I have been noticing that Amtrak is monkeying with the prices a bit and actually dropping some last minute fares in order to fill the rooms. AmSnag won’t show this, but if you go to Amtrak.com and start putting in more pax (up to 8) you can trigger it to try and reserve up to 4 rooms. Once a room type is sold out, then you know how many are actually available, or if you get to a fare that doesn’t show a limit to rooms available then there are at least 5 rooms that are vacant. So if the LSL has two sleepers and they show one room at low bucket, put in 4 people and see what two rooms are or if they show sold out. If you get a price then you can bump to 6 people (3 rooms) and see what it give you. I’ve been doing this for the western trains and am as baffled as ever as some trains will get major adjustments and others none. Such as I’ve seen either section of the Empire Builder with all 5 bedrooms available at low-bucket and when I rode it the other day the cheap room on 28 was mid-bucket, there was one more at the next bucket and the other 3 were high bucket. Yep, no bedrooms had been sold but they were still very pricey.
