Who has experience with this? I am interested to know about early or late occupancy of the roomette - that is, does it ever happen that Westbound, you can go into the roomette earlier than TOL, and coming back East, do you ever get to stay in the roomette past TOL?
Boarding in Cleveland, we always do our zone award westbound starting with TOL. We have yet to be allowed in the sleeper early, partly because the stop in CLE is usually rushed--the sleeper attendant in that particular car was taking his break-etc. The conductor did allow us to sit in the LL seats on the Capitol so as to make a quick exchange to the sleepers at the front of the train in TOL.
Eastbound, we have been more fortunate, especially when traveling in bedrooms. A couple of times we have been able to stay in the sleeper from TOL to CLE as long as we had purchased a coach ticket TOL-CLE, which we always do. We agree not to use the upper bunk (since we disembark in CLE at 1am its not a big deal--which makes the car attendant happy that we didnt mess up his bed
A generous tip is always included.
One of the reasons for this is that conductors change in Toledo and it causes some problem if the new conductors do not know where you are.
I would doubt you would be permitted to change to your bedroom/roommette before TOL in most cases going westbound