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1. Yes, but only hourly in the early morning hours. 2.Yes, the #16. Its schedule is here. 3. Next up is a southwest route from downtown Minneapolis to Eden Prairie. There are vague, hand-wavy plans for a street car on West 7th heading from downtown St. Paul in the direction of the airport...

You can't make a connection on a blackout date unless (is there any statement about AGR that doesn't include "unless" or "except"?) your train is late, you miss your connection, and are put on the next day's train, or in the case that the schedule has changed since you made your reservation...

You can always ask Customer Relations for a voucher, and see what they offer. This holds true for any perceived Amtrak failure. Me, the only time I was bustituted on the Empire Builder (Whitefish to Shelby, because of a BNSF derailment in Marias Pass) I didn't ask for compensation, because I...

I'm back from the East Coast, and want to thank everyone who gave advice. The quiet car was tomb-like in its silence, the pterosaurs were great (the stations where you flapped your arms to control the video of the Pteranodon were a hoot), and the cheese slice at Pizza Suprema might be the best...

I've always enjoyed Katz's pastrami, but the focus on this trip is the pterosaurs, so I'll just be taking the C train straight to the museum.

Thanks for the advice. Trains, pizza, and Mesozoic flying reptiles, what more could a boy want?

Other than the dodgy word "gyp," I'm not sure what this sentence means. I like riding trains. I also have to travel from St. Paul to Minot at least once a month because of my ailing mother. Am I cheating Amtrak if I use Amsnag to ensure I pay as little as possible for my roomette? When I...

Living in Minnesota, I rarely ride trains in the NEC. Hence, I am clue free on certain issues for an upcoming trip to see the big pterosaur exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History. 1) On regional trains, which car in the consist is the quiet one? 2) What's a good pizza place near...

Can you book an AGR award St. Paul-Chicago-Flagstaff? I haven't tried recently, but AGR shot me down every time I tried to book a connection between 2 western trains overnighting in Chicago, and can recall flying MSP-MDW on Southwest to catch the Southwest Chief in Albuquerque.

Apparently AGR doesn't control what routes are published, so not only are alternate routes not published, but routes that are illegal according the the Rules as Written remain published. Like many things involving Amtrak and AGR, it doesn't make much sense to me as an outsider. Sure, you could...

I was amazed to arrive in St. Paul Monday morning only an hour late. Best Empire Builder performance in ages. I live in hope, since with my mother's declining health, I'm on the train at least once a month.

In June 2013 I was on a Coast Starlight that detoured up the Feather River Canyon to Keddie, then continued up Great Northern's Inside Gateway to Klamath Falls, to avoid a derailment somewhere around Redding. It certainly seemed that our velocity in the Canyon was lower than the California...

A common carrier can fulfill its reasonable committments under contract before respoding to reasonable requests for common carrier service. What is "reasonable"? That's what lawyers get paid to argue. In practice it means that when there's a bumper crop in North Dakota the crop sits for weeks...

Doesn't Metra in Chicago allow beer? I remember once nursing a beer at the Metro bar in Chicago Union Station, waiting for the Empire Builder. A regular came in and put a bill on the bar. Without a word exchanged, the bartender poured him a shot of Crown Royal and produced a 24 ounce beer in...

Distilled water has less minerals, of course, but I can't imagine how it is less likely to have germs. Surely that depends on how clean the bottling line is, how old the bottle of distilled water is, etc., etc., etc. I doubt that your rebottled distilled water has a significantly lower...

According to the Rules as Written, you won't be able to book that trip, because it leaves the Central Zone, enters the Eastern Zone, and then returns into the Central Zone, making it a "circle trip." I doubt that you could book that trip anyway, since a legal routing...

Hilton is very much an outlier in how easy it is to buy status with credit card use, and if you go to Flyer Talk you'll find any number of Diamonds complaining about how all the credit-card Diamonds dilute their perks. Not that I agree, as I'm a gold thanks to the Surpass credit card, and I...

Gary was founded in 1906, generations after Chicago became a railroad center. Given that it was a US Steel company town, clean and honest are not useful adjectives.

Well, if you mention stills, does that mean that homebrewing is also forbidden? In any case, since you didn't mention it, I guess my deep fryer is hunky dory. ETA: I did once drink moonshine on a Soviet train, but it was already distilled when my benefactor (?) boarded the train in Kiev.

As far as I know, if the routing "published" on the Web site and isn't a circle route, it can be booked. You don't have to use the most direct routing or the first one listed, though I've encountered AGR agents who have claimed otherwise. In your case I'd expect to be able to go to Seattle via...