Disclosure: Despite what follows, there is no way I would travel to New York City from Washington, DC except by railroad. Yet, Amtrak remains an extraordinarily unreliable organization.

We booked our Memorial Day travel on the Acela train from Washington, DC Union Station to New York’s “new” Moynihan Penn Station terminal on January 22, 2023, a full four months before the trip. Having had enough of listening to people yelling into their cell phones, oblivious to the disclosure of their personal and business information, we were determined to get into the Quiet Car and to sit next to each other in regular seats, not at a table with two strangers.

Thus, we (my wife actually) booked Acela 2170 departing Washington on May 26, 2023, at 3:00 PM and arriving in New York City at 5:49 PM, enough time to make it to a dinner engagement and then to a jazz show at Dizzy’s Club. The confirmation returned by Amtrak took us out of the Quiet Car. After several changes online, consuming some hours, we received a fourth confirmation showing we were in the Quiet Car and, we thought, not seated at a shared table. We had the same seats assigned in both directions. The return train (Amtrak 2155) was scheduled to depart New York City at 11:00 am on Monday, May 29 as we had seen in the schedules on the Amtrak app.

Perfect.

For reasons that defy understanding, Amtrak sent us a new confirmation on January 27, changing our seats on the return trip to DC to 8A and 8C. The message sending the PDF of the ticket simply said:

Thank you for choosing Amtrak.
Your travel documents are attached. Please print and bring them with valid identification to show the conductor aboard the train.

Concerned about the implications of this unexplained change, I tried to locate a seat map to be sure we were not seated at a table on the return trip. I could not find a seat map on Amtrak.com which was not recognizing our reservation number, so I engaged the Amtrak “chat” feature to be sure we had the seats we wanted. There ensued a 779-word “chat” with “Desiree.” I will spare you the details of this agony of miscommunication. Suffice to say that Desiree assured us that our new return seats were not at a table and were still in the Quiet Car. Exhausted, I accepted her assurance.

On February 16, my wife, but not me, received an UPDATED confirmation from Amtrak indicating a “modified” reservation, but in fact the details were the same as we had previously received. Puzzlement.

On April 5, we received another Amtrak unexplained email (labeled Change Summary), showing an issue time of 7:09 am PT, changing our return train to a different train number, later departure (11:20 instead of 11:00) and …  and … changing our seat assignments to two different cars!!!!

Car 2 Quiet Car – Seat 4D

Car 3 – Seat 10A

No explanation provided.

We called Amtrak yet again and succeeded in getting reassigned to adjacent seats in the Quiet Car:

Car 2 Quiet Car – Seats 4F, 4D

The confirmation, labeled Sales Receipt with PDF ticket attached, issued on April 5 and, curiously, also at 7:09 am PT.

Also, on April 5 at 7:09 am PT, Amtrak issued yet another email moving us out of the Quiet Car on the return trip:

Car 3 – Seats 10A, 10C

Followed by another email also at 7:09 am:

Car 2 Quiet Car – Seats 4F, 4D

I am not making this up.

In the chaos, I failed to record the change of train number and departure time. My bad. But not just me. How can Amtrak explain this turn of events? Wait.

As reported in my previous post, we had a truly remarkable weekend in New York City. We departed our hotel in plenty of time to make what we thought was our 11:00 am train to DC.

When we arrived at the Red Cap station in the Moynihan terminal, we noticed our train number (the original number on which we had been confirmed) was not listed on the departure board. I inquired.

We were informed that we had the wrong train number and that we were not in the Quiet Car and not seated together!!!!! Neither of us had any record of this change. Fortunately, the Red Cap was very polite and helpful and in a few seconds, using the Amtrak app in my cell phone, was able to change our car assignment to the Quiet Car in adjacent seats.

So, all’s well that ends well, right?

True enough, I suppose, but how can the above sequence of events be explained or justified? Amtrak’s technology and “self-awareness” of what it is doing seem to be mythologically screwed up. This is not the first time our trains and seats have been changed without being told. It happened on a previous New York trip and, when discovered at the last minute, could not be changed. We ended up traveling in different cars, each seated adjacent to a stranger and not in the Quiet Car.

Amtrak is the only feasible alternative to flying to New York, especially on a holiday weekend when the roads are packed with cars and huge delays are commonplace. Surely this is not the best Amtrak can do. In a real sense Amtrak is a monopoly – at least in the sense that it is the only way to travel to NYC by train. Obviously, there are options – driving, the dreaded airlines (one to two hours taxi/Uber/Lyft ride into the city) but for many of us there is no real choice. Knowing its position in the hearts of many travelers, we would hope Amtrak would be better at its job. It’s not. A mystery.