Sunset limited schedule to change in may

[trainman74]

And I have to give Amtrak additional partial credit, since in addition to the voicemail about the schedule change, they did send an email as well -- I found it in my junk folder, but I made sure to "whitelist" the sender address so I'll see such emails in the future.

However, still only partial credit, because this was the email:

Our records indicate that you are scheduled to depart on Amtrak Train number 0421 from Chicago-ILLINOIS at 1:45PM on Thursday June 14 and arriving in Los-Angeles-CALIFORNIA. That schedule has been cancelled due to . There is no alternate service available. To speak to a customer service representative about travel options such as selecting another date or destination call us at 8772319448 at your earliest convenience. We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for being a valued Amtrak customer. Sincerely, Amtrak .

Someone needs to work on getting all the fields filled in these emails ("due to..." what?), improving the messaging ("There is no alternate service available" is not particularly accurate in this case), and improving the way they look to a human ("Chicago-ILLINOIS"? 8772319448? How about "Chicago, Illinois" and "877-231-9448"?).

 

[Aaron]

Here's something goofy related to the schedule change. I'm in Tucson, and I've wanted to take my young kids on a short train trip for a long time, but since the Sunset Limited comes through here in the middle of the night, it just was impossible. Now, with daytime service, I can actually pull it off.

I went to amtrak.com to book tickets for the first Saturday after the change, 5/12/12, and the website only gave the option to mail tickets, not to pick them up. I'd rather not get the tickets by the mail just in case I have to refund them, so I thought that was weird. I looked into it more on the website, and it said that mail delivery was the only option because the station wasn't scheduled to be open or staffed at the time of departure. Since the station opens in the middle of the night for the current runs, I have no doubt they'll be opening it in the morning for an 8:15 departure. But, since the current nighttime hours are the ones programmed into the computer system, the computer chokes.

I'm going to call tomorrow to see if someone can override on the phone, but I thought it was weird. I wonder if that impacts the ticketing for any other stop on the route? Most other stations on the route are either completely unstaffed, open 24 hours, or have the new schedule fitting in their existing hours from what I can see, so I'm guessing it's just ticketing out of TUS and maybe MRC that would be affected.