adventurepdx

I believe that you are referring to my photo. First off, there aren't any panniers on that bike, just a basket and rear transverse saddlebag (Carradice). The bike wasn't even set up for panniers at that point, but is now. Anyways, as stated in my original post, this was taken on the Capitol Corridor, which has the full "roll-on" service, meaning you roll it on and put it in the hook, and you roll it off. (And the bike is in a public area, too. I wouldn't be able to get a shot like this if it was in the baggage car.) Since you are the one handling the bike, you can get away with stuff like this. It would be an issue if the things on the bike interfered with loading other people's bikes, which would probably get the attention of Amtrak staff. And there's always the chance that there could be a staff person who sees it and gives me a hassle. In that case, I'd just remove the bags. But since no one minded, I left them on.

The bigger issue I've seen with the hook area on these California cars is that some passengers will treat it as storage for their big roll on bags and other bulky goods. This would be a major annoyance if I rolled my bike onto a train that I reserved a bike hook for and had to deal with a bunch of luggage blocking my spot.

HelpSingularity 

I took the 4am Amtrak out of San Diego to San Louis Obisbo in late April 2022 for the Eroica California in Cambria. I just wheeled my loaded touring bike onto a car as directed and leaned it against the wall. Then I sat down on one of the half dozen seats in that section. That's all that happened. Eight hours later I was deposited in SLO. You do have to switch trains in Union Station.

I've been on other Amtrak trains where you did have to remove all your luggage from the bicycle and then hand your bike over to the baggage handler in the baggage car and then get on the train yourself with your luggage. But that is not how the 4am SD to SLO Pacific Surfliner works, at least not 10 months ago.

It was almost identical to the process used for the Coaster Train in San Diego County if you have used that service.

skidder

Thanks for that update, I'll check out the scheduling later in the summer as I may go do a SLO to OC ride this fall and they do change things a bit depending on the season. Fun trip, one of my favorites. One thing I don't remember is the transfer at Union Station; I just stayed on the same train the whole way up there, Anaheim to SLO.

HelpSingularity 

I'm not for sure, for sure it was Union Station for the transfer but I know I transferred somewhere in the LA metro area, both going north and going south. It takes 8 hours, bring some sandwiches, but there is a club car for snacks and hot/cold beverages.

And you are right, it is a fun trip. Very scenic, even in the city in its own weird way, but certainly the stretch north of Santa Barbara.

MixedRider

I have not had any issue taking a rigid mountain bikepacking rig w/2.5" tires on Amtrak (cascades and empire builder routes) using trainside checking. This may be because there were only a couple of bikes in the luggage car. I think as long as your bike does not "look" weird and/or the luggage car is not full of other bikes, you will be OK.

stevel610 

Tell them you want an ADA accommodation.

csport

My experience from 2021/Capitol Limited in Cumberland: some people had bikes with very wide tires which did not fit the hooks, and they just stood in the baggage car next to the rack. I could not mount my bike because those other bikes blocked the rack and I had to leave it standing inside the baggage car. I think the conductors did not object because it is a very popular route (GAP/C&O) and because this train uses the baggage car instead of the hooks within the passenger cars.

PedalingWalrus

plus you can always deflate the tires and then sweat it out on the platform ;-) got to give to receive hahha

timdow

Because you roll you own bike on, and park it in a rack with generous space and with both wheels on the train car floor and it is not hanged by the conductor in a train-car on a hook, you should have no problem with oversized tires on the Pacific Surfliner. If you go further North and need to use the Coast Starlight, then tire/bike size considerations might be an issue. SLO is your destination stop, and is also the end of the line for the Surfliner.

I have done this stretch several times, including taking the train to SLO from SD as you intend. I left SLO and headed a bit North to Morro Bay, then reversed course . Morro Bay SP has hiker/biker campsite for $10. It's a good trip, but getting through LA is a challenge.

staehpj1

My experience with them is limited, but pretty negative. For the trip where I used it, it was expensive, less comfortable, and slower than renting a car. Retreiving my boxed bike was super slow and tedious, waiting what seemed forever in a crowded hallway with no seating. I didn't find the ride itself all that comfortable and arrived tired. Given how bad rental car companies have gotten in recent years, I may give Amtrak more consideration on that same trip if doing it now, especially if they have roll on service now.

Where I have checked it out as an option instead of flying, Flying won out. For the locations and distances where I have wanted to use it flying was cheaper and faster in the cases where I had to choose between the two. Most of the time I was choosing a way to get across the country, so it was multiple days on amtrak vs multiple hours on a plane.

Anyway I just rechecked what it would be to do one of the trips I needed to do in the past. On amtrak Baltimore to San Diego looks like it would take a bit over 3 days. Prices are listsed as "Coach from $528", "Business from $336", and "Rooms from $1747". I imagine 3 days on a train in the reclining seat would be pretty uncomfortable (On mylast several hour amtrak ride I found it to be almost as bad as sitting in an airport lobby seat that long). The room price seems pretty high. I am a bit of a cheapskate when travelling alone and might spend that much for total expenses for an entire coast to coast tour. A vacation with the wife the cost wouldn't be so bad especially since if I understand correctly the room price is shared between the two passengers and not applied to each ticket.
I don't understand that Business Class price. It must be an error or it is the cost just to upgrade fom coach. I am guessing the latter

That is a big plus. My solution in some cases has been to get the flying out of the way at the start of the trip, but that only works if you live somewhat near one end of the trip or the other. In other cases I used to be able to fly standby with a friends and family deal from a helpful long time airline employee relation.

These days I am inclined to drive my own car to even distant places if it is possible, but that doesn't work for a coast to coast trip.

Flying has become more and more of a hassle as have car rentals in many cases. Rental prices went crazy after covid and probably are still pretty high (I am a bit out of the loop not having rented for a while, but the last time my wife travelled the price was pretty crazy and they didn't have the promised car. People were stacked up at all the rental desks waiting for cars that they had reserved. She finally gave up and called a relative who picked her up at the airport. She did without a car for the trip.

Yeah we have no amtrak service anywhere near here in Tallahassee. We'd have to either go to Birmingham, AL or Jacksonville. Birmingham is 300 miles. Jacksonville is only 165, but then to go west on amtrak you'd need yo go all the way up to Raleigh. Then to go west you'd need to connect either vis New Orleans or Chicago. It would be very indirect in any case.

These days I might consider some driving/amtrak hybrid. For example. I could see driving to Portland, riding the pacific coast, and taking Amtrak back to my car in Portland. I haven't thought that out in detail and I'd only do it if the trip involved other stuff during the drive out and back. That said, I have enjoyed the coast to coast drives I have done.

tcs

IF a cycletourist wanted to make frequent/extensive/regular use of America's AmTrak, here's the golden ticket: get a folding bike.

AmTrak allows an extremely generous 34" x 15" x 48" (860 x 380 x 1120 mm) for folders. On/off at any station as carry-on luggage. Only you handle the bike.

Don't like small wheels? Hey - nobody said you had to have small wheels. Get a Montague, Tern or Changebike big wheel folder.

Caveat: technically, couplers or rinko don't count as a folding bike on AmTrak.
Caveat: Just two carryons and the folded bike is one. You'll have to temporarily pack every/anything else into a big duffle, a la post no. 18.

Bonus: AmTrak serves 516 destinations. (Airlines with scheduled service go to 503.) If your tour doesn't start or needs to end somewhere other than an Amtrak station, go multimodal: grab that folder and hop on a bus. Intercity buses (Greyhound, Trailways, Jefferson, Megabus, Flixbus, Tornado and many smaller, regional carriers) serve ~5000 destinations in the USA.

AmTrak station in Sanderson, Texas. on AmTrak's Sunset Limited and Adventure Cycling's Southern Tier:

jamawani 

Although much of the conversation has been about the Surfliners in southern Calif.,
other posts show how widely the bike policies vary across the Amtrak system.
And it can change from one month to the next - from one train to tne next.

For people unfamiliar with takeing bikes on Amtrak it can be mind-boggling.
For people who have used Amtrak for 40+ years it can be mind-boggling.
When it works it can be a pleasant and easy way to start/end a tour.

But when it doesn't it can unravel pretty fast.
I used Amtrak with my bike more than two dozen times.
I'd say it works well about 80% of the time.

But, I've had a bike as baggage left at the wrong station - two days to retrieve,
I've had bikes not accepted on trains that are supposed to carry bikes.
And - of course - the famous Amtrak late trains - 6, 8, 12 hours late.

Shorter trips with multiple daily trains have fewer issues.

mev

Something weird is going on with the pricing there...
I selected BAL to SAN one-way departing April 26th and got something similar - with two slightly different choices:
(1) The first choice where there is a difference between coach and business - if you click to compare the actual routing chosen - then the first two segments are the same. BAL to CHI and CHI to LAX. There is no business class on those trains and both segments are coach tickets. The difference in price comes only in the last segment from LAX to SAN where a business is listed and coach. I have a suspicion an anomaly perhaps related to track closures is at play here.
(2) The second choice where there is a coach choice and no business, appears to have gotten around the anomaly a different way. It now uses a five segment route in coach to go BAL to CHI but then to take the train from Chicago to Sacramento. A bus from Sacramento to Stockton. A train from Stockton to Bakersfield. A bus from Bakersfield to San Diego.

The second choice is a good example of how sometimes you need to pay attention to specific routing choices since occasionally it will give you seemingly random choices with bus fares in the middle.


If I am willing to shop around just a bit more and also depart from Washington DC to get to LAX, I can get $197 for a two train ride to LAX

Added with a $36 fare from LAX to San Diego.


But in general that ~$260 range is about what I expect for a one-way train ride across the US - and then add in $20 for each long haul segment with a bicycle.

tcs

For anyone running the numbers on a particular trip, be sure to total in the cost of meals on the multi-day AmTrak passage vs. an hours-long flight.

staehpj1

Maybe I should have shopped a bit for different dates and/or departure cities, but the price I posted seemed pretty typical to what I had gotten in the past.

Tourist in MSN

My longest Amtrak trips were from Wisconsin to Portland OR, from San Francisco (actually a suburb across the bay) to Chicago, and Washington DC to Wisconsin. They were long enough, have no interest in doing coast to coast.

While I have had delays on Amtrak, quite frankly I have had much worse times on airlines with a bike.

The photo below was taken at about 3am in Minneapolis airport where Delta stranded me. I still had to pay for the place in Iceland where I was supposed to be asleep at that time. Usually this area between all the major concourses would have several hundred travelers rushing between gates to change flights, but it was totally deserted.




On a different trip, it took three different ticketing agents (below) to figure out my flights to get home from Halifax NS. Expedia had juggled my flights so bad that my itinerary was that I was supposed to fly from Montreal to Chicago, and then minutes after I get off the plane in Chicago I was supposed to board a flight in Halifax to fly to Montreal. Air Canada had changed one of my flights but Expedia then got everything messed up. Apparently Expedia buys tickets in bulk and if you have a flight change, that does not work so well when Expedia bought tickets in bulk, they might not give you a ticket that makes any sense. I got home a day late.




The third time I flew with a bike on a plane, I felt like I won the lottery. No flight delays, luggage arrived when I did. I flew Southwest so my bike in an S&S case flew for free.

I am wearing the S&S Backpack on my back in the photo below, it is hard to see with the black bag and dark background.



I have had more Amtrak bike trips than airline trips, some had delays of hours, not days. Only three of my bike trips involved air travel. And have had several trips that involved a very long drive too, as a friend of mine that I have biked with likes to drive and does not like to fly. So, White Rim in Canyonlands meant driving from Wisconsin to Moab. And Florida Keys trip meant driving to Marco Island from Wisconsin. And a few other shorter driving trips too.

For those of you that usually get off the plane on the day you were supposed to for a bike trip, congratulations.

tcs

Yes, that's ↓ a folding bike (and bonus! a folding helmet) in the overhead bin of a Southwest Airlines jet.

Tourist in MSN

I have not seen any Amtrak discussions on the Folding Bikes forum for a few years, but there have been threads there before. One common recommendation in those older threads was to carry a paper copy of the folding bike policy, as a lot of Amtrak staff were unaware of it and some people had been denied travel. Others that had a paper copy of it got onto the train.
https://www.amtrak.com/bring-your-bicycle-onboard

I would carry a print of this too, although at nine years old, it is pretty dated.
https://bikeportland.org/2013/12/18/...arry-ons-98779

And the Amtrak carry on luggage size policy is quite generous, at 28 x 22 x 14 inches and 50 pounds, the largest carryon for Amtrak is bigger than an airline would allow for checked luggage. I have a 115 liter backpack made by Sealline that is more of a drybag with shoulder straps than a backpack. Packed it is 30 inches long, if I left out a few liters and packed that two inches shorter than it is capable of, that would work. I actually bought that backpack to use for checked luggage on airlines. It is air tight, I put something in the folding part of the top to allow air in and out when I fly with it.

You also can carry on two personal items besides your carry on bag and folding bike. The Amtrak personal item size criteria matches my Ortlieb Frontrollers and at 25 pounds each, that is more weight than I could ever pack into a Frontloader.
https://www.amtrak.com/carry-on-baggage

I have considered doing a tour with my folding bike on Amtrak, but have not done so yet. I started planning a trip (I got to the details of measuring my Frontloaders and other luggage for my one carry on), but the logistics of scheduling three different trains, and motels for layovers for one way, it got complicated enough that I quite thinking about that trip.

My folder at about 32 X 32 X 10 inches (smaller if I pull out the fork and crank arms) easily fits the Amtrak folding bike size criteria. Shown below without racks.




I might still do a trip with that some day.

Tourist in MSN

I have read of people taking a Brompton as a carry on.

I wear my helmet onto the plane when I fly with my bike, I do not want baggage handlers to have a chance to crack it. I stow it in the overhead. One airline employee smiled when he looked at me and said that planes are getting safer these days. I smiled and explained that it was just to avoid baggage handlers, my carry on bag was too full to stow it.

mev

For me, choice of rental car vs. Amtrak vs flight really varies based on the trip. For example,
- Last weekend I cycled from Austin to San Antonio (~75 miles). For my return Amtrak coach fare was $7.50 but I opted for a ~$100 rental car because it was just a lot more convenient.
- Looking at a several day cycle ride to DFW area. A rental car might be slightly more convenient but the train ride isn't much longer and ~$35 plus bike. Flying would take just as much time as a rental car and more expensive and less convenient.
- A train trip to El Paso with a bike ride back - made sense as I did it a few years ago. I was able to spend the time and can sleep fine in an Amtrak seat - which I find much more comfortable than increasingly closely spaced/narrow airline seats. It also happens to be more convenient to do the "last mile" cycling to the Amtrak station than the Austin airport which doesn't have good bicycle access - and it would take 3 buses from my residence to get to the airport.
- Across country, I would probably fly - though I do have an Amtrak ticket currently to go two overnights from Austin to Washington DC via Chicago.
- When in Portland, I found the Cascades train particularly convenient on trips in the Eugene to Vancouver corridor.

I'm happy train travel is part of the portfolio of choices. Seats are comfortable enough and I get a book and read or watch the scenery. Airline flights are much less comfortable both because of seats and slightly more hassle on the airport check-in side (I have paid more than 3x as much to airlines for my Trek 520 than I originally paid for the bike new - some of that is overseas fees where there isn't a choice). They are faster though. A one-way rental car also sometimes is a good mix to add.

As far as delays go. Flights have a higher percentage of "close to time" arrivals which I assume is within two hours. I've had my delays though, e.g. most recently a connection in LAX returning from overseas in August that was scheduled for 4pm, postponed to 8pm, boarded, returned to the gate for mechanical issue before being cancelled. Instead of going direct from LAX to Austin, took a flight via Chicago and arrived ~15 hours after original time.

On Amtrak, perhaps 1/4 or so of my trips come outside that time window. For example, trip from Austin to Tucson delayed by 6 hours waiting for some event on the tracks, trip from Minot to Chicago delayed by 5 hours, accumulated delays before I boarded, trip down the West Coast delayed by 9 hours after the train ran into a huge log that had rolled downhill and onto the tracks in middle of the night. The other 3/4 of trips within my time window (and shorter trips like on Pacific Cascades with higher on-time ratio).

As far as delays

jamawani 

Be careful.
The Amtrak scheduling app is notoriously iffy.
And, for no apparent reason, Amtrak stopped posting timetables.

The 10:59 departure is on the Cardinal which only runs three times per week via West Virginia.
The Capitol Limited is the direct train - daily, overnight - with excellent bicycle handling.
And takes 6 hours longer. Both should give you ample time to connect to the Southwest Chief.
Of course, Amtrak trains are known to be more than 6 hours late, so be prepared.

mev

It is frustrating they no longer have PDF timetables on the web page. I typically look at either:

- Dixieland - which has maps like this one where you can hover over or pick trains - Amtrak Status Maps - West
- Railrat - where you can see how current trains are doing - https://railrat.net/routes/PacificSurfliner/ If there is an active train and the planned arrival/departure times match your future trip, you can at least get an idea of when major stops are planned.

Update: Apparently Dixieland also has schedules now - https://dixielandsoftware.net/Amtrak/...esSummary.html

adventurepdx

And remember that if you are booking sleeping car accommodations, meals are included, and there's usually a coffee percolator at one end of the sleeper car. Last time I took a sleeper they started to give one complimentary alcoholic beverage at dinner--any extra is on you.

If you're riding coach, you'll have to pay for food. If you don't want to be beholden to the ok-at-best selection of the cafe car nor spend money on a meal in the dining car, it's best to pack a bunch of food.

adventurepdx

One thing to remember is that Amtrak's bike policies have changed quite drastically in the past few years, generally for the better. They've implemented some sort of "roll-on" bike service (unboxed, on hooks) for pretty much all the long distance routes. Many of the shorter routes have roll-on service too, but how it is implemented varies from route to route. (A lot of this can be due to the fact that many of the short routes are supported/funded by state DOTs, like the Pacific Surfliner/Capitol Corridor/San Joaquins services in California and Cascades in OR/WA/BC.) So if your only experience with bringing a bike on Amtrak is from 10 years ago or more, things are now different.

Is there room for improvement? Yes. The biggest irony is that the Northeast Corridor, where the most Amtrak service is concentrated, is still not great for bikes. Looking at the website only a few of the NE Corridor runs accommodate full size bikes.

adventurepdx

Yes to this. My partner and I used Bromptons last year when taking the Empire Builder from Portland to Red Wing, MN, which is the start of the Lake Pepin Three Speed Tour. Red Wing's station is unstaffed, so there would be no way to get a regular sized bike on and off here. (The closest stops where we could board/deboard with full-size bikes, St Paul and Winona, MN, are about 50-70 miles away.)

Here's our Bromptons in the baggage rack on the Pacific Surfliner. Mine had to be laid sideways because I have the longer seatpost--a regular size one would fit upright on the rack.