Originally Posted by
Tourist in MSN
I have suddenly become much less enthusiastic about Amtrak. I have been talking to an old touring buddy about another tour for almost a year. I was under the belief that all long distance middle-America Amtrak routes had added some form of roll on/roll off service or had dedicated bike racks in the baggage cars where your bikes could be handled my Amtrak personnel at all stops, did realize that this option only worked at luggage stops. Perhaps my mis-understanding was because all of the Amtrak routes I have traveled in the past offered some option for bikes where we wanted to travel.
I think the confusion lies in the differences between roll-on/roll-off and trainside checked. Amtrak has improved their bike service so that most lines offer some way of bringing a bike without boxing it, and that's good. But roll-on/roll-off means you roll the bike on and roll it off. The bike hook is in a passenger car, like the California cars I've referenced or the Vermonter that indy depicted.
But roll-on/roll-off typically happens on the shorter distance lines. The longer distance lines have "trainside checked", where you bring the bike to the baggage car and an Amtrak employee loads and unloads the bike for you. And unfortunately that generally happens at stations with baggage service. I was hoping that when Amtrak instituted this service it'd be available anywhere, but it hasn't yet.
There are exceptions, and Amtrak has on their website where you can do trainside checked at stops without baggage service. Amtrak Cascades is a short-distance line that has the bikes in the baggage car, but you can get on/off with the bike at unstaffed stations like Mount Vernon, Washington. It's probably because the Cascades is state funded and Washington and Oregon made sure that bikes can get on and off anywhere on the line.