That why I mentioned it!
Lets see: Two group trips. One trip - double booked. Next trip - room shuffled. Gee, I'm two for two with the group.
How festive!
Wasn't the other person who thought he was assigned to your room actually traveling on the wrong day? That is he did have that room but on a different day? This is the one out of Denver, right?
Yes and no (the long version). It was the 2007 trip on the Zephyr from Denver west (me to Reno).
The other party (a couple) had been booked on our train on our day in coach. They still had the reservation confirmation to prove it. Four days prior to departure from Denver they decided to splurge and called Amtrak to check availability and cost to upgrade to a roomette. The agent checked, found availability, charged the upgrade, and revised the reservation. The problem was that the agent somehow checked availability for that day, not the couple's actual travel day. The reservation was changed to four days earlier without the travellers knowing a thing. I'm not sure when they got their tickets, but when they got the tickets they did not notice that the tickets were for a trip four days earlier than they wanted. Neither did the Zephyr conductor who checked them in at the DEN station desk, lifted their ticket (four days out of date), and issued them a boarding pass for MY ROOM.
The very next passenger in the check-in line was.... me. The conductor lifted my ticket, and BING! He did a double take. Looked at my ticket: looked at the couple's lifted ticket, and saw the same car, same room. He called over the ticket agent. They pondered for a moment, and then saw the date error on the other ticket. They knew they had an extra roomette in the Transition car, so they figured one of us would end up there. They said they would sort things out at the train. I kind of figured I did not want it to be me going to the transition car (which in summer is at the front of the train with the actual sleepers at the rear). So I wiggled my way to the front of the queue waiting for boarding to start, reverted to my high school track mentality, and when the gun went off, I all but ran out to the train, to my car, up the stairs, to my room, threw my suitcase in, and messed things up a bit to make it look used.
With the room now occupied (BY ME), the other couple met trainside with the conductor who realized it was a mistake by Amtrak reservations. He got them situated in the Transition car. To Amtrak's credit they worked things out to everyone's satisfaction. Of course when the AC went south in my car and I was sweating while sitting doing nothing I wondered if maybe I had outsmarted myself, but things got sorted out there as well, and we all had a nice ride.