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Amtrak website & timetables

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Posted by Overmod on Wednesday, February 24, 2021 6:18 PM

Lithonia Operator
In the box at upper left, there are big light-blue buttons for Map and Schedule. Please click on the Schedule button. Tell me where you wind up.

I let them have it in the feedback.  Felt annoyingly good, too.  With all the back-end expense Amtrak has loaded itself with, there is no conceivable excuse not to have a functional schedule on a tab marked 'schedule' -- let alone a need for a notice describing vague changes to completely different trains.

At least the little morons are consistent: the link from the obsolescent early-2020 schedule from the train here:

https://www.amtrak.com/train-schedules-timetables

also "helpfully" redirects to the same pointless messages.

 

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Posted by MMLDelete on Wednesday, February 24, 2021 9:02 PM

And also, on the page I first linked here (https://www.amtrak.com/pennsylvanian-train), there is a dark blue banner at the top, which, in white type has a link to Schedules. If you click on that, it brings you to the page Overmod linked, which, as he said, has a handy link which does NOT take you to the Pennsylvanian's schedule.

I am planning to travel on that train, but so far, the only schedule I can find is one done by a railfan (http://cwrr.com/Amtrak/e_broad.html), and I have no idea if it's accurate.

 

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Posted by Overmod on Thursday, February 25, 2021 10:05 AM

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Posted by Overmod on Thursday, February 25, 2021 10:05 AM

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Posted by Overmod on Thursday, February 25, 2021 10:08 AM

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Posted by Overmod on Thursday, February 25, 2021 10:09 AM

I reloaded the app.  Of course there is no schedule (I see the USRail app for iOS features a clickable map with stations).  You have to 'book', then specify your endpoints (or scroll through an interminable list that resets to the beginning every time).

I ran the test for the Pennsylvanian; for Friday to Monday it shows as leaving Moynihan-NYP at 10:52am and arriving 7:59pm.  Interestingly, coach was $65 both Sunday and Monday, down from $82.  I did not think to run the numbers from Philadelphia instead of NYC.

You could also spend a mint and ride "multiple trains" to arrive nearly at midnight, although if that's via the Capitol something is badly wrong with the earlier-indicated arrival at Chicago...

Supposedly there is Keystone service (train 641) with an execrable through bus connection, leaving earlier at 7:17am and getting to Pittsburgh by 6:40.

As I was offered push buttons to lock in my rate, and a useful if accurate bar showed prospective occupancy (hopefully calculated for social distancing) I think we can conclude this is still a 7-day-a-week train with no weird weekend changes...

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Posted by charlie hebdo on Thursday, February 25, 2021 10:44 AM

Quadruple post?? 

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Posted by Overmod on Thursday, February 25, 2021 11:03 AM

charlie hebdo
Quadruple post??

This one is only incidentally associated with the 'Pittsburgh-Indianapolis' trip... or the revised grand excursion from Maine...

[EDIT -- jeez! how did that happen?  And you wouldn't believe how long it took to fix the four of them; the Web site kept saving and 'updating' the deleted posts if I didn't back out far enough.  Whether this is a Kalmbach thing or a 'new and improved' criOS thing (it was updated several days ago) I don't know yet.  It's double-posted at least 3 other times since then...]

Lithuania noted that when he tried to get schedule information for the Pennsylvanian, from the tab labeled 'schedule' in the train's Amtrak Web page, he got nothing but an ultimately-irrelevant notice about train service being cut back in the pandemic.  It then transpired that any attempt to find a schedule for that train produced the same worthlessness.

I have now verified that the only way to get times for that train is to 'book', tediously specify endpoints, and take notes, essentially just as on the kiosk in the Memphis Central Station.

This also differs critically from the Amtrak Web-site look and feel threads or the bewail-absence-of-system-timetable thread, because this deals with finding specific data for a specific train knowing its name and general route.

One other interesting detail: the Amtrak booking page is configured to use the calendar date as default whether or not there's still an available train that day... and gives a cryptic message very like that discussing the triweekly cutbacks when you innocently 'search for trains' that have already left.  It will NOT show you those trains as scheduled to run that day, but already departed...

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Posted by BaltACD on Thursday, February 25, 2021 8:27 PM

Amtrak's aim with their web site is just CYA - to say 'we have a web site'.

The web site is designed to discourage anyone from wanting to us Amtrak.

Never too old to have a happy childhood!

              

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Posted by matthewsaggie on Tuesday, March 2, 2021 6:04 PM

Try:

Amtrak.Com/timetables.html

There all there. Dont know why thete is not a working link on the Amtrak website.

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Posted by Overmod on Tuesday, March 2, 2021 10:59 PM

matthewsaggie
Try: Amtrak.com/timetables.html They're all there.

Ah, did you actually click on one to see the schedule?

Go to that page, click on the Pennsylvanian, and then report back here the times it says for Philadelphia...

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Posted by MMLDelete on Tuesday, March 2, 2021 11:16 PM

We've now bought our tickets for a trip on the Pennsylvanian in June. We called on the phone. So now we finally know when it leaves! It's not the time shown on that railfan's timetable; but to be fair, I don't know the vintage of that webpage.

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Posted by matthewsaggie on Wednesday, March 3, 2021 9:03 PM

The ones I was interested in eete all there- Cardinal,  Crescent, Capital, and City of NO with their days of operation. Sorry yours weren't. 

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Posted by MMLDelete on Sunday, March 7, 2021 12:21 PM

In addition to the Pennsylvanian, none of the Philly-Harrisburg Keystone trains have a timetable accessible on the Amtrak website either.

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Posted by zugmann on Sunday, March 7, 2021 12:45 PM

Lithonia Operator

In addition to the Pennsylvanian, none of the Philly-Harrisburg Keystone trains have a timetable accessible on the Amtrak website either.

 

On the main page, just select HAR - PHL (or other way around), your departrue date and find trains.  It will list them all (8 I think on a weekday). 

It's been fun.  But it isn't much fun anymore.   Signing off for now. 


  

The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any

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Posted by Overmod on Sunday, March 7, 2021 2:49 PM

As of 1:00, the following did NOT have accessible schedules: Adirondack, Cascades, Carolinian, Downeaster, Empire, Ethan Allen, Heartland, Hiawatha, Illinois, Keystone/Pennsylvanian, Maple Leaf, Michigan, Missouri River Runner, NEC1 and 2 (2 doesn't even have a clickable link!), NE Regional, San Joaquins, Vermonter, and Virginia Service.

Interestingly I reported via the 'feedback' tab that the Capitol Limited schedule was down -- it is now available.  Don't know if that's cause and effect but I reported the others.

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