Kudos to Washington Union Station Lost and Found Department

I sent the following email to Amtrak this morning:

On November 14, 2016 I was riding MARC #407 (operated by Amtrak) from Baltimore to Washington. When I arrived in Washington, I left my gym bag on board the train and did not realize that I had done so until I reached my office, which was well after the train had left for a return trip to Baltimore.

When I called the Washington Union Station Lost and Found, I was pleased that I was immediately connected to the staff at the lost and found department instead have having to navigate through a phone mail tree. The employee, though obviously very busy, was courteous has he took the description of the bag and my contact information.

The bag was located by lunch time (I left it at about 7 AM), and I* was promptly contacted by Amtrak. When I went to the station to retrieve it, the employee handling the matter was courteous, and also conscientious, as he made sure to check my ID card before handing the bag to me.

Because of the effective service on the part of the lost and found department I not only did not have to replace all of my workout gear and bag, but I was able to go to the gym and have my workout without any disruption to my schedule.

Please convey may appreciation to the employees of the lost and found department, who helped me recover from my momentary lapse of attention to my property.

This is not the first time I've done this. About 4 years ago, the same gym bag (and workout gear) took an unplanned ride to New York on a Northeast Regional. And it was a two days before I was leaving on a trip where I had planned to use said gym bag. Amtrak returned it to me safe and sound the next day.

There's so much complaining about the quality of Amtrak service. I thought it might be nice to post something a little different.

I agree. In summer of 2015 my son left a book on a bench at BAL. We called the station as soon as we figured out what had happened (about two hours). They not only located the book, they shipped it up the corridor to PHL so we could pick it up locally!

You were lucky twice. I'd worry about any potential third time.

I've lost camera lenses, power adapters, Amtrak tickets, and a bunch of other random stuff over the years. Never has Amtrak found or returned anything back to me. When I've called Amtrak while the train was still in transit I received the phone based equivalent of a shrug and a suggestion to call back later. Nobody has ever been willing to contact the train in any way. When calling back to follow up as requested they've never once had any record of my previous call. Had to start from scratch every single time. Now I just let it go. Amtrak has done an amazing job of training me to never bug them about anything I lose on board. Maybe if I ever lose some gym clothes I'll give it another try sometime.

Someone took our suitcase by mistake a stop before ours in Chicago. While we were at the desk filling out the paperwork, they got a call that the person who had mistakenly taken our bag at the previous stop had returned it and it arrived about 5 minutes later on the next train

Last year I left my phone on the Surfliner when going from San Diego to Los Angeles. I didn't notice it was missing until I was about to board the FlyAway bus to LAX. By the time I got back to the train, it was sealed up (fortunately, it wasn't headed farther up the coast). I went to the Lost and Found, who instructed me to wait for the conductor to make her way back. About a half hour later, I met with her and she had my phone in hand. She cheerfully declined my gratuity, saying it was part of her job.

My grandson left his iPad on a Washington DC to New York train last spring. Amtrak found the iPad on the train and returned it within a few days. It's good to know these things happen.