Thanks so much for the info about Flyertalk. I will check it out.
Our original homebound itinerary is WFH to PDX Mar 10, PDX to LAX Mar 11, LAX to LCH Mar 12. No agent mentioned that the CS/SL was not a guaranteed connection(although, 1 hour does seem close).
On normal days, when the SL is scheduled to leave at 10:00, it's a guaranteed connection, even though the CS is only scheduled to arrive 1 hour before. Most days, the CS is early, and if it wasn't, they would hold the departing SL to wait for it unless it was going to be several hours late.
Yeah, if you go to Amtrak.com and put in PDX-LCH, it just gives you the bus option. You were lucky to get that one hour connection (and I'd be nervous about it).
On the other end, moving your departure a day early and overnighting on your dime *shouldn't* be a problem. I suspect that the LA connection is throwing flags and causing issues.
Margo, here's what Amtrak did: They rescheduled the departure times for #2 in Feb and March on the days that track work was happening.
But, instead of going back and breaking the CS/SL connection just for those days, they broke it for the whole two month period, even though it should be perfectly valid on a day like March 12 when #2 leaves at the normal time. So, if you search on the website for a train that's connecting that day, you get only the San Joaquin/bus combo as an option, even though staying on #11 until LAX would get you there in plenty of time otherwise.
Since the connection in LAX is not a published route on that day, AGR could try to deny you that since they won't book travel on a single segment that's not a published route. I suspect you booked your original itinerary (leaving WFH March 10) before the track work was announced a couple of weeks ago, so they had no problem booking it then. If you tried to book the same exact itinerary today, they would probably have a problem because of the broken connection of the CS/SL and try to force you to the train/bus combo,
despite the schedule being exactly the same.
So, when you're calling and saying that you want to move the WFH-PDX segment earlier by one day and leave everything else as is, even an agent who understood what was going there and allowed the overnight would probably still run into problems booking the connection at LAX. Since it's not a published route with the connection, but WFH-LAX and LAX-LCH are both published routes by themselves, they'd want to charge you more points (15,000 for the WFH-LAX portion, then 20,000 for the LAX-LCH portion, which totals to 15,000 more than you thought you should be paying.
I would hope that could be escalated and fixed since WFH-LCH is a published route with those times any other time of the year. However, it does seem like it's possibly a little more difficult than just educating a rep about the allowed overnight in Portland.