Amtrak from Niagara Falls, NY to NYC

[Claw406]

Hello

Does anyone here have experience traveling on the Empire Service from NFL to NYC?

I've just booked two tickets for train travel on this route for 31 Dec departing at 640am. I've read somewhere that sometimes the train can be delayed up to 3 hrs and this is worrying me.. We hv to get to NYC in time for the NY's eve party and I'm now wondering if we should hv booked a flight instead. the reason why we booked a train is to experience train travel in he States.

I paid for the train tickets with a credit card. Should I decide to cancel it, will I be able to get back my money via credit card instead of e-voucher? The refund policy online was somewhat confusing to me.

Thanks

 

[jis]

Hello

Does anyone here have experience traveling on the Empire Service from NFL to NYC?

I've just booked two tickets for train travel on this route for 31 Dec departing at 640am. I've read somewhere that sometimes the train can be delayed up to 3 hrs and this is worrying me.. We hv to get to NYC in time for the NY's eve party and I'm now wondering if we should hv booked a flight instead. the reason why we booked a train is to experience train travel in he States.

I paid for the train tickets with a credit card. Should I decide to cancel it, will I be able to get back my money via credit card instead of e-voucher? The refund policy online was somewhat confusing to me.

Thanks

Under normal circumstances it is seldom delayed three hours. In winter of course there is always a chance that a blizzard will hit and something will happen to cause such. But then air service won't generally do much better under those circumstances either. One other reason for outage is flood, and that is unlikely in the winter. And slow orders due to high temperature is unlikely too. But then again the great CSX can always put one of their trains on the ground and hold up everything, but that is seemingly becoming less frequent now that they have actually spent the money to fix up the tracks on that route and bring them upto state of reasonably good repair.

If you cancel an Amtrak ticket before the departure of the train you will get the money back in full provided you have not received a printed ticket yet. If you have a printed ticket I believe there is a small service charge for cancellation. You will get the money back in your credit card if you so desire. Indeed that is what will happen by default if you paid by a credit card.

 

[the_traveler]

The 6:40 AM train begins in NFL, so there should be no (major) delays!

The "3 hour delays" you hear about are from the Maple Leaf, which crosses the border from/to Toronto and is sometimes delayed with the Customs inspection. Of course any train can be delayed, but much less likely than a plane! I (myself) would chose a train in winter! Just my 2¢!

As long as the tickets have not been printed, you can cancel by phone and get a 100% charge back to your credit card! If the tickets were printed, you can get a 90% refund or a 100% value voucher!

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

Make sure to get seats on the right side of the train when travel down to NYC, left when going home.

Yes you could have problems, but not likely. Most days the trains do get thur on or close to timetable. Will your train be unlucky? Maybe, but that's life. Your car may not start that morning too.

Don't stress yourself get on the train and kick back and watch upstate New York go by.

 

[claw406]

Thank q so much everyone for yr inputs. I feel much better after all yr clarifications and input.

I think the train ride is the way to go!

Both my husband and I are from Singapore and this being the only chance we will ever get to spending NY's eve in Times Square means so much to us (we'll be returning home to Sg end of next yr) Hope we will get to NYC on schedule!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone

 

[Shanghai]

Both my husband and I are from Singapore and this being the only chance we will ever get to spending NY's eve in Times Square means so much to us (we'll be returning home to Sg end of next yr) Hope we will get to NYC on schedule!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone

I hope you have a wonderful trip from Niagria Falls to New York City and enjoy New Year's Eve

in the city. It is a far different place than Singapore. My family and I spent one Christmas

in the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, enjoyed the Christmas decorations on Orchard Road and ice

skated at that old rink off of Bukka Timah. We spent several holidays on Sentosa and I did part

of my graduate studies at the National University of Singapore. I hope you enjoy New York as

much as we enjoyed Singapore!!

 

[PaulM]

According to Amtrak, #286 runs only on Saturday while its companion, #284, runs the other six days a week, departing NFL at 7:05AM.

The very useful train status website has 10 observations in the last 4 weeks for the two trains. The average delay arriving NYP was just under 9 minutes, with the worst 45 minutes.

So it looks like the odds that it won't be 3 hours late are no worse that that you will get to the station safely.