crescent2
Conductor
A friend and I have an upcoming trip which involves two 2-zone AGR awards with no hotel overnights. We should be arriving in CHI early in the day to end the first award, and then departing on the same day 9 hours later on a different train to begin the second award. The trips are on two separate reservations, so to Amtrak, the connection is not a connection at all and is therefore not guaranteed.
In discussing this in the main forum, I was advised to call and get the reservations cross referenced, which i did. However, the agent said she would cross reference them but the connection would nevertheless not be a guaranteed one. (Despite my pleas of "But a green maned lion said....!") I then asked if the reservations could be combined into one reservation and was told no, but that even if they could be, the connection would still not be guaranteed, "because you are arriving and leaving on the same day." I inquired if there was any way to obtain a guaranteed connection, and she said no and repeated the quoted reason.
I am not necessarily disputing the impossibility of getting a guaranteed connection between the two awards (and not really worried with a 9-hour layover), but the reasoning makes no sense to me. The layover is nine hours so that's not a factor, and the connection is between two different trains as is the norm. The other connections in the trip are also "arriving and leaving on the same day," as are many if not most connections that people routinely make.
Can anyone shed more light on this?
In discussing this in the main forum, I was advised to call and get the reservations cross referenced, which i did. However, the agent said she would cross reference them but the connection would nevertheless not be a guaranteed one. (Despite my pleas of "But a green maned lion said....!") I then asked if the reservations could be combined into one reservation and was told no, but that even if they could be, the connection would still not be guaranteed, "because you are arriving and leaving on the same day." I inquired if there was any way to obtain a guaranteed connection, and she said no and repeated the quoted reason.
I am not necessarily disputing the impossibility of getting a guaranteed connection between the two awards (and not really worried with a 9-hour layover), but the reasoning makes no sense to me. The layover is nine hours so that's not a factor, and the connection is between two different trains as is the norm. The other connections in the trip are also "arriving and leaving on the same day," as are many if not most connections that people routinely make.
Can anyone shed more light on this?
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