Originally Posted by
EnhancedByCO
Interestingly, if you run the barcode through a decoder app all it contains is your reservation number and (first?) date of travel. So either Amtrak has gone truly ticketless on their back-end system, or the ticket numbers are strictly used internally.
I'd be shocked if that were the case; it would require a MUCH more extensive overhaul of ARROW than I think would have been possible.
Originally Posted by
EnhancedByCO
Out of curiosity, how much time passed between when you purchased the ticket and when it was scanned? My initial suspicion is that the conductor's hand-held scanner was out-of-sync with the live database and wasn't able to connect via a mobile (cell phone) data network. Of course, they should really have a formal procedure for this sort of circumstance...
Booked on 11/9 for travel 11/19.
I don't think the conductors' phones maintain any sort of offline database. I've had them try to look things up in dead zones and they usually just give up or say they'll come back later. If they did have an offline copy of all outstanding reservations, the database would be HUGE.