Amtrak Northeast Regional Extended to Roanoke
 

On Oct 31, the first train will depart from Roanoke (RNK) heading north.

https://media.amtrak.com/2017/06/amt...anoke-service/

I am booked on the inaugural. If anyone else is interested, book now. Amtrak will sell you a Thruway connection ticket now because the system hasn't been updated yet, but it will be reissued to a train ticket before departure. The Thruway connection partner will be ending service the day before, so you will be riding the train despite the Thruway ticket.

This can now be booked directly w/o a work around

Bob H

If anyone did what I did and booked the thruway segment expecting it to be converted to a train segment, check your reservations. Apparently ARROW can't combine segments automatically, so all it did was cancel the thruway leg. You can call amtrak to be rebooked on the train the entire way, and you'll receive a refund of the fare difference since the price went down without the thruway segment.

I'm booked for a turn to DC!

Interesting. I got an e-ticket email from Amtrak a few minutes ago, and the email says my trip was modified this morning. I thought maybe they were fine-tuning something like adjusting the departure/arrival times or train numbers or something, but I can't see any difference at all between the ticket email I got this morning and the one I got last night after booking. Literally the only thing that changed (from what I can see) is the ticket number is different.

OK, this is getting odd...I just got another one. Everything looks identical again, except for the ticket number...

Clearly, when things are not quite finalized in the system, ARROW has issues!

On the inaugural? What do you mean by a turn to DC?

Departing Roanoke 6:19am on 10/31, arriving DC at 11:20am; departing DC at 4:50pm same day, arriving back to Roanoke 9:55pm.

I figured that the chances of me getting to take the last train on a given route are much, much higher than the chances of ever again getting to take the first train on a new route, so I decided to make a special trip for this.

I'll see you there!

ARROW's stupidity continues. Just received this today:

Of course, those times are the exact same times my original e-ticket shows when I booked last week...

Though I now suppose I have an out for a full refund if I can't make the trip! I'll just claim the new times don't work for me. :D

It's really five hours from Roanoke to DC??

I received the same email.

It's approximately 4 hours driving, or a 1 hour flight. 235 miles as the crow flies, 244 miles via highway. The train stops in Lynchburg, Charlottesville, Culpeper, Manassas, Burke Center, and Alexandra along the way. Assuming a 10-minute stop at each of them (It's probably longer at the more popular stops such as Lynchburg and Charlottesville, and shorter at stops like Culpeper) that ~50 mins, so the train is about on par with driving. You'd probably it traffic driving into Washington at the time that the train operates.

I'm flying into Roanoke the day before to ride the inaugural (Hooray for Saver awards, 10k miles for BOS-IAD-ROA yielded a rate of 4.6 cents per mile since the IAD-ROA leg is ridiculously expensive for some reason)

Actually, Amtrak stops are generally at most 2-3 minutes, maybe 5 minutes if there's a huge crowd boarding/disembarking. Designated moke stops (which are often, but not always, collocated with crew change points) can be ~20 minutes if the train is on-time (and more if early), but I'd be somewhat surprised if there were any smoke stops on that particular route (since the crew change point is almost certainly DC).

Most of the reason it takes 5 hours to do a 4-hour drive is because the train isn't spending most of its time going 79mph.

Especially not on CSX owned tracks. CSX is in their own world of hurt right now operations-wise.

I stumbled upon the media event yesterday (trip report and photos to come!).

Amtrak wasn't entirely honest with the media about how great their trains were. Yesterday, they ran a special from Lynchburg to Roanoke just for the media and elected officials. On the train was: Locomotive - Three Business Class Cars (with tables at the ends!) - Cafe Car (with tablecloths!) - Beech Grove (Amtrak's private office car). They also scrubbed the heck out of the Cafe car, because I've never seen one so clean!.

I'm currently seated in the Business Class car.

I'll have to pop back for a hello! Or you can pop forward. If you get this, I'm one car ahead of the cafe (the car with the new seats), seat 7A. Getting off at WAS. ;)

I'm actually mildly disappointed with the trainset on today's train. Given your report about yesterday's media special, I'd have expected a train filled with newly-refurbished coaches and scrubbed-clean cars. Aside from the presence of the one refurbed coach (the one I'm in), it's like any other Regional--worn out and tired. Not the best introduction for the hundred or so people riding the train today for the first time. ;)

Ah dangit, I didn't check FT at all after my last post. Oh well. Just noticed your post right now, while the train is at Union.

Ah, too bad--I thought about going back to biz but realized I'd have no idea how to pick you out from Adam. :D I contemplated putting a big FlyerTalk logo on my laptop screen and walking down the aisle with it conspicuously displayed... :p

I actually bailed at ALX to meet an FT friend for lunch. On the Capitol Limited now for home. The crew this morning was much nicer and happier than this crew... :D

Of course the crew this morning was happy. There were at least 6 of them working the train, so each conductor only had 2 cars to work at most. They also had to be happy because the media was on board (they took over the cafe car seating)

The business class conductor smelled like he bathed in Vicks Vaporub. :D

The poor Lounge Service Attendant (cafe car guy) was taken for a ride. I chatted with him and he told me that he's based out of WAS, and was supposed to do WAS-BOS-WAS yesterday, but since the power was out at PVD, they cancelled the train at NYP. Because all of the Northeast Regional trains terminated at NYP yesterday, the LSAs got jumbled around. They put him on last night's train to Lynchburg and didn't tell him. Poor guy thought he was going home that night until he realized that the train kept going at WAS instead of going into the yard. He didn't put in a resupply order thinking that he was done at WAS, so the cafe car wasn't fully stocked. They put him up in a hotel in Lynchburg (the train was there for layover) and he was confused when the train continued south after he boarded it this morning. He had no idea that this was the inaugural Roanoke train until it backed into the station this morning and the media took over his car.

LOL!!

I went in to buy a coffee right after we departed LYH and while there was a line, the only thing marked "Sold Out" was some kind of pepperoni pizza thing. (Maybe there was more sold out and he just ran out of Sold Out stickers?) He was sure working hard, though!

He couldn't find his stickers so he had to get a supply of those at WAS too.

My points for the ride finally posted. Ha, seems they need to get AGR's systems updated:

My guess is that's Amtrak's fault, not AGR's. Amtrak sends that data over to AGR.

They changed the codes temporarily. RNK used to be the thruway stop, most tickets booked on this train were booked out of RNK. Once the train was bookable, the train station was changed to RNV until the end of thruway service. The train station should have inherited RNK now.

Most of this route is Norfolk Southern. I live near MSS and have taken the VRE trains on this route to DC. These trains never seem to exceed 50 mph, including the stretch on the CSX/RF&P line over the Potomac to Union Station.