New York to San Fran, or the other way around?

[BCL]

Hi, welcome fellow Pennsylvanian. I don't believe 10 ride tickets work like that. They are intended for commuters on shorter, frequent corridor rides. If you are looking to ride long distance you would need to make your itinerary and make individual reservations with your stops in mind. An option is to buy a USA Rail Pass ($500) which does allow stopovers, yet you still would need reservatons for each segment. Sorry, they don't make it easy.

It used to be a lot easier back when a multi-ride was a workaround to get on an otherwise fully booked train. And I think on some routes they allowed them to be used for multiple passengers as long as the passholder was one of them. Five passengers might go round-trip with a single 10-ride pass.

 

[joelkfla]

I think @sp001 actually meant the Rail Pass, as it allows 10 segments or "rides", but isn't familiar with the terminology.

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[Cal H]

New here also.....and also want to do this trip but we were thinking of buying the 10 ride ticket so we can get on and off where we want.
Anybody do this?

This sounds like the rail pass. If so, my wife & I used it last fall. We had a great time and it was a pretty good deal. As others have said - it is not a “hop on- hop off” like a tourist bus, but with a bit of planning you can make it operate kinda sorta like that.
Please clarify for us the ticket/pass you are referring too and I’m sure you’ll get lots of good info!

 

[BCL]

I think @sp001 actually meant the Rail Pass, as it allows 10 segments or "rides", but isn't familiar with the terminology.

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Yeah - I was a bit confused with the reference to a "10 ride". Most here would call it the USA Rail Pass or at least refer to it as "10 segments". Plus "on and off" sounded like it could be about random times. But then "doing this trip" didn't necessarily make sense in that context.

As for the pass, there are some things that might be considered, such as bus segments counting as a whole segment if one wants to maximize the use of segments. Haven't some people decided against using the rail pass to reserve a bus segment and just bought a separate ticket for the bus (with a throwaway train segment) just to preserve the rail pass segment to use on a longer train ride? I know there's a lot of talk about that for Emeryville or Oakland to San Francisco.