Some of the downtown Albany hotels have free pickup/drop off at the train station
The "lollipop loop" Baltimore to Boston and return via Albany
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Hilton Albany was the last one I used pick-up at. If I had a hockey meeting at a hotel that didn't have train pickup (like the Desmond up by the airport) I would just drive.
I don't think you have anything to worry about. Many North American chain hotels have dropped their airport shuttles, so I imagine the train station would be an even lower priority. Marriott properties are by far the worst offender.Please don't tell me the Fairfield Inn is one of them.
The hotels are having a hard time getting CDL drivers, too…
By the way, the Albany Desmond is a unique and fun property. Outside it looks like a very boring airport hotel. But the inside rooms overlook a beautiful (if somewhat dated) atrium with koi ponds and pathways. I've always found the staff to be unusually cheerful and helpful. If you ever stay there, ask for a third floor inside balcony room. There aren't many, so ask early!
Love the Desmond!
The train station to downtown is only a few minutes, even the ones that do the train station don't do the airport. There are a group of hotels near the airport that still pick up there, but they don't come down to the train. I understand the Desmond redid the front lobby and made it modern style, while leaving the rest of the property intact. They have now affiliated with IHG as a Crowne Plaza, that may be useful to IHG members.
Now I'm back in the Metropolitan Lounge at the Moynihan Train Hall. My Empire service train arrived a bit early, The Crescent, my ride to Baltimore, departs at 2:15 PM. I thus have about an hour and a half layover. First things first. Lunch. I'm hungry and I want to check out the expanded (relative to all the other lounges) food service offered at the lounge in Moynihan. My choice: A garden salad, one of the "pinwheel" type wraps (chicken) and an upscale soda claiming to be made with cane sugar:
They were both pretty good, the prepackaged salad was really nice, all the veggies were fresh. They only had ranch dressing packaged with the salad, though. If you're a big eater, you might want to ask for two of the wraps.
While eating, I contemplated the crowd boarding trains.
Uh, oh, looks like a bit of a cattle line here.
While the salad and warp were tasty, I was still ready to eat some more, and also wanted to see a bit more of the new train Hall.
Here's the "ticked passengers waiting area" for the "riffraf" who can't get into the Metropolitan Lounge. It looks like your classic wood-bench train station seating, but notice that the actual seats are padded. They also have power outlets for your devices. By the way, you have to show a ticket to get in here. It's pretty nice, but it was pretty full when I was there, and I'm not sure they have enough seating to handle things when it gets really busy.
This is "The Hive" by artists Elmgreen and Dragset, an art installation located on the ceiling at the 31st St. Entrance.
Walking out on to 31st St. we see the competition from the stagecoaches, er, buses. At least these guys load off the street and don't block traffic. Mr. Butterfield and his customers would be impressed with the service.
And, finally, around the corner to my destination:
Right on 8th Ave, across 31st. street from Moynihan Train Hall.
A true New York experience, you stand in line, and have to be quick to order your slices. But despite the crowd, these cocailly-distanced and partitioned tables opened up pretty quickly.
And this is it. The most yummy New York slices around. One is pepperoni, the other is Margharita. But remember, they're $5 -$6 for a slice. But oh, so good.....
After that little excursion, back to the lounge to wait for the train.
I had requested a redcap to ensure preboarding. Unfortunately, that didn't seem to work here. For one thing, I noticed that whereas in the old station, they announced the track number in the lounge long before they announced it to the general public. Here, the announced the track number to the lounge and the general public at the same time. They actually didn't call those of us for redcaps until boarding was already underway, and the redcap wasn't even in the lounge. This wouldn't be a big deal to people in sleepers because, of course, their space is already reserved, but I was traveling coach, and I wanted first dibs on a decent seat. Thus, I told the desk that I wouldn't be needing a redcap after all, and dashed downstairs to get to the platform.
This led to the real reason why a redcap won't help you with pre-boarding, at least on a long-distance train like the Crescent. When I got to the platform, there was only one door open to the cars, and at that door was a gatekeeper in the form of a coach attendant, who was assigning seats. As it turned out, I couldn't see whether they were able to actually separate overnight travelers from people going shorter distances, but the attendant was assigning seats and mostly trying to keep groups together. In any event, there were only two coaches. We also had two lines at the door, one of people who came down to the platform from Moynihan, the other who came down from the old part of Penn Station. From the looks of the lines, most of the passengers were coming from the old part of the station. There was a lot of carry-on luggage, and a lot of people were confused, so this boarding process didn't go smoothly. Right before he got to me, the attendant had to go into one of the coaches to deal with someone already sitting in an assigned seat. Then he came back, and assigned me a seat, and somebody was already sitting there! He just told me to sit in the row behind, and I had 2 seats to myself. Then, at Newark, he asked me to move (as this was actually reserved for disabled, and he had an actual disabled passenger), but I got a nice seat in the other car, and had that to myself until Philadelphia. The whole business was a bit semi-chaotic compared to boarding a Northeast Regional. It's also notable that the trip time New York to Baltimore is scheduled for 2:50, compared to a typical Northeast Regional, which does the run in 2:40. In any event, it took us 3 hours for the ride, and I think a lot of the delay is from the boarding process and assigning seats on the fly at the platform.
Otherwise, the ride was fine, and we whipped down the corridor pretty quickly, even if the presence of Viewliner I sleepers meant our speed maxed out at 110 instead of 125. After a 9 minute late arrival in Baltimore, I got off the train, and on the platform, who should I encounter, by fellow AUer Amtrak Blue! We had time for maybe 15 seconds of conversation, as her northbound train had pulled into the station, and she had to board it. Then it was up the escalator, into the station, and pull out the phone and order an Uber to get me home.
This was a nice little railfan ride. I got to see the Mattapan Trolley, and ride the Lakeshore Limited between Boston And Albany. I have no ridden almost all the Amtrak mileage in the northeast, with the exception of the Portland to Brunswick, Essex Jct - St. Albans, Whitehall, NY to Rutland, and Port Kent to Montreal. I still need to to the full run of the Pennsylvania, as my run over the Horseshoe curve was done in 1973 and in the middle of the night, so maybe it doesn't count. I've even done all of the Amtrak routes in the southeast, except for Lynchburg to Roanoke and Atlanta to New Orleans. After that, I'll need to be going out to the west and midwest. Maybe, if things really work out well for passenger rail, they'll be adding so many new services that I will never be able to ride them all.
They were both pretty good, the prepackaged salad was really nice, all the veggies were fresh. They only had ranch dressing packaged with the salad, though. If you're a big eater, you might want to ask for two of the wraps.
While eating, I contemplated the crowd boarding trains.
Uh, oh, looks like a bit of a cattle line here.
While the salad and warp were tasty, I was still ready to eat some more, and also wanted to see a bit more of the new train Hall.
Here's the "ticked passengers waiting area" for the "riffraf" who can't get into the Metropolitan Lounge. It looks like your classic wood-bench train station seating, but notice that the actual seats are padded. They also have power outlets for your devices. By the way, you have to show a ticket to get in here. It's pretty nice, but it was pretty full when I was there, and I'm not sure they have enough seating to handle things when it gets really busy.
This is "The Hive" by artists Elmgreen and Dragset, an art installation located on the ceiling at the 31st St. Entrance.
Walking out on to 31st St. we see the competition from the stagecoaches, er, buses. At least these guys load off the street and don't block traffic. Mr. Butterfield and his customers would be impressed with the service.
And, finally, around the corner to my destination:
Right on 8th Ave, across 31st. street from Moynihan Train Hall.
A true New York experience, you stand in line, and have to be quick to order your slices. But despite the crowd, these cocailly-distanced and partitioned tables opened up pretty quickly.
And this is it. The most yummy New York slices around. One is pepperoni, the other is Margharita. But remember, they're $5 -$6 for a slice. But oh, so good.....
After that little excursion, back to the lounge to wait for the train.
I had requested a redcap to ensure preboarding. Unfortunately, that didn't seem to work here. For one thing, I noticed that whereas in the old station, they announced the track number in the lounge long before they announced it to the general public. Here, the announced the track number to the lounge and the general public at the same time. They actually didn't call those of us for redcaps until boarding was already underway, and the redcap wasn't even in the lounge. This wouldn't be a big deal to people in sleepers because, of course, their space is already reserved, but I was traveling coach, and I wanted first dibs on a decent seat. Thus, I told the desk that I wouldn't be needing a redcap after all, and dashed downstairs to get to the platform.
This led to the real reason why a redcap won't help you with pre-boarding, at least on a long-distance train like the Crescent. When I got to the platform, there was only one door open to the cars, and at that door was a gatekeeper in the form of a coach attendant, who was assigning seats. As it turned out, I couldn't see whether they were able to actually separate overnight travelers from people going shorter distances, but the attendant was assigning seats and mostly trying to keep groups together. In any event, there were only two coaches. We also had two lines at the door, one of people who came down to the platform from Moynihan, the other who came down from the old part of Penn Station. From the looks of the lines, most of the passengers were coming from the old part of the station. There was a lot of carry-on luggage, and a lot of people were confused, so this boarding process didn't go smoothly. Right before he got to me, the attendant had to go into one of the coaches to deal with someone already sitting in an assigned seat. Then he came back, and assigned me a seat, and somebody was already sitting there! He just told me to sit in the row behind, and I had 2 seats to myself. Then, at Newark, he asked me to move (as this was actually reserved for disabled, and he had an actual disabled passenger), but I got a nice seat in the other car, and had that to myself until Philadelphia. The whole business was a bit semi-chaotic compared to boarding a Northeast Regional. It's also notable that the trip time New York to Baltimore is scheduled for 2:50, compared to a typical Northeast Regional, which does the run in 2:40. In any event, it took us 3 hours for the ride, and I think a lot of the delay is from the boarding process and assigning seats on the fly at the platform.
Otherwise, the ride was fine, and we whipped down the corridor pretty quickly, even if the presence of Viewliner I sleepers meant our speed maxed out at 110 instead of 125. After a 9 minute late arrival in Baltimore, I got off the train, and on the platform, who should I encounter, by fellow AUer Amtrak Blue! We had time for maybe 15 seconds of conversation, as her northbound train had pulled into the station, and she had to board it. Then it was up the escalator, into the station, and pull out the phone and order an Uber to get me home.
This was a nice little railfan ride. I got to see the Mattapan Trolley, and ride the Lakeshore Limited between Boston And Albany. I have no ridden almost all the Amtrak mileage in the northeast, with the exception of the Portland to Brunswick, Essex Jct - St. Albans, Whitehall, NY to Rutland, and Port Kent to Montreal. I still need to to the full run of the Pennsylvania, as my run over the Horseshoe curve was done in 1973 and in the middle of the night, so maybe it doesn't count. I've even done all of the Amtrak routes in the southeast, except for Lynchburg to Roanoke and Atlanta to New Orleans. After that, I'll need to be going out to the west and midwest. Maybe, if things really work out well for passenger rail, they'll be adding so many new services that I will never be able to ride them all.
Nice overall trip, but $5 for a Slice of Pizza!
The boarding process on the LD Trains, along with Redcaps not being able to Pre-Board you from the Lounge, makes one think that riding a Regional or Acela when in Coach( BC on Acela), is a better idea if Amtrak insists on continuing this Cluster Flub.( why not Let one Pre-Select your Seats when Booking like most forms of Transportation do now days?)
The boarding process on the LD Trains, along with Redcaps not being able to Pre-Board you from the Lounge, makes one think that riding a Regional or Acela when in Coach( BC on Acela), is a better idea if Amtrak insists on continuing this Cluster Flub.( why not Let one Pre-Select your Seats when Booking like most forms of Transportation do now days?)
Oh yeah, my experience tells me to avoid riding between the NEC points on the long distance trains, even if you do get those nice roomy Amfleet 2 coach seats complete with window curtains.Nice overall trip, but $5 for a Slice of Pizza!
The boarding process on the LD Trains, along with Redcaps not being able to Pre-Board you from the Lounge, makes one think that riding a Regional or Acela when in Coach( BC on Acela), is a better idea if Amtrak insists on continuing this Cluster Flub.( why not Let one Pre-Select your Seats when Booking like most forms of Transportation do now days?)
It's about time you got to our quick meet-up. It was nice seeing you.
At the pizza place, I think you're sitting where Penny and I sat when we were there in May.
It was nice seeing you.At the pizza place, I think you're sitting where Penny and I sat when we were there in May.
I'll agree on that, especially in an Amfleet II over a I, just like 2x1 Seating in BC is better than the 2x2 Amfleet BC Cars( Pennsylvanian).
But the process needs to be, and can be,improved before it becomes set in stone like the Gate Dragons in Chicago!
I took 97 back home in May and was able to sit wherever I wanted in the coach I boarded. So, it may vary between trains or just between OBS.
Used to be, the long-hauls didn't allow local NEC riders...you had to book to/from Virginia. The reason I rode them, was to enjoy their diner's, as well as long-distance seating, and lounge cars. But even if they allow NEC riders now, they ban coach riders from the diner's...
They have been allowing bookings on the LD trains southbound between NYP & WAS for a few years.
They don’t allow for northbound because they’re discharge only.
They used to be “‘R’—Stops only to receive”, between New York and Washington. I bought a ticket on the Meteor to Alexandria, which happened to be the same fare as Washington, had dinner, and just got off at Washington…
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They must have observed your behavior carefully because for a short while they made ALX R too, and this was before they added the Fredericksburg stop. So the likes of you would have to shell out the bucks to go all the way to RichmondThey used to be “‘R’—Stops only to receive”, between New York and Washington. I bought a ticket on the Meteor to Alexandria, which happened to be the same fare as Washington, had dinner, and just got off at Washington…
Fortunately I think it was for only one or two timetable cycles. Anyway, as you point out, they have removed the major motivation for wanting to travel by LDs in Coach for such a venture.
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