Lost and Found
 

Has anyone had any luck with retrieving lost items from Amtrak? I left my jacket on the Silver Star a couple of weeks ago, in the bedroom closet, and nobody seems to be able to help me. When I called the 800 number 2 hours after I got off the train, they told me that they would call the train to let them know. I gave them exact details of what the jacket looked like, where it was left, and who the bedroom attendant was. They also directed me to call the Miami lost and found, which I did for several days, but they haven't found anything. I figure that someone walked off with it, but as a last ditch, I thought I would appeal to FT to see if anyone had personal experience in getting back something they had lost.

I've had bad luck, left a pair of sunglasses on the northeast regional once... got the runaround from Boston and they made no attempt to find them even though I know I left them on the train at South Station.

Few years back I left my jacket in the bedroom closet on the Zephyr
when we got off in Grand Junction. Got to Moab and discovered my
error, called Amtrak and they said they'd do their best and to check
with the staff at Grand Junction when we caught the Zephyr again
in 5 days time. Did that and voila there was my jacket which had been
to Chicago and back.
So sometimes it works out.

I've left things on the train twice and have had terrible luck. Both times, I called with a half hour of leaving the items, both times at night, after normal business hours. I've called, and been told "they'd send a note to the stations up the line." When I asked when the note would be sent, they said the next day, after the morning rush (both times were on NEC trains). In both cases for me, the train was still traveling, but there was no way for them to radio to the train to ask the conductor to look. Hope you have more luck than I did.

I've had the opposite problem.

I was traveling with a large group of people (8 or 9 of us, I think, headed on a wine tasting trip in California), and in the rush to detrain at a brief, unstaffed station stop and offload everyone's luggage, one of us grabbed a 6-pack carrying case of wine from the downstairs luggage rack. We didn't realize it wasn't ours until we popped it open as we were loading it in the rental van a few minutes later and noticed that it was filled with a bunch of cheap wine (definitely not ours!) and a half-drunk bottle of Skyy vodka. Of course, by that time, the train had already pulled away.

I immediately called Amtrak and they supposedly documented the incident and "sent messages to all of the stations up the line" so that the rightful owner could claim it and Amtrak could get it to them. Of course, being that I was at an unstaffed station, I couldn't simply drop it off with Amtrak personnel (and the next stop was more than an hour up the line, so I couldn't chase the train), but I offered to drive it to the nearest staffed station (~30 minutes away) if the lost item was claimed so it could be carried to its rightful owner.

Despite giving my phone number, I never heard a thing back. After waiting a month, I gave it away.

It seems Amtrak doesn't have very good procedures or infrastructure to handle lost and found claims.

For one, they need to have a better, more centralized way of filing and processing claims. "Sending messages" to stations up the line seems like it leaves a lot of potential cracks in the process.

Two, they need to have a way to contact on-board crews to handle claims filed before the train reaches its destination. In my case, if Amtrak had the ability to contact the on-board crew, the rightful owner could have been located and notified and I would have dropped it off that same evening, and it would have been reunited with the owner the next day. In the OP's case, the car attendant could have looked in the closet, found the jacket, and ensured it was secured and sent to the right department (baggage/shipping) so it could make its way back to the OP.

I understand that using BNSF/UP/CSX/NS/etc. radio time to handle stuff like this may not be the best way to deal with it and would be logistically difficult. However, conductors all now have iPhones; perhaps this messaging functionality should be integrated right into the app that the conductors use to scan tickets and monitor train status and things. But at the very least, those iPhones have phone numbers (and conductors do call into dispatch regularly, especially in dark, non-Amtrak-owned territory to report station departures and delays and things), so they are reachable by voice.