It absolutely works. I've done it myself. My most recent experience is 7 days CO --> Amtrak.

Amtrak does impose a cap of 25k Guest Rewards points moved out of the program to any of its transfer partners in a year (50k is the limit for Amtrak elites). Why? Because it works too well -- and Amtrak has to buy all those darned United miles!

The details are:

Get an Amtrak account first -- www.amtrakguestrewards.com

Continental miles can be transferred to Amtrak
http://www.continental.com/company/alliance/amtrak.asp

Here's how you do it -- call the Continental One Pass Service Center at (713)/952-1630 (6:30am to 8:00pm Central). Have your Continental and Amtrak account numbers and your Continental password ready. They will move miles to Amtrak in 5000 point increments. The transfer should be accomplished within 10 days.

You can move Amtrak --> United online
http://www.amtrakguestrewards.com/Redemption/online_rewards.cfm?CFID= 2646599&CFTOKEN=41006491&category=PE

Amtrak transfers allow you to move pretty much any airline into United miles.

AA: credit your miles to Midwest and transfer Midwest --> Amtrak --> United

NW: credit your miles to CO and transfer --> Amtrak --> United.

DL: credit your miles to CO and transfer --> Amtrak --> United.

AS: credit your miles to CO and transfer --> Amtrak --> United.

US: credit your miles to UA. (obvious)

UA: credit your miles to UA. (obvious)

YX: transfer your miles --> Amtrak --> United.

This doesn't work for HP unfortunately, since they're no longer partnered with CO.

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View from the Wing: A blog about Free Miles and Free Markets

[This message has been edited by gleff (edited 08-22-2003).]