College football has sold out the entire train months in advance

shop deals on amazon
Advertise with us
Shop deals on ebay
Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum

Help Support Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Status
Not open for further replies.
Upstate

Upstate

Lead Service Attendant
Joined
Feb 21, 2009
Messages
405
I was looking at a cruise out of New Orleans and checking on the train tickets and noticed that the Crescent was sold out on Nov 6th between NOL and Tuscoloosa. Turns out its the day before the the LSU-Bama game. I mean this is two months out and not a single seat or sleeper is available. Its rare to see this part of the route come above low bucket prices but to be sold out completely is very different.
 
Shoot...I've got tickets to the Mississippi State- LSU game on 9/26. Going to Tuscaloosa and renting a car; it's only an hour and some to Starkville. GO TIGERS !!! ;) ;)
 
The same thing happens with the Heartland Flyer on OU-Texas Weekend-the game is played at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. A special RT fare is offered going down Friday and returning Sunday and the HF goes ahead and makes the turn in FTW and goes on into DAL. Last year Amtrak tossed on 2 extra Coaches, bringing the consist to 5 and still had to turn fans away. As far as I know, nothing special is offered on the Texas Eagle for the UT fans but I imagine almost every seat between Austin and DAL is Burnt Orange.
 
OlympianHiawatha said:
The same thing happens with the Heartland Flyer on OU-Texas Weekend-the game is played at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. A special RT fare is offered going down Friday and returning Sunday and the HF goes ahead and makes the turn in FTW and goes on into DAL. Last year Amtrak tossed on 2 extra Coaches, bringing the consist to 5 and still had to turn fans away. As far as I know, nothing special is offered on the Texas Eagle for the UT fans but I imagine almost every seat between Austin and DAL is Burnt Orange.
Click to expand...
Rightfully so! HOOK "EM HORNS!!!!"No reason they cant add coaches to the regular crescent runs,sounds like the demand is sure there even @ high bucket!

All you SEC fans have to get by Florida before they play Texas for the BIG PRIZE!!!!!! :D
 
Roll Tide!!!

I'm a UA alumni and can say this doesn't surprise me in the least. Hotels in Tuscaloosa are booked for home football games generally a year in advance. Even in years when the team isn't doing so well. Alabama games sell out fast and people come in from all over the south to see them. During football weeks the RV'ers start arriving on campus on Tuesday night for the home games.
 
Well I grew up in an era when the trains were often full for special sports and also political events. Extra cars and even extra trains were easier to come by then than now.

I am just glad to see it still happening, even if not on the scale as in the distant past.

Some mentioned extra cars, keep in mind Amtrak does not have too much of that. But hopefully they will do what they can to provide extra. Coaches at least. Not much for Viewliners.

I am not a sports fan myself but my sister is a Roll Tide graduate so I am well aware of the fever pitch surrounding these games. I think tp49 and I have talked about our mutual Alabama connection several years ago.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
And people sat the Ohio Tri-C corridor will never fill up... I say it will 7 Saturdays out of the year!
 
All the Cascades runs Seattle to Vancouver BC are sold out for the February 2010 Winter Olympics. I'm sure travel agents bought them as solid groups of tickets. I am also sure that all the Greyhound and shuttle bus services got bought up the same way.

It will be an interesting couple of weeks. I wonder if I will even make it north of the border during that time? Sitting in line at the border crossing in a car (can't quite imagine whose car it would be) will be an hours long ordeal I'm sure.
 
I've always wanted to see of folks take the CZ from Lincoln (UNL) to Colorado for the NU vs CU game. If on time, it really works well. With the CU game usually at 11am thats time to do a quick RT and sleep on the train both ways since you travel through Nebraska at night. Its Thanksgiving weekend so I have never done the trip before.
 
When the Bear's played in Champaign for one year, I took the train down twice to see them play. I was talking about Randy Moss's wife before we even came to a stop in Champaign. I was telling the conductor he should call Randy Moss and tell him to get his wife off of the railroad property because she was stinking up the railroad. That's the G rated version anyway. LOL
 
Cascadia said:
All the Cascades runs Seattle to Vancouver BC are sold out for the February 2010 Winter Olympics. I'm sure travel agents bought them as solid groups of tickets. I am also sure that all the Greyhound and shuttle bus services got bought up the same way.
It will be an interesting couple of weeks. I wonder if I will even make it north of the border during that time? Sitting in line at the border crossing in a car (can't quite imagine whose car it would be) will be an hours long ordeal I'm sure.
Click to expand...
I would guess that the CS loads north of Portland will be pretty heavy too...
 
Are there any football specials still being operated by Amtrak (or anyone else)? I guess there are still specials for the Army-Navy game, but any others?

I remember back in 1972 the BN ran one from OMA to LNK for Nebraska home games. I don't think it was considered an Amtrak train, even though it duplicated the Zephyr's route.
 
In addition to having little, if any, surplus equipment to run "college specials" there are some behind the scenes considerations for Amtrak. We were working with the UP on an employee special planning (with UP equipment) and the company brought out some interesting points. Finding "extra" conductors and engineers on a week-end is hard to do at certain times of the year and football season is one of those. The liability for fans who have wetted their whistle drastically increase from ordinary pax trains and finally, or so says the RR, there is no profit in a special just a dose of PR....so much for bean counting !
 
USC also does this with the CS for one game a season. This year it is for the Oregon game. They reserve all the sleeper cars and then sell them to fans (as a package with game tickets, etc) from a different website. I was watching the video from last year and it looks like a blast :)
 
Several years ago, a special Indy 500 train would run from downtown to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Race Day.

Also, a special State Fair train would run from Fishers, IN to the Indiana State Fair grounds during the fair.

New Jersey Transit has started special Football trains from Hoboken to the Giants/Jets stadium in Rutherford, NJ.

There has also been discussion to use this train for a park and ride service for daily communters.

Go Trains!!
 
railiner said:
Are there any football specials still being operated by Amtrak (or anyone else)? I guess there are still specials for the Army-Navy game, but any others?
Click to expand...
The only contemporary Army/Navy special I'm aware of is Bennett Levin's private train, and even that only ran for a few years (2005 was the first, I'm pretty sure it ran in 2006, and I'm not sure about 2007; pretty sure it did not run in 2008). And that train is only for wounded veterans and friends, by invitation--a wonderful thing, but nothing like the "football specials" of decades ago (when the PRR ran dozens of special trains on game day from West Point and Annapolis straight to the stadium in Philadelphia and back).

Just imagine what it must have been like to live in a world where railroads had enough spare equipment to create forty extra trains for a day, most of them longer than a typical Amtrak LD too!...
 
wayman said:
railiner said:
Are there any football specials still being operated by Amtrak (or anyone else)? I guess there are still specials for the Army-Navy game, but any others?
Click to expand...
The only contemporary Army/Navy special I'm aware of is Bennett Levin's private train, and even that only ran for a few years (2005 was the first, I'm pretty sure it ran in 2006, and I'm not sure about 2007; pretty sure it did not run in 2008). And that train is only for wounded veterans and friends, by invitation--a wonderful thing, but nothing like the "football specials" of decades ago (when the PRR ran dozens of special trains on game day from West Point and Annapolis straight to the stadium in Philadelphia and back).

Just imagine what it must have been like to live in a world where railroads had enough spare equipment to create forty extra trains for a day, most of them longer than a typical Amtrak LD too!...
Click to expand...

At about the age of eight or nine we were driving by Union Station, Chattanooga, and I saw a train in when no train was due. Daddy agreed to stop so I could look at it. It did not look that much like any regular train. I found out it was a political special to going to the Eisehnhower Stevenson convention.

My first introduction to special trains. Had not heard of them before that night. As I recall it was a good 12 or 14 cars long, it took up the whole platform.It had an old fashioned open platform observation car on the rear. That was a treat because they were gradually being phased out.
 
This is the exact reason why I propose a seasonal service PHL-Lemont (the closest active tracks to Penn State). With an average attendance of 103,000, a handful of Amfleets will almost certainly fill up.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest posts

Back
Top