Southwest Chief discussion Q4 2023 - 2024

[TinCan782]

One bit of information that we got out of all of this: a Deluxe Bedroom on SWC No. 3 from CHI to LAX currently can be had for 118,838 Guest Reward Points if you happen to have that many.

Eric & Pat

For comparison, our September/October SWC round trip (LAX>CHI>LAX) was 143,326 points for a Deluxe Bedroom both legs.
Reservation was made in February.

 

[Eric in East County]

From time to time people have mentioned making "dummy" reservations for the purpose of finding out current prices, the availability of bedrooms or roomettes, etc. What are the precise steps for making dummy reservations without inadvertently making an actual reservation? (As it gets closer to our September trip on the SWC, we'll want to learn if the prices will have dropped so that we can ask for a partial refund.)

 

[zephyr17]

From time to time people have mentioned making "dummy" reservations for the purpose of finding out current prices, the availability of bedrooms or roomettes, etc. What are the precise steps for making dummy reservations without inadvertently making an actual reservation? (As it gets closer to our September trip on the SWC, we'll want to learn if the prices will have dropped so that we can ask for a partial refund.)

Start a reservation and back out before getting to the payment page. I just ran some a few days with 8 people in a Deluxe Bedrooms LAX-CHI to research the amount of open inventory for @Keith1951 . That was a total price of over $15,000 when I tried for single rooms. If there was any
chance at all of inadvertently getting charged $15K I wouldn't have done that. It's easy and straightforward to back out of the transaction well before payment but after getting a price quote.

I also make sure I am not signed in when doing it, just to be doubly safe. That way my credit card information will not auto-fill if I accidentally went as far as the payment page.

 

[railiner]

I don’t think a reservation is complete until payment is made, either in money or points, and a confirmation number is given…

 

[Eric in East County]

Start a reservation and back out before getting to the payment page. I just ran some a few days with 8 people in a Deluxe Bedrooms LAX-CHI to research the amount of open inventory for @Keith1951 . That was a total price of over $15,000 when I tried for single rooms. If there was any
chance at all of inadvertently getting charged $15K I wouldn't have done that. It's easy and straightforward to back out of the transaction well before payment but after getting a price quote.

I also make sure I am not signed in when doing it, just to be doubly safe. That way my credit card information will not auto-fill if I accidentally went as far as the payment page.

We've printed this out and will keep it handy for future reference. As Charlie Chan would say, "Thank you so much."

 

[Chuk]

The EB Southwest Chief departs at 5:55 p.m. daily from Los Angeles. Will dinner be served to sleeping car passengers? Does one need to pick a seating time while at the Amtrak lounge before boarding? If so, what is the process?

 

[Eric in East County]

The train departs at 5:55 p.m. from Los Angeles. Will dinner be served to sleeping car passengers? Does one need to pick a seating time while at the Amtrak lounge before boarding? If so, what is the process?

Sleeping car passengers will receive dinner. The chief dining car steward will stop by your bedroom or roomette to take reservations for whatever seating you want, assuming that seating is not already filled.

 

[zephyr17]

Dinner will be served departing LA.

It has been a couple years since I rode the SW Chief out of LA, but the routine then was for the diner LSA was to go through the train reserving dinner seatings shortly after departing Los Angeles. There are at most two seatings. The first seating starts around Fullerton.

I have never known diner LSAs to work the lounges for reservations anywhere. I have seen conductors scan tickets in the lounge in Chicago, but that has been several years since I last saw that. And I mean several years, the last time that happened was in the old lounge in the concourse.

 

[Chuk]

Sleeping car passengers will receive dinner. The chief dining car steward will stop by your bedroom or roomette to take reservations for whatever seating you want, assuming that seating is not already filled.

Thanks. My reason for asking is that the train originates at Los Angeles so that might affect the dining. One time, my wife and i rode a pair of private cars (including a chef and galley) coupled on the EB SWC from L.A.. No dinner was served and the car owner seemed surprised that the passengers hadn't eaten before boarding. By chance, a good buddy and his wife surprised us at Fullerton with a gift basket of snacks for the trip. We shared it with others and it was empty in an hour.

 

[01piglet_patinas]

FYI, the revised schedule takes effect on the Monday, July 8 departures for both 3 and 4.

Have they posted the new schedule? I cannot find it. If you have a link I would really appreciate it.

 

[Eric in East County]

Once the new schedule goes into effect, No. 3 will be departing from CHI at 2:25 p.m. (25 minutes earlier) and arriving in LAX at 7:57 a.m. (3 minutes earlier). No. 4 will be departing from LAX at 5:22 p.m. (33 minutes earlier) and arriving in CHI at 2:42 p.m. (8 minutes earlier.)

 

[zephyr17]

Have they posted the new schedule? I cannot find it. If you have a link I would really appreciate it.

Amtrak hasn't been creating PDF schedules for a few years now, unfortunately. Their dynamic schedule generator on the "Schedules" tab has it, that's how I found the starting date. The RPA hasn't updated their independently created PDF schedule yet.

 

[Eric in East County]

Probably ongoing negotiations with BNSF. With the "new" (effective December 2020) STB/FRA passenger delay regs, authorized by the PRIIA Act of 2008 but held up in court for years, many LDs have undergone schedule tweaks to come up with 'enforceable' schedules. This appears to be the second such iteration for the SW Chief. They fiddled with the eastbound schedule, at least, once before in the last couple years.

Yes, it appears to be a permanent change. Starts July 8th and runs through the end of searchable trains next May.

As zephyr17 has pointed out, the new SWC schedule change was most likely part of an agreement between Amtrak and host railroad BNSF so that SWC trains would receive priority over freight traffic. (Host railroads having to give priority to Amtrak long-distance trains is actually mandated in laws that were passed years ago but which, up to now, had never been successfully enforced.)

 

[01piglet_patinas]

Amtrak hasn't been creating PDF schedules for a few years now, unfortunately. There dynamic schedule generator on the "Schedules" tab has it, that's how I found the starting date. The RPA hasn't updated their independently created PDF schedule yet.

Thanks-I look for the link for the RPA

 

[zephyr17]

As zephyr17 has pointed out, the new SWC schedule change was most likely part of an agreement between Amtrak and host railroad BNSF so that SWC trains would receive priority over freight traffic. (Host railroads having to give priority to Amtrak long-distance trains is actually mandated in laws that were passed years ago but which, up to now, had never been successfully enforced.)

The mandate was in it from the beginning, it was part of the Rail Passenger Act of 1970 as one of the conditions of railroads joining the National Rail Passenger Corporation (dba Amtrak) and being able to discontinue their own passenger service. The problem was there was no enforcement mechanism for the mandate, other than the DOJ bringing suit. Which happened all of one time. Without a practical avenue to enforce its rights, Amtrak adopted a "go along to get along" stance. The PRIIA Act of 2008 (as amended to move the definition of delay metrics from Amtrak itself to the FRA to conform with Supreme Court rulings) allowed passenger delay complaints to be brought by Amtrak itself directly before STB and the STB the authority to levy sanctions based on passenger delay. After further legal wrangling, which the railroads uniformly lost, implementing regulations were finally allowed to take effect in December 2020. Those regulations called for schedules to be negotiated between railroads and Amtrak taking into account the newly published passenger delay metrics before sanctions could be imposed, within a reasonable time (forgot the actual limit).

Amtrak has submitted a complaint to the STB on passenger delay against UP for Sunset delays under its new rights. That is the first one. UP is fighting it and will doubtless appeal a negative STB ruling to Federal Court, since the this will be a test case for actual enforcement, so it will still take some time before it fully settles out. One of UP's arguments is that the schedule is impractical. Since they never bothered to renegotiate it when it was time to, I think that argument is pretty weak. IMHO, they accepted it by default by not renegotiating it when it was time to. The funny thing is they did renegotiate the Starlight's schedule. Perhaps they wanted to force a test case, too.

The ability to have these rights at all is still rooted in the Rail Passenger Act of 1970, since that's where the railroads voluntarily agreed to it. They did not have to join. PRIIA just provided a better, actually usable, enforcement mechanism.

The finalized delay metrics themselves are pretty simple. 80% of all passengers arrive at their destinations, large or small, within 15 minutes of their scheduled arrival. As measured quarterly, IIRC. They make no mention of train performance or dispatch priority at all.

 

[joelkfla]

Thanks-I look for the link for the RPA

RPA does not have the new schedule, and they probably won't update their timetable until well after it goes into effect. The new schedules are only available by searching on the Schedules tab on the Amtrak website with the City option and a date after the change.

Here are copies of the new schedules which I printed from the website:

 

[acelafan]

Here you go, I'll ask RPA to get these posted. There are only 2 of us trying to maintain these schedules; Amtrak has an Army of people with billons of funding but apparently it is too difficult for them to run a python program using the data they create and publish.

June 23
June 30 (Albuquerque changes)
July 7

 

[Keith1951]

Okay, I am going to do the basic evaluation based on adult fares, not senior, since that is what is easily referenced on @niemi24s' chart.

Just now, I ran it on Amtrak.com for 4/15/25:
1 Bedroom for 2 adults at $2506. $2506 - $290 = $2216, 6th Bucket
2 Bedrooms for 4 adults at $5626. $5626/2 = $2813. $2813-290 (adult rail fare) = $2523, 7th bucket
3 Bedrooms for 6 adults at $8,439. $8439/3 = $2813. $2813 - $290 (adult rail fare) = $2523, 7th bucket
4 Bedrooms for 8 adults at $12,676. $12,676/4 = $3169. $3169 - $290 = $2879, 8th bucket, the top.

You discovered a bucket jump. Actually, two of them. These results show that there is currently one open bedroom allocated to the 6th bucket, after that it jumped to the next bucket, with 2 Bedrooms in the 7th bucket, then jumped again to the 8th bucket. If you exceed the lowest bucket inventory on a single reservation request and there is inventory in a higher bucket, the price for all the rooms requested jumps to highest price for any of them. If there is not inventory in a higher bucket, it will return "Sold Out".

Further, up to 5 rooms can booked for 8 people, but it will not go any higher than 5. There is not enough inventory to accommodate 8 adults each in their own Bedroom, so the total open Bedroom inventory is 5. The cost for 8 adults in 5 rooms is $15,265. It also means 3 doubles and 2 singles. That means a rail fare adjustment of $290 each for the 3 rooms with double occupancy to get single adult room pricing to reference back to the chart. 15265-(3x290) = 14395 adjusted total for single adult occupancy of 5 bedrooms. 14395/5 = 2879, again, high bucket.

Conclusions:
1. Bedroom total available inventory is 5. Those 5 are allocated with 1 in the 6th bucket (2216), 2 in the 7th bucket (2523) and 2 in the 8th bucket (2879)
2. If there were two sleepers currently assigned to the 4/15/25 departure, the total inventory would be 10. One sleeper, 5. Since it is very early, and there are 5 open bedrooms, it is highly likely only one sleeper is currently assigned to the 4/15/25 departure of train 3. The chances of all five bedrooms in one whole sleeper being sold out this early is unlikely. If there were two sleepers, I would expect to be able to book 6, 7 or 8 adults into singles. My opinion therefore is that 31 car is not slated to run next April on the SWC as of now. That very well may change.
3. Yield management has actively been fooling around with those departures for the SWC recently. The allocations and prices have been jumping around since this discussion started. My guess is they'll settle for awhile now, but yield management on the SWC/TE is confounding me and is unlike the patterns I have come to expect on some other trains I investigate more frequently, like the Builder. However, all inventory now seems consistent with a fairly common pattern of one room in the lowest open bucket, then more in higher ones, all of them high-ish.

I've always been able to get multiple bedrooms on that date through this whole discussion. I ran several other dates in April 2025 and get similar results, with the allocation of the first 3 rooms varying between 1 in the 6th bucket and 2 in the 7th bucket and 2 in the 6th bucket and 1 in the 7th bucket. That is also the inventory allocation for the last date open for sale right now, 5/16/25. It really looks like one sleeper assigned, no sales yet, and they've consistently allocated the April departures in a similar fashion. Finally, railsforless.us is giving different, and lower priced, results than Amtrak.com right now for these dates. Perhaps they cached old data?

With only one room in the 6th bucket now for your date, and no date at all lower than the 5th bucket for Bedrooms on the SW Chief between now and then, you may want to think about grabbing that 6th bucket price, which works out to $2448 for two seniors (2216 - 29 senior discount one rail fare + 261 senior rail fare). Prices may drop to the 5th bucket, but also when they actually start selling, that 6th bucket room will be the first to go. I normally wouldn't buy this far in advance and would wait for things to develop, but with only one room and the steps up after that of over $300, then nearly $700, I'd grab it. Keep monitoring though, and ask for a partial refund if it drops.

I dont know what happened, but Im glad it happened. That SWC that I have been watching dropped to $1955 for a bedroom for my April 15, 2025, date. I guess it is a lower bucket, but whatever its called, I jumped on it with the quickness. I got so happy when I saw the price. I got car 330 which from reading the forum is good because, its the base car, I think. Thanks for your help Z. I waited and saved $500.

 

[zephyr17]

I dont know what happened, but Im glad it happened. That SWC that I have been watching dropped to $1955 for a bedroom for my April 15, 2025, date. I guess it is a lower bucket, but whatever its called, I jumped on it with the quickness. I got so happy when I saw the price. I got car 330 which from reading the forum is good because, its the base car, I think. Thanks for your help Z. I waited and saved $500.

Well, they reallocated inventory and put at least one room in the $1723 4th bucket. I got a $1723 for one person in a bedroom the next day and $1955 for two seniors works out to that bucket (1955 - (2 x 261 senior rail fare) + 290 adult fare = 1723). That's a low-ish bucket for the SW Chief and one that wasn't there at all at any time when @niemi24s did his latest chart, since he had to impute the 4th bucket and came up with $1714, not bad for an estimate.

You are welcome. It has been an interesting exercise, and caused me to do some deeper dives than I have for a long time. Those dives uncovered some different yield management patterns than those I had become used to. At least on the SWC, they are doing a lot more fooling around with allocations in the early months after inventory release than the usual pattern had been. They had been pretty much setting a fairly aggressive allocation at inventory release 11 months ahead of departure and leaving it alone for at least 5-6 months, at least on the Builder, Starlight and Lake Shore, trains I regularly check. But they have been continually fiddling with the SWC's allocations that are far out. I've gotten a number of different allocations for April/May 2025 dates and they put inventory in a low-ish bucket that had had zero inventory in it on every departure. I need to rethink my current strategy of checking it pretty far out and then not bothering much again until starting 6 months or so of my chosen date(s) in light of what I've found here.

PS-railsforless.us appears to be encountering a problem connecting with Amtrak since yesterday.

 

[zephyr17]

Finally, @Keith1951 , in case you are interested, it is good thing you grabbed it, because the one you got was apparently the only Bedroom allocated in that 4th bucket.

There are 4 more Bedrooms available on 4/15/25 on train 3 (so there isn't a second sleeper assigned yet) and the remaining four are allocated as follows:
2 @ $2216-6th bucket. That would be $2448 for two seniors
1 @ $2523-7th bucket. That would be $2755 for two seniors.
1 @ $2879-8th bucket. That would be $3111 for two seniors.

There is no 5th bucket inventory at all.

 

[Bob Dylan]

I dont know what happened, but Im glad it happened. That SWC that I have been watching dropped to $1955 for a bedroom for my April 15, 2025, date. I guess it is a lower bucket, but whatever its called, I jumped on it with the quickness. I got so happy when I saw the price. I got car 330 which from reading the forum is good because, its the base car, I think. Thanks for your help Z. I waited and saved $500.

Congrats, but that's still pretty Pricey considering you can book nice Cruises, Fy to Australia,Asia or Europe RT with 7 day Packages for for Less, and in 1st Class on most LD Flights within the US!

 

[Keith1951]

Congrats, but that's still pretty Pricey considering you can book nice Cruises, Fy to Australia,Asia or Europe RT with 7 day Packages for for Less, and in 1st Class on most LD Flights within the US!

I know, but we are retired, and we have saved every month for years for all our vacations, it adds up. So, the cost is not a problem and I like riding the train. Plus, I saved $500 because I was gonna get it at $2448, but I waited, and the SWC is the only LD train we have not travelled on. Thats funny you mentioned all that because we are going to LA for a cruise and flying back first class. Maybe we will get to Australia, Asia and Europe someday. Thanks.

 

[Keith1951]

Finally, @Keith1951 , in case you are interested, it is good thing you grabbed it, because the one you got was apparently the only Bedroom allocated in that 4th bucket.

There are 4 more Bedrooms available on 4/15/25 on train 3 (so there isn't a second sleeper assigned yet) and the remaining four are allocated as follows:
2 @ $2216-6th bucket. That would be $2448 for two seniors
1 @ $2523-7th bucket. That would be $2755 for two seniors.
1 @ $2879-8th bucket. That would be $3111 for two seniors.

There is no 5th bucket inventory at all.

You are good. One day, maybe, I will figure out how you do that. To know what the rest of the bedrooms will cost. I will just keep reading all the posts on this forum and continue learning.

 

[zephyr17]

Congrats, but that's still pretty Pricey considering you can book nice Cruises, Fy to Australia,Asia or Europe RT with 7 day Packages for for Less, and in 1st Class on most LD Flights within the US!

I do not think anyone has ever contended Amtrak sleepers, especially Bedrooms, are a good value proposition. I certainly haven't. They are able to maintain their pricing not because they represent good value, they don't, but because the supply is highly constrained in face of even the limited demand for sleepers. A cruise ship sailing has thousands of cabins. There are hundreds of First Class airline seats between Chicago and LA. The SW Chief on a given departure next spring with one sleeper has 5 Bedrooms and between somewhere between like 9 and 17 revenue roomettes, depending on whether there's a transdorm.

 

[jshell]

Weird thing happened today (July 2) that I think (hope) is just a glitch in the matrix: I got an email alert and phone message from Amtrak that seems like another minor schedule adjustment alert - except it claims (emphasis mine): "You're now scheduled to depart on train #0004, the Texas Eagle, from Los Angeles Union Station on Thursday, August 1st at 5:22pm and arrive in Kansas City, Missouri on Saturday, August 3rd at 6:26am."

Train 4 is still the Southwest Chief, right?

It caught me off guard for a moment because I do have the Texas Eagle in part of my overall travel plans but certainly not how I'm planning to get from Los Angeles to Kansas City.