BEWARE: Service advisory for Chicago/St. Louis Trains

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Compuwriter

Compuwriter

Train Attendant
Joined
Apr 10, 2011
Messages
36
Location
Northeast
I was planning to go pick up my train tickets this Friday for our train trip starting next Thursday. I booked a Lincoln service (303) to St. Louis after getting off the Capitol Limited on the 16th and Texas Eagle (322) back to the Capitol Limited on the 22nd. I bought these tickets back in April. When I went in to the Amtrak site I found a service advisory for those trains. I called customer service and was told Amtrak was changing them to bus routes, one of which is impossible for making our connection and the other bus route has us getting on the bus at around 5 AM. I received NO PHONE CALL and NO EMAIL letting me know about this.Now I have to go to the proverbial "Plan B" and try to find another way to get from Chicago to St. Louis without an 8 hour layover,(which I may just go ahead and deal with), and a way to get from St. Louis to Chicago without getting on the train at 5 am and having another 6 hour layover in Chicago. Does anyone have any ideas? I am not familiar with that area. I confess I am REALLY UPSET with Amtrak that I was never contacted. We joined NARP and do everything but wear sandwich boards saying "Ride Amtrak" .We are bringing our 13 year grandchild on this trip to make another Amtrak convert and this is not a great start!
 
The Texas Eagle is still runing through, although they often eliminate the extra car that runs only STL to CHI. If it's not already sold out, get the agent to transfer you to train #22 or #422 assuming that it's the correct day. In fact that should have been done automatically.

Unfortunately that only helps you in one direction. You'll probably find that going south to STL you can't get a seat on the Eagle, since they often block the sale of seats on train #21 between CHI & STL. Of course if you'll willing to part with a few extra dollars, and assuming that there is still a room available, you could get on 21 that way.

I can't speak to why you've gotten no phone call, unless this work was just announced and they're working down the list. But I think that advisory has been up for several weeks now, won't swear to it however. I would double check your reservation to ensure that you gave them a correct phone number.
 
Thanks Alan. I gave them both my home and cell numbers and both are correct. I also gave them my email! I think the advisory about the flooding was up for a while, but I have been in a few times and did not see the one about the other routes.It has been a week or so though. When I look at my account page and reservations there are no changes. What a fiasco this would have been if I did not check the website. The representative I talked to told me to call customer service in the morning.It does look like there is a Megabus running between the two cities so I may have a plan "C' if Amtrak has no alternative for us.
 
Actually I had double -booked that leg and I also had a reservation on the 321 in case we missed the 303 with the Capitol being late. Apparently there is an issue with that one too!
 
Alan, I took your advice and booked us in on 21 and 22. They were the only Texas Eagles showing on the web site for our travel dates. My husband is healing from leg surgery and the more I thought about it, the more worried I became about him being stuck on a bus. The only space available was roomettes and the web site made me book two of them for the three of us.On the Capitol Limited we have a bedroom for the 3 of us. Anyway, I will deal with all this later this morning and work with customer service to cancel my old reservations and hopefully manage to save some money on all of this. I was thinking maybe we could make do with just one with hubby being in the top bunk and my grandchild and I sitting below. This should be interesting! We get to try almost all the accommodations available on Amtrak.
 
Train 29 to 303 isn't a valid connection anyway.

The schedule for this last bit of trackwork was just finalized, so as Alan said, it's likely they're just going down the list and didn't get to your reservation yet. If you had a ticket for 321 from Chicago to St. Louis, it would still be valid on train 21 (since it really is the same train). Same with 322/22 out of St. Louis, with the note that your departure from STL would be 7:00 instead of 7:55.
 
Thanks Togdor. The representative I got told me that 321 and 322 were canceled and we would be on buses instead. I am going to work with customer relations today and try to get this mess straight. I do feel a bit better knowing that this advisory was recent!
 
Thanks for the heads up. I think we will do that next time if my hubby's leg is better. The only option Amtrak gave us was to use the buses they were supplying or to keep the roomettes I jumped on when I found out about this. The representative was very courteous and very nice. But as she explained Amtrak's job is to get us from point a to point b whether it is by bus or train. The fact we needed transport where my husband could get up and stretch his bad leg frequently was "unfortunate" but not something they could really help with. So for this trip, we will keep the roomettes and just eat tuna fish and hamburgers for a while to pay for it. On the plus side, we get to try virtually every accomodation Amtrak has and have learned a LOT about booking train travel! I am so glad I found "amtraktrains"!
 
henryj said:
Greyhound has buses leaving all day long. It's a 6 hour ride and if you book online it's only $23 one way. I have no idea what is wrong with Amtrak but it seems to be just falling apart out west and in the midwest.

https://www.greyhound.com/farefinder/step2.aspx
Click to expand...
It's called building a high speed rail link between Chicago and St. Louis. That's was causing the busitusions.
 
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