The attendants are very observant as are dining car staff so folks ticketed in sleepers are recognized by those folks. Sleeper car passengers board into their car at the front of the train and coach is loaded by destination. As I recall it's sleepers, dining car, observation car, coach cars. Sleeper car passengers have a car # on their tickets which helps them get to the right section of the train. Also spending the extra for a Red Cap can make it easier at bigger stations.
Btw, this is good advice but the thread you mentioned is quite old. I don’t know it the advise necessarily applies for the original poster anymore.
So you consider the removal of the Silver Meteor sleeper to be properly done?
Well, if they never sold inventory in it, thereby forcing downgrades and reaccomodations, I actually would consider it "properly done" for purposes of the immediate discussion.
I don’t promise anything. Wait till when the Meteor gets traditional dining and see what happens. I would not take my own prognostications to the bank. It is hearsay until Amtrak says something or it happens.
Well aware. But the most recent incident - the spring reduction - was more notice 2 months (or more). So at this point I'm leaning towards it's coming back as scheduled. There's also been a couple healthy arrivals of equipment from Beech Grove in recent weeks. I suspect they probably got a lot of heat for last summer/fall so one would think they'd want to avoid that again. But I guess we'll see in a few weeks.
Certainly not saying you should and given what happened last summer and fall certainly can't blame anyone for being skeptical. Book however you feel comfortable. Was merely sharing my point of view and opinion on it.
At the end of summer when they moved into the fall planning season. These should stick around until September at least. This is why I said good news for those with summer reservations. Beyond the September fall shift i make no predictions or after the new fiscal year starts.
That was their intention last year that they proved unable to fulfill.
They dropped sleepers with sold inventory, often downgrading people to coach or even canceling trips entirely.
They did make the decision as early as May, but they often didn't inform those affected until just two weeks before departure. That doesn't make it better, it makes it worse, and did indeed f the passengers.
We got skunked twice last year with bedroom reservations on the Southwest Chief. The first time was June-July. We rescheduled to September and were skunked again. (Rather than canceling our reservations and requesting a refund, we had Customer Relations reschedule us to June-July 2023. That far in advance we were able to get bedrooms in the "base" sleepers. We also had the satisfaction of knowing that these bedrooms are costing us what bedroom cost in January 2022 rather than what they will cost in June 2023.
Sorry to hear about your travails at Amtrak's hands. Glad that you were able to book another trip this summer at a cost acceptable to you and you got "base" sleepers to minimize the chances of falling foul of Amtrak's "planning" yet again.
Well, I'd feel pretty safe booking in a "base" sleeper, none of which got pulled through all of this mess. But I certainly understand avoiding it entirely.
