thing that happened is that the word "Schedule" greyed out, but no schedules revealed themselves. I am using Chrome on a Macintosh computer. Are there particular computer/browser combinations that this doesn't work with? Oh, I tried it a 4th time and got this message which I hadn't gotten the first 3 times I tried:
> "We've experienced an unknown error. Try again later or call us at 1-800-USA-RAIL." So I guess I'll try another time. Maybe the site is taking a day off as it is Memorial Day." Did anyone one else on here try it out and was your success better than mine? I had tried various city pairs just in case it didn't like some pairs, but nothing worked.
> 
> Edit: I also tried it in Safari on my Macintosh, but same with only it didn't give any error messages.


I tried it yesterday and forgot to mention it failed miserably. Attached is a screenshot - the same error as you.


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## acelafan (May 31, 2021)

Before someone says that query from ATL to KCY is too difficult, here's an easy one for the Crescent. Still no luck.


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## acelafan (Jun 1, 2021)

A friend of mine works for Amtrak in ops and he's quite senior. He asked the group in charge about the timetables and he said "It's not looking good - they cut that job." He thinks RPA is the best hope to change things. 

I called RPA and the representative (Harvey?) said they would raise this issue with Amtrak at their weekly meeting tomorrow. He said it can take a long time for them to respond to queries, though.


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## railiner (Jun 1, 2021)

"They cut that job"? Incredible! Since they don't publish and distribute printed National and route timetables anymore, how much time can it take for one person to simply use existing templates and make the occasional changes for the PDF accessed by the website? I'm not an "IT guy", by any stretch of the imagination, but I wouldn't think it would take more than a few minutes, whenever a change in schedules is made, if they keep it up on an ongoing basis....


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## Devil's Advocate (Jun 1, 2021)

There is no reason why anyone should need to manually update published data from a dynamic source. This is a task made for computers. The job of many IT guys is to make tedious tasks faster and more dependable, until at some point they can simply run on their own without intervention. The difference with Amtrak is that they fail to build the replacement process before ridding themselves of the staff.


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## drdumont (Jun 2, 2021)

Devil's Advocate said:


> The difference with Amtrak is that they fail to build the replacement process before ridding themselves of the staff.



In a related subject, here's a "No S___ter". My company last year issued a nationwide decree: "Every department will lay off one employee. No exceptions. Questions and request for variance will not be entertained. Period."
So I lost the last assistant I had. Been averaging 20-25 hours a week overtime since to cover the shifts and work. Cool.

Now here's the payoff: We had a department which oversaw a computer operation - home grown home built software and hardware, administered the entire 44 station network commercial acquisition combination database and file transfer automation. Three people, the guy who wrote the system and two assistants. One left two years ago. Another quit two months before the bastinado. To go to work for the first guy who quit. And of course, no replacements. So Chuck, this one man department whose operation is the key to corporate income, gets the pronunciamento. Chuck duly submits his name and corporate ID number. On D-Day he receives a Fedex addressed to him. In it was the standard "See Yuh" package directing him to terminate forthwith the person named on the form, complete with forms, severance checks, and receipts to sign when he took possession of the password list, corporate cellphone, computer, keys, building and parking pass.
So he wrote an email to himself directing that he report to his office forthwith. Signed all the papers, called Security, was perpwalked out the door, and security used his override to open the parking lot gate. See Yuh!
Wait for it...

Within a week days he was getting calls at home. Answered none, but his attorney notified the company that Chuck could not speak to them, as he was under an NDA with his new employer. You guessed it, the hated competition. The corporation offered the competition a large amount of money to hire him as a contractor for a week to sort things out. Competitor refused, on Chuck's advice.

So as of last week the company is still Fedexing commercial material to each station on disk drives, and has contracted a firm to rebuild the system all new. From? Yup. The company started by the first guy who quit.

And it's not a password thing, Chuck sent certified letters with all passwords to several corporate officers before D-Day.

I am retiring (after 57 years in the business, and 10 years here) on 31 December 30 - days after I am entitled to the pension. I will still be laughing.

Bottom Line:
So I am thinking of applying to AMTRAK to be the Timetable Data Base Coordinator. Sounds like they need one. Indoor work and no heavy lifting, I bet.


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## neroden (Jun 3, 2021)

acelafan said:


> A friend of mine works for Amtrak in ops and he's quite senior. He asked the group in charge about the timetables and he said "It's not looking good - they cut that job." He thinks RPA is the best hope to change things.
> 
> I called RPA and the representative (Harvey?) said they would raise this issue with Amtrak at their weekly meeting tomorrow. He said it can take a long time for them to respond to queries, though.


The timetables are going to come back. The big question for me is, will they come back under current Amtrak management, or will we have to get Flynn and his entire top staff fired? We can; this is egregious enough.

Keep on complaining to Amtrak. I've got an awful lot going on personally in the next two weeks, but I'm not going to let up on this either. I know some approaches through Congress, and jishnu has found a legal approach; I want a DOT approach, however, which I haven't found yet (due to, honestly, working on other things most of the time). I think DOT will have the greatest ability to apply pressure this year, so if anyone has a connection at DOT, start using it.


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## dcipjr (Jun 3, 2021)

The aforementioned "Schedule" link on the individual train route pages has now disappeared.


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## Cal (Jun 3, 2021)

dcipjr said:


> The aforementioned "Schedule" link on the individual train route pages has now disappeared.


This happened days ago, only on some routes, I believe LD trains that have gone back to daily service.


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## jis (Jun 3, 2021)

There is some evidence that the only way one gets any activity funded within Amtrak is to first try to discontinue it and then watch hell break loose. What a way to run a company!


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## acelafan (Jun 3, 2021)

Cal said:


> This happened days ago, only on some routes, I believe LD trains that have gone back to daily service.


They are slowly disappearing, yesterday only 4 routes were missing but now all these schedules are gone:

California Zephyr
Capitol Limited
City of New Orleans
Coast Starlight
Empire Builder
Lake Shore Limited
Southwest Chief
Texas Eagle

I am calling Customer Relations today and making a complaint.


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## railiner (Jun 3, 2021)

jis said:


> There is some evidence that the only way one gets any activity funded within Amtrak is to first try to discontinue it and then watch hell break loose. What a way to run a company!


That's how Claytor manipulated Congress, right? By threatening to cut a train that happened to go though the district of reluctant members of finance committees?


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## jis (Jun 3, 2021)

railiner said:


> That's how Claytor manipulated Congress, right? By threatening to cut a train that happened to go though the district of reluctant members of finance committees?


I suppose it is fair enough to use what seems to work repeatedly. Actually, coming think of it, in this context, Anderson seems to have done a masterful job to secure stable funding for the Southwest Chief  And now it appears even food service is on the way to get more stably funded. I wish there was a better less stressful way to achieve these.


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## neroden (Jun 3, 2021)

I found Bill Flynn's email address through Elliott Advocacy.






Amtrak







www.elliott.org





Use it wisely.

UPDATE: Flynn's email is bouncing -- but his subordinates' emails aren't.


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## acelafan (Jun 3, 2021)

It took a long time to get through but I did open a case with Customer Relations asking for the missing timetables and giving multiple reasons why they should not be discontinued. Like...printing them ahead of time before a trip because you may not have wifi or mobile data access enroute, they are helpful for trip planning, and their absence prevents computer-challenged people like my mother from trying to figure out where the trains run. 

The representative said she would send my comments to management and that I asked to be contacted about it. Not holding my breath, obviously, but whining is better than remaining silent in this case.


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## daybeers (Jun 3, 2021)

acelafan said:


> It took a long time to get through but I did open a case with Customer Relations asking for the missing timetables and giving multiple reasons why they should not be discontinued. Like...printing them ahead of time before a trip because you may not have wifi or mobile data access enroute, they are helpful for trip planning, and their absence prevents computer-challenged people like my mother from trying to figure out where the trains run.
> 
> The representative said she would send my comments to management and that I asked to be contacted about it. Not holding my breath, obviously, but whining is better than remaining silent in this case.


Thank you for doing that!! Please update if you receive a response.


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## COTraveler (Jun 4, 2021)

Death by a thousand paper cuts. I've had enough. I cashed in all my points for a cross-country trip this summer, which unfortunately will probably be my last trip on Amtrak.


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## drdumont (Jun 4, 2021)

Enjoy your trip this Summer. But don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Check back in a few months and see if progress is made.


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## zephyr17 (Jun 5, 2021)

Amtrak goes through cycles and always has, pretty much from crappy to really crappy to super crappy then back to crappy. We appear to be starting another super crappy to merely crappy transition in the cycle right now.


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## Trailrider1951 (Jun 5, 2021)

I have some copies of past schedules for some western trains, and a couple of eastern ones. Some are dated March, 2020, before the switch to three day a week train schedules. They are in pdf format. I can post them if:

1. there is interest
2. it is allowed and does not infringe on copyright laws, and 
3. does not violate the terms of use of this website.

Just let me know.


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## jis (Jun 5, 2021)

Apparently RPA reps brought up the timetable on website issue with Amtrak management and they were informed that the outage is temporary until they manage to get their act together through this unstable period of frequent timetable changes, which they are not staffed to deal with. Why not is a good question, but as has been said by the last guy "It is what it is" I guess.  Anyway, it is good to know that even this shall pass, if they stick to their word that is.


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## me_little_me (Jun 5, 2021)

jis said:


> Apparently RPA reps brought up the timetable on website issue with Amtrak management and they were informed that the outage is temporary until they manage to get their act together through this unstable period of frequent timetable changes, which they are not staffed to deal with. Why not is a good question, but as has been said by the last guy "It is what it is" I guess.  Anyway, it is good to know that even this shall pass, if they stick to their word that is.


What's sad is that most of Amtrak's problems are two problems:

The original problem itself (in this case, no timetables)

Their lack of any kind of customer understanding: "Amtrak has a temporary issue with releasing new timetables because [ explanation here]. Please bear with us. Our management has researched the issue and resolved the delay so fully expects to have the problem resolved and new timetables available online by [date here] and in print by [date here]]." <--- The missing part - telling their customers.


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## zephyr17 (Jun 5, 2021)

jis said:


> Apparently RPA reps brought up the timetable on website issue with Amtrak management and they were informed that the outage is temporary until they manage to get their act together through this unstable period of frequent timetable changes, which they are not staffed to deal with. Why not is a good question, but as has been said by the last guy "It is what it is" I guess.  Anyway, it is good to know that even this shall pass, if they stick to their word that is.


My take is they actually intended permanent removal of the timetables, that is what I've heard in other forums and pretty consistently. When called on it by the RPA (and some of their own market research, which was what I was seeing in the other forums), they found a plausible excuse. It wouldn't be the first time Amtrak management has come up with such "the dog ate my homework" excuses for their actions.

Now, though, the important thing is too see that they follow up on their commitment to restore the timetables. There have been wayyyy too many things that Amtrak management implemented as "temporary" that turned out to be permanent.


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## acelafan (Jun 6, 2021)

Trailrider1951 said:


> I have some copies of past schedules for some western trains, and a couple of eastern ones. Some are dated March, 2020, before the switch to three day a week train schedules. They are in pdf format. I can post them if:
> 
> 1. there is interest
> 2. it is allowed and does not infringe on copyright laws, and
> ...


Trailrider1951, thanks - I have kept track of Amtrak timetables for about a decade to the best of my ability. First I would check the Amtrak website every 30 days for any changes and post them to my archive at this link: Amtrak Timetable Archives - Home

But then I wrote a program to automatically check amtrak.com for changes and it worked well for years, until Amtrak removed the consolidated list of timetables and then started removing the PDFs altogether. Hopefully they will come back as they say.


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## west point (Jun 6, 2021)

The Amtrak list for IT persons says they are hiring 25 persons. (last month ). Need anyone say more ?


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## neroden (Jun 11, 2021)

zephyr17 said:


> My take is they actually intended permanent removal of the timetables, that is what I've heard in other forums and pretty consistently. When called on it by the RPA (and some of their own market research, which was what I was seeing in the other forums), they found a plausible excuse. It wouldn't be the first time Amtrak management has come up with such "the dog ate my homework" excuses for their actions.


I'm afraid that's also what it looks like to me.



> Now, though, the important thing is too see that they follow up on their commitment to restore the timetables. There have been wayyyy too many things that Amtrak management implemented as "temporary" that turned out to be permanent.


Yep. Keep the pressure on.


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## drdumont (Jun 11, 2021)

neroden said:


> Yep. Keep the pressure on.


How can we help?


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## neroden (Jun 12, 2021)

drdumont said:


> How can we help?



Keep complaining to Amtrak and telling them you want timetables ASAP, through whatever channels you have. Complain to your Congresspeople, too, perhaps. If we get something better-organized going like a petition or delegation or open letter, I'll let y'all know, but we don't seem to be quite to that stage of organization yet (I am still talking to other people at RPA about this.)


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## Abe26 (Jun 13, 2021)

Can we please get the timetables back????


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## Palmetto (Jun 13, 2021)

Abe26 said:


> Can we please get the timetables back????




See the post above yours.


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## railiner (Jun 13, 2021)

neroden said:


> Keep complaining to Amtrak and telling them you want timetables ASAP, through whatever channels you have. Complain to your Congresspeople, too, perhaps. If we get something better-organized going like a petition or delegation or open letter, I'll let y'all know, but we don't seem to be quite to that stage of organization yet (I am still talking to other people at RPA about this.)


While I whole-heartedly support your crusade to restore the timetables, I am afraid that if I vehemently complain to my Congressperson over that one issue, I would be dismissed as some sort of 'kook', and lose credibility for any future lobbying....


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## neroden (Jun 13, 2021)

railiner said:


> While I whole-heartedly support your crusade to restore the timetables, I am afraid that if I vehemently complain to my Congressperson over that one issue, I would be dismissed as some sort of 'kook', and lose credibility for any future lobbying....



....I don't think so. If your Congressman has ever used a train in his entire life, his reaction is likely to be "what the hell, what do you mean Amtrak isn't publishing timetables, what is wrong with them?" You might want to point out that every other railroad in the world, including SunRail, Tri-Rail, Brightline, Miami Metrorail, and Miami Metromover, publishes timetables, and that Amtrak (the railroad funded by *Congress*) should too. If your Congressman has never used a train in his life, it might cause him to campaign for Amtrak to be defunded or privatized because Amtrak management is incompetent, but that's the risk you take.

If you were complaining to your Congressman about the food in the dining cars, then yes, you might sound like a kook. Complaining about the absence of timetables, something every single railroad in the world provides, just makes you sound like someone who is asking for something extremely reasonable and normal which you have every right to expect.


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## MARC Rider (Jun 13, 2021)

neroden said:


> Keep complaining to Amtrak and telling them you want timetables ASAP, through whatever channels you have. Complain to your Congresspeople, too, perhaps. If we get something better-organized going like a petition or delegation or open letter, I'll let y'all know, but we don't seem to be quite to that stage of organization yet (I am still talking to other people at RPA about this.)


Think that making a FOIA request citing 49 CFR § 700.3 (b) would help? Of course, if Amtrak responds to FOIA requests like we used to do at EPA, it'll be "all hands on deck," mostly doing CYA paperwork to document that they're dealing with the request, not necessarily actually dealing with the request.  And this might mean that maybe nobody will be available to actually put the timetables back up on the website.  (And, actually, 49 CFR § 700.3 (b) does seem to suggest that the timetables are to be printed.)

Amtrak FOIA requests got to:

Amtrak FOIA Office
1 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20001

You may also submit a FOIA request via fax to 202-799-6934 or via email to [email protected]. 

Also, here's aa copy of Amtrak's FOIA handbook, which gives suggestions on how to make a FOIA request.

Oh, and FYI, they may want to charge you for xeroxing stuff. We would do that to law firms representing big rich regulated companies, but maybe waive the fees for impecunious public-interest groups. If the requested information required hours of searching through half-forgotten files drawers and additional work putting the stuff together, we might also charge those law firms for the labor involved. Because a large percentage of the FOIA requests from the law firms were "fishing expeditions" where the firm wasn't sure what they were looking for, once we quoted them a fat price for getting the stuff together, they usually backed off.

Of course, a request for public timetables would be a completely different kettle of fish. I think if I made such a request and they started dragging their heels or charging me xerox fees, I'd just find a handy reporter at the Washington Post and embarrass them to hell. But I suspect that they would be more likely to just send me some sort of timetable.


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## Devil's Advocate (Jun 13, 2021)

railiner said:


> While I whole-heartedly support your crusade to restore the timetables, I am afraid that if I vehemently complain to my Congressperson over that one issue, I would be dismissed as some sort of 'kook', and lose credibility for any future lobbying....


You won't be talking to your actual congressperson unless you're on the major donor list and telling an office clerk you want Amtrak to publish timetables for easier booking would be one of the _least_ kooky things they heard that day.


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## railiner (Jun 14, 2021)

Devil's Advocate said:


> You won't be talking to your actual congressperson unless you're on the major donor list and telling an office clerk you want Amtrak to publish timetables for easier booking would be one of the _least_ kooky things they heard that day.


Good point...I suppose it might help if you would tell your Congressperson, that you would be sure to let other advocates in their constituency how they supported your request?


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## drdumont (Jun 17, 2021)

< On 16 June, 2021) I just got this email from AMTRAK:
------------------------------
_Thank you for contacting us.

Please visit Amtrak.com, where you can download printable versions of timetables for each route in the Amtrak system. You can also download the entire Amtrak System Timetable. You will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader to view these PDF files. Please note that the schedule information listed in our Timetables may change after publication. The most current information may be obtained at Amtrak.com or by calling an Amtrak reservations agent.

Please call 1-800-USA-RAIL (1-800-872-7245), 24/7, if you need assistance. Press '0' to speak with an Amtrak reservations agent.

We look forward to serving you aboard Amtrak. 

Sincerely,
Maureen
Amtrak Center of Excellence_
-------------------------------------------
Needless to say, I can not find them on the website. I responded thus, and have yet to get a reply.
"Download the entire Amtrak Timetable" my butt. It hasn't been available for ages.


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## drdumont (Jun 17, 2021)

@ Ventureforth... I hope it is AMTRAK at whom you are angry and not me. Don't shoot the messenger!


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## joelkfla (Jun 17, 2021)

drdumont said:


> < On 16 June, 2021) I just got this email from AMTRAK:
> ------------------------------
> _Thank you for contacting us.
> 
> ...


Left hand, meet right hand.


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## jruff001 (Jun 17, 2021)

MARC Rider said:


> Think that making a FOIA request citing 49 CFR § 700.3 (b) would help?


What would you be asking for exactly? Something that does not exist?


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## me_little_me (Jun 17, 2021)

drdumont said:


> @ Ventureforth... I hope it is AMTRAK at whom you are angry and not me. Don't shoot the messenger!


Kings and other potentates often shot (or had executed) messengers with bad news as they were available and brought the news. So there is no reason to make an exception in your case.

However, we'll make you a permanent honorary member with the title of "Amtrak Executive" instead of "Service Attendant" after you have been disposed of.


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## Amtrak Cajun (Jun 21, 2021)

Is anyone having the expired login issue? Even though I'm logged in, its stuck in a loop of, log in again, but im logged in. Can I plleeaaassee just purchase my tickets Amtrak?!!!

Edit: The site apparently reset itself, and my tickets are now booked for my trip to Michigan in August.


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