Earning Rail Points
 

Sorry for the beginner questions, and if there is already a faq somewhere please point me int that direction...

I have a question about earning rail points...

I found this:

Does this mean that say you spend 50 dollars (making this number up) on a business class Acela ticket, you would earn 600 points? And round trip would earn 1200?

OR (and I think this is the correct answer) in the above scenario one would earn 500 points for one way and 1000 points for round trip?

I also don't see cities like Baltimore or Wilmington in the select city pairs, do these not qualify at all?

TIA

You are correct on both points, generally you earn 2 rail points for each dollar spent, with the two exceptions that

a) you get a minimum of 100 rail points for each ticket (limit for legs per day), and

b) you get 500 or 750 rail points for travel between certain city pairs, a provisio that doesn't include Baltimore and Wilmington.

Note that Amtrak often has promotions, as well. Right now you can get double bonus points (triple later in the month) on each trip. Bonus points don't count towards status, but do count towards award travel.

Just for clarification, if I did a round trip between approved city pairs on Acela, First Class, it would be 1500 points, and under triple points, it would be 4500 total points, with only 1500 rail points. Do I have this right?

I would like it to be 4500 rail points, but as far as I understand it bonus points don't count towards rail points.

One more aside, are there other high point runs to make under triple points, or is first class acela the highest point run to make?

My home station is PHL, thanks!

Yes, you are correct on all points.
An expensive cross country trip in a bedroom accommodation would probably exceed the Acela FC cost and earn more points.However, the Acela trips(cities-pairs) will earn points faster with the shorter duration trips.

Wirelessly posted (SAMSUNG-SGH-I617/1.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 7.6))

Since you're at PHL, if you're looking for good points-per-dollar ratios, Keystones are even better...only 100 points per segment, rather than 750, but also only (approximately, I don't have the fares handy) $5 PHL-PAO, rather than $250-300 for the Acela, i.e. ~20 PPD rather than just 3 or so. Just a thought. And of course, that's just the rail points. Either would be tripled under Spring Training. :)

Spring Triple Points
 

Do you need to register to obtain triple points

or do all with GR acounts earn them

Thanks

Wirelessly posted (SAMSUNG-SGH-I617/1.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 7.6))

No, you must register...IIRC the code is 31210.

Thank You
 

Just did

Many thanks

CHIC SILBER, please note that the current Spring points promo does not earn extra Rail Points (Select/Select Plus-qualifying points), which is what this thread is about. Just want to make sure you're aware of that in case you were under a different impression.

Also note that for the 100 point minimum runs, you are limited to 4 per day and they must be on different trains. This is to prevent you from using one-stop tickets (A-B-C-D-E-F) rather than a single ticket A-F.

It is fraud and should not be encouraged.

The way I read the relevant rule (below) suggests that A-B-A and a second A-B-A on the same day is within the rules (different train numbers even though it's the same route), right? For example, someone in metro-PHL could do PAO-EXT-PAO in the morning before work and then PAO-EXT-PAO again on the way home. That would be four segments per day, all on different Keystone train numbers with 3x points earning a total of 1,200 per day, all for very little $.

The Keystone is great for this sort of thing because they're relatively frequent, so you can catch one in one direction, ride for about 5-10 mins, hop off, wait 30 mins or so, and then hop back on in the opposite direction.

Hope I'm not killing the golden goose by discussing this... :(

That's correct.

Excellent - completed 2x of the above (PAO-EXT and back) today and plan to again all this week. The morning crew punched my stub & kept the ticket. The afternoon crew (both directions) didn't punch the stub & on the second EXT-PAO I saw the conductor crumple up & throw my ticket in the trash. Guess those points won't be posting automatically!

The afternoon crew is definately more lax. Today they didn't even lift my ticket - in either direction! I'm starting to worry that it's going to be difficult to claim credit for all these short hops - there's very little evidence that I'm actually riding. Maybe I should take a photo on board each time or something...