But an FYI is Amtrak, as a govermnet owned company, has been caught and reported in newspapers for standing on tracks to rack up thier pay.
I’d love to see the proof on this one. I’m sorry, but I’ve been following Amtrak for years and I’ve never heard this story before. And short of standing in Chicago’s Union Station, it can’t happen and wouldn’t happen just about anywhere else, for several reasons.
Second, the operating crews (engineer & conductors) can’t easily play a game like that, as two things happen. First, they are only allowed by law to work a certain number of hours. If they go over that, bad things happen. Second if they don’t get to where they are going within a reasonable amount of time, then they don’t get enough rest and can’t work their next shift, which means that they now loose potentially 8 or more hours of pay.
And believe me; most of the crews want to ensure that either they get home to their own beds that night, or to the hotel where they are supposed to stay. They don’t want to run out on their hours of service and be stuck in the middle of no where waiting for a van to come pick them up and take them to their hotel, much less standing there facing angry passengers who want to know why the train is stopped.
As for the on board service crew, the car attendants, waiters, cooks, café attendants; those guys and gals have pretty much been on duty for two days straight by the time they get to Chicago. They aren’t looking for an extra hour or two of work at that point; they are looking for a bed!
Finally, we don’t know all of the fact regarding the women who said she had booked a sleeper. Occasionally double bookings do happen. But it is also possible that she boarded at the wrong stop, and therefore the crew believed that she was a no-show and sold her room to someone who wanted to upgrade.