Originally Posted by
robow
Here I would disagree with you if you are using a rail line that follows a common bicycle trail such as the Katy Trail (Missouri River Runner Line) or GAP / C& O (Capitol Limited Line) because they will often have an insanely limited number of bike spots available on that train (as little as 4 or 6 bikes per train) and often you can get shut out if you haven't made your reservation months in advance. Less a problem if you're solo but if it is my wife and I or a small group, we've often had to alter our riding dates because we have tried to get our bikes on, even weeks ahead during popular touring times.
And here often is what will shut you out. I want to ride from St. Louis to Kansas City 250 miles, but they won't allow my bike on because just yesterday some bike commuter booked for just 9 miles outside of Kansas City in, and only at that point will I become bike number 5 after 241 miles. So frustrating, especially when that person eventually cancels but you can't know that in advance and when you get there, you see that the train could easily handle twice the number of bikes that they allow.
I know I stated that each train experience can be more or less accommodating than another, but I have never seen a time when they will break the limit number of bikes allowed on a train for even a few miles.
I am not going to get in a debate with you. You clearly encountered an unfortunate situation.
Katy Trail. We planned to ride Amtrak at the start of our trip, but not at the end, this was 2010. Thus there was not an Amtrak availability issue at the end to mess things up. Two of us wanted to ride from Kirkwood (a suburb of St Louis) to Sedalia on Amtrak, then ride our bikes back to Kirkwood. (Kirkwood had free parking, St Louis did not.) The date we picked, could not take both bikes onto the train, so we picked an adjacent date. This was days in advance, so we left home one day different than our original plan. From the clear limit of four bikes on the train, we were quite confident that there were four bike racks and the limiting factor was the racks. But when we got on the train, the train conductor instructed us to lay our bikes down on a front row of seats, there were no racks. That really baffled us as to why there was a limit of four, it would have been easy to load more. But we were on the train so we quickly forgot about that. If that is still the situation, I can see where you are unfortunate, as there should be some more space for a bike somewhere on the train.
GAP and C&O. There was no limit on number of bikes when I rode that, the limit was how big the baggage car was and how many bike boxes it could hold. We did this trip in 2013 before the roll on roll off option existed, thus bikes had to be boxed. Boxed up our bikes in Columbus Wisconsin and took the train from Wisconsin to Chicago. Changed trains in Chicago and rode to Pittsburg. Then rode GAP and C&O to DC. At some point after Cumberland but before we got to DC, we decided which day we wanted to take the train back home and made the reservations for the return at that time. Spent several days in DC sightseeing while staying at the HI Hostel in DC, I spent almost all of that time in the Smithsonian. Rode our bikes to the Amtrak station, bought boxes and boxed them up for the return trip. Everything went smoothly.
The last time I rode Amtrak was in 2014 for Pacific Coast. Took Amtrak from Wisconsin to Portland, then a bus to Astoria that was part of our Amtrak ticket. Rode our bikes to San Francisco. About three days outside of San Francisco, we made our reservations for the Amtrak return. We planned for two days of sightseeing in San Fransisco, but if we delayed our Amtrak trip by a day, the fare was much cheaper, cheap enough to cover the costs for another day of sightseeing, so we stayed for one more day of sightseeing.
I am not saying everything Amtrak does is perfect. They parked the train in Shelby Montana for about 10 hours on my return home when I rode Amtrak to and from Whitefish to ride the Glacier Watertown Loop. But fortunately they announced to everyone on the train that we were going to stay there due to a rail repair for at least eight hours, so everyone was free to spend some time off the train as long as they were careful to return on time. There is not a lot of sightseeing to do in Shelby, but I have been treated much worse by airlines on several occasions. I have done a total of three trips on an airplane with a bike, but only one of those three trips had me arriving on the day I should have arrived at both my destination and again arriving on the correct day at home at the end of the trip.
Now that Amtrak offers roll on and roll off options, there is a limit on the number of racks, but it is my understanding that you can still box up a bike at luggage stations and avoid that problem. If Amtrak no longer allows you to box up a bike as luggage in luggage compartment, that is news to me.