https://railforless.us/ appears to be working for me (today, Sat 3/16) on Chrome (with the exception I have been discussing above).
Rail for Less: a fare checking site
- Thread starter phoenix
- Start date
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You might need to delete cookies and site data for the site. Amtrak.com wasn't working for me on Firefox, and that fixed it.
ETA: RFL just worked for me on Firefox, but it was slower than usual.
I'm not seeing any issues in the logs. It's possible that you tried to use it during the five minutes of downtime I needed to update the Docker images.
This seems to work:
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While these two attempts do not!
ANY ROUTE SELECTED
ROUTE - SOUTHWEST CHIEF SELECTED.
FROM AMTRAK'S WEBSITE.
Fun, isn't this!
Odd:
At any rate, this is a client-side display issue and not a fundamental flaw in the data we are getting from Amtrak (thankfully).
The route list is broken, however:
This makes me wonder if @tikkisean is accidently caching the routes from past searches (the Pacific Surfliner makes no sense for these station pairs, for example).
At any rate, this is a client-side display issue and not a fundamental flaw in the data we are getting from Amtrak (thankfully).
The route list is broken, however:
This makes me wonder if @tikkisean is accidently caching the routes from past searches (the Pacific Surfliner makes no sense for these station pairs, for example).
trimetbusfan
OBS Chief
The Pacific Surfliner is probably for the itinerary that requires taking a Surfliner train to an overnight bus to the California Zephyr. It shows up if you want to do LAX-CHI.
Do you seriously think anyone here has the answers?
Devil's Advocate
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Airlines do it because they need to compete with other airlines, but Amtrak seems to think they have no competition. When it comes to my trips Amtrak is competing with driving and/or flying, and usually falling way behind. I miss the Boardman days when Amtrak acted like they did have competition and even advertised inside airport TSA bins reminding people they did not have to remove their belts and shoes to ride the train. In my view the 2010-2015 period was the apex of travel on Amtrak.
Ah, right you are!
I fixed an issue with the www subdomain, that might caused the issue you saw.
I just want to say I've used this site a number of times with Edge and I haven't really had a problem, other than those I've seemingly caused myself. Using the "back" button and/or clearing the cache seems to remedy most situations I've encountered.
Some returns are a little tedious if Amtrak offers multiple trains and mixed service for the route chosen, but then, so is the Amtrak website. Using different sorts in these instances can help, as well as displaying more returns per page. Maybe a sort by number of segments would help? I know I would like to see that.
Thanks so much, Mr. Technician, for your work on this site. I am grateful.
Some returns are a little tedious if Amtrak offers multiple trains and mixed service for the route chosen, but then, so is the Amtrak website. Using different sorts in these instances can help, as well as displaying more returns per page. Maybe a sort by number of segments would help? I know I would like to see that.
Thanks so much, Mr. Technician, for your work on this site. I am grateful.
Hey all,
I thought I'd check up on this thread as I just pushed the first major update to the site since we launched v2 last month. I apologize for the issues some of you were facing--you're correct in pointing out we had a bug with single-day searches which should now be resolved. Amtrak has not shut us down, any issues you are facing are likely an edge case we hadn't considered so always reach out and let us know so we can fix it! On that note, feel free to let Riley and I know in this thread if you're still facing these issues or have any other questions/concerns with this new update.
I thought I'd check up on this thread as I just pushed the first major update to the site since we launched v2 last month. I apologize for the issues some of you were facing--you're correct in pointing out we had a bug with single-day searches which should now be resolved. Amtrak has not shut us down, any issues you are facing are likely an edge case we hadn't considered so always reach out and let us know so we can fix it! On that note, feel free to let Riley and I know in this thread if you're still facing these issues or have any other questions/concerns with this new update.
Since yesterday (Monday, July 1st) railsforless.us seems to be having a problem getting responses from Amtrak's servers. I cannot get results from it on various queries for a few different trains. It makes repeated attempts and then posts a failed to connect with Amtrak message. I emailed then owners via their contact tab, so hopefully they can correct it. Amtrak may have closed whatever security hole that enabled them to access an internal Amtrak API. If so, I hope they find another way around.
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The owners/devs emailed me back this evening saying they got it fixed, and they have.
Those guys are sharp.
Devil's Advocate
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Maybe I'm misunderstanding the current solution, but I think we should be careful about implying the use of an unpublished API represents a "security hole" since these are distinct concepts that could be misconstrued by laypeople and give them the wrong idea.
Let me see if I understand this…are you saying that some people may think that Amtrak is purposely blocking what should be consumer helpful information about their fare comparison’s, but that third party consumer friendly websites are finding ways to “hack” that information?
RailForLess V3 will be launching in the next few days and we are looking for testers. If you would like to participate, please use https://dev.railforless.us/ instead of the primary site and report any issues you may have here.
The upcoming features include:
The upcoming features include:
- Much faster search times
- A complete rewrite to use Cloudflare workers
- Better handling of sold out dates.
Devil's Advocate
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Performance was good for my initial searches. Reminded me strongly of Google Flights. If you select Roomette it asks if you want Bedrooms, which I left unchecked since by Amtrak's naming these are different products. But that meant nothing was found and there was no output other than Cloudflare saying "Success." Seems like selecting Roomettes should automatically flip the switch to add Bedrooms if that is necessary to find anything. Maybe it's my ADHD acting up but I'm not a huge fan of the little train repeatedly zooming by. Maybe it could pass by once per search or have a cookie switch? Just a suggestion.
crescent-zephyr
Engineer
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2015
- Messages
- 4,796
It worked well for me - I like that you can select only the routes you want to travel after the search.
The reason for the bedrooms prompt is that fetching bedrooms and family rooms takes additional time. All other filters, such as filtering by roomettes, can be changed after the search is complete. If you select no on bedrooms/family rooms, you will need to rerun the search to see prices for those accommodations.
We could possibly disable the train animation if the browser requests reduced motion.
Also, are you saying you never got past the captcha?
Devil's Advocate
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Amtrak's naming convention considers "Bedroom and/or Family Room" as distinct from a Roomette, leading to an answer of "No" in my case, which originally returned nothing (beyond a Cloudflare success message). When I restarted and selected "Yes" Roomettes showed up no problem. Now it returns Roomettes even if I select "No." Not sure if anything changed or if it was just a fluke. Seems a little slower now but still good and light speed compared to manual.
No problems with captcha. Maybe the success message was part of an opaque captcha check but I did not dig very deep into anything.
I think the train adds some whimsy to the experience, but I can see how it can be distracting. I added a "Search animations" toggle, which when unchecked disables the train and the spinning number animations.
I added some more common sense rules to make this more intuitive. The prompt only shows when it isn't obvious from the fare class you have selected if you want bedrooms and/or family rooms included in your search. There is also now a "Don't ask me again" checkbox in the dialog (also accessible in settings) if you understand this dialog and do not wish to see it on subsequent searches.
Devil's Advocate
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Thank you so much. I'll do some more testing when I get some time but the main takeaway so far is that your site is so much cleaner, faster, and easier than Amtrak.com - which only makes me want to book more travel on Amtrak. Keep up the great work y'all.
I tried a search for a trip we're considering for next year, (mostly) on the California Zephyr, and connecting from/to our hometown via the Lincoln Service. The results were good enough for a rough estimate, although I'd need to search again with the month next year when we wish to travel as the date filter. I know from our recently-completed Texas Eagle trip that we'd want to book 2 roomettes (so we could each have a lower berth to sleep on) for the roundtrip on the CZ, and I'll rewatch the Grounded Life Travel video which recommended that for instructions on how to do so. Is there any way one could specify the number of sleeping car rooms one wants to book for a party of 2? It's not a huge deal if that wouldn't be feasible, as the current dev v3 does at least show how many sleeping car rooms are left for travel on a particular date, and we'd be going through Amtrak itself to book the journey after using Rail for Less to pick the thriftiest time to travel within a selected date range.
