Roomette for Partial Trip

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Dec 17, 2018
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I'm looking at booking a trip from Whitefish, MT to Chicago next summer. The lowest price roomettes are almost booked up for the dates I'm looking at. Since I'm boarding the train at 7:20am I don't really need the roomette until the evening when I want to sleep (yes I do know I get meals included all day included with the roomette). I'm wondering if I can book a coach ticket for most of the day and a roomette at a lower price starting at one of the later stops. Obviously I would need two separate tickets. Can this be done? And if so, would I actually need to get off the train and then get right back on in one of the sleeper cars? Or could I just walk through the train to the sleeper car at the appropriate stop?
 
You can certainly do that. The pricing may not be much cheaper, but you may save a bit of money. On that particular segment, I'd suggest looking at either Williston or Minot as the transfer point; both are stops that are a bit longer and thus would give you more time to move. Minot is the longer of the two stops, but it's later in the evening and significant lateness could make it a late-night transfer instead of an evening transfer. It may help to do a multi-city booking; that way it's all on one ticket and if there's any through pricing it'll factor that in automatically.

You won't necessarily need to get off the train and go back on, though you may find that easier to do. Especially during meal times, if you're in the sleeper cars for train #8 (usually cheaper) you'll find it much easier to go outside than try and go through the dining car. The one sleeper on the train #28 section is on the rear of the train, so that may be easier to transfer to from inside, especially if the conductor lets you board in the rear coach. (Note that for your segment of the trip, trains #8 and #28 are connected together and essentially the same train, just different locations for sleeper passengers on the different train numbers. When traveling in coach, the train number makes no difference as to where you're seated.)
 
I have done that in reverse (roomette to coach), and the conductor did request that I get off the train and walk down outside with my carry-on luggage.

Yes, it was two tickets and they were able to link the reservations so that everyone knew I would be already on the train and merely changing accommodations.
 
Thanks for the quick replies. I'm trying to use points for the roomette portion of the trip. They still show one left at the cheapest points rate but I'm afraid it might be gone by the time I'm ready to book in a week or so. It looks like there are more available if I book it at a slightly later stop. 
 
As was said, you can very much do that, and you won’t even need two totally separate tickets if you use the multi-city tool. However, it likely won’t be much cheaper, because one continuous segment will pretty much always cost less than a broken up trip.

And I do recommend you at least look into getting a Roomette the entire way, because of the privacy, complimentary meals, and other amenities.

EDIT: Just saw your second post. Maybe it would be possible for you to book that cheap Roomette now, and then if you need to travel on a different date or something, just modify your reservation? If you cancel it altogether, there would be a 25% fee, but there won’t be one if you merely modify it. Or if you don’t want to do that, youn can actually call Amtrak and have them hold the fare for you (the current price will be reserved for you for up to 7 days). We did that a couple months ago when a cheap Roomette popped up on the Silver Star and we weren’t sure if we could actually take it, so you should be able to do the same here.
 
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Thanks for the quick replies. I'm trying to use points for the roomette portion of the trip. They still show one left at the cheapest points rate but I'm afraid it might be gone by the time I'm ready to book in a week or so. It looks like there are more available if I book it at a slightly later stop. 


You can actually call Amtrak and have them hold the fare for you (the current price will be reserved for you for up to 7 days). 
This!

If you’re still not ready in 7 days, call and make a small adjustment or just request nicely and they may give you another 7. 
 
You can actually call Amtrak and have them hold the fare for you (the current price will be reserved for you for up to 7 days). 
This!

If you’re still not ready in 7 days, call and make a small adjustment or just request nicely and they may give you another 7
Or if that agent isn’t cool with an “extension”, just hang up, call back, and ask a different person. I doubt they’re keeping track of who has had fairs reserved or whatever they call it, so I don’t see why there’d be any issue.
 
I recently tried to put a hold on a reservation using points and I was told by an AGR agent that they were not able to do that with points, only with cash. I’m not sure if the agent was correct or not. I went ahead and made the reservation. 
 
Other than booking problems when chopping up a trip between coach and sleeper, too much chopping can lead to a total fare that's more than the sleeper all the way.  Just for giggles, I looked at an extreme example on the Texas Eagle from CHI to LAX and broke it up into six segments (three coach and three Roomette) starting on a date when the whole trip was at low bucket in a Roomette (13 Jan 2019). 

•  Roomette all the way from CHI to LAX was $544 for one adult.

•  Total for the six segments (with a Roomette on each of the three nights) totaled $731.

Each Roomette segment had a duration of about 10 hours, so I suppose the total cost could be lowered by making them shorter.  Wonder how short they'd have to be in order to get the total for the 6 segments down to $544?

[edit] Lowest I could get the total fare down to was $653 with 3 much shorter segments in a Roomette totaling 7 hours and 17 minutes.  
 
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