Sinfonia,

I echo was the above posters have said, and I'll offer some additional advice.

As mentioned above, if your tickets have not been printed, you should be able to call Amtrak and cancel your reservation for a full refund. It sounds like you may have booked sleeper accommodations, and in normal circumstances, that portion of the cost would be nonrefundable on such short notice (sleeper fares typically require a week's notice for a refund). Considering the circumstances, I think Amtrak will probably make an exception for you and issue a full refund as long as you tell them the same thing you posted here.

If your tickets HAVE been printed, getting a full refund should still be possible, but it may take some insistence with a customer service representative, and you'll need to go to a station to trade in the tickets for the refund.

Regardless, you should call Amtrak TONIGHT to arrange for a refund if that's what you want.

If you're still interested in taking the train north from Santa Barbara and want to arrange transportation to that station on your own (perhaps have a friend drive?) instead of risking a motorcoach (and I think assuming a motorcoach as of right now is prudent, given that Amtrak hasn't updated their website with tomorrow's plans yet—although that should happen tonight), Amtrak should be pretty amenable to refunding you the portion of your railfare (and accomodations) applicable from LAX to Santa Barbara. Again, set this up with Amtrak tonight unless they feel that there is some chance that the train may run from LAX after all (if that's the case, you may want to have them put a note on the reservation summarizing your plan to switch to Santa Barbara and have the Santa Barbara station agents process your refund there before the train departs—get there early for that).

And lastly, I also recommend southwest airlines as a good "contingency travel" airline, as their fares are completely refundable. So you could book a trip with them tonight online and if you end up not needing it, no money is lost. Although I have to comment that the plane experience isn't much better than a bus, although it gets you there faster.

-Rafi