Seat assignments (Acela pilot Feb 2018)

[Acela150]

Effort will be made to try to keep the Acela trainsets oriented the same with Car 1 on the South/West end closest to Washington and Car 6 on the North/East end closest to Boston ergo on an odd numbered train the first class *should* be at the front and on an even numbered train first class will *should* be at the rear.

They've done a fairly good job at it recently and before the Covid-19 crisis at least from what I've seen.

 

[Palmetto]

This "fixed consist" idea implies that they will not loop the train in Southampton Yard [Boston]. The consist will have to go back to South Station as a "back-up" move, if you can call it that. When there's a cab at each end, there's really no backing up, I guess.

 

[IndyLions]

I have an upcoming trip BOS-NYP in Acela Business after helping my daughter move back to college in a couple of weeks.

I received an email (and a voice mail) regarding seat selection and took the opportunity to use the web site to select a seat. I found the user interface fairly reasonable.

As it turned out, they had pre-assigned me one of the 4 person table areas - and the other 3 seats were blocked out so no one else could select them. Since I will be working, there's no way I could really improve on that - so I didn't change my seat. I WAS surprised that they selected one of those 4 person areas for a single traveler. But that just shows how committed they are to the spacing on the Acela trains.