Originally Posted by Tourist in MSN

I have not had a train conductor start making up the rules, but the nearest Amtrak station to my home used to have a manager (and sole employee for that location) that would make up rules all the time. On one trip, I got to the station two hours early, asked for a bike box. He said I had to wait, he had an important conference call. An hour and a half later I asked him about the box. He looked at his watch and said he had authority do deny me getting on the train because I had to be there 45 minutes in advance if I had to check luggage. I reminded him that I had asked him for the box before his "important conference call", things went down hill from there.

The Amtrak overhead compartments are huge, I think your bike would have fit just fine. Amtrak carry on luggage size limit is almost as big as an airline checked bag size.

I agree with Saddle Sores, there must be more to the story on his bike box being rejected. If it was an airline other than Southwest, I suspect it might have been a small regional airline with small plane that the box would not fit in. But I do not think Southwest has any small regionals under contract like that. I used to travel a lot for work and had to bring lots of tools for work, etc. Some smaller regional planes, especially the turboprop planes have small doors and small luggage compartments. They could be problematic, sometimes we had to ship stuff separately to the motel near the work site.

Originally Posted by mev

I haven't in quite a few flights. It is a little surprising to me because I would have then brought up the Southwest Airlines policy e.g. https://support.southwest.com/helpce...tedSportsEquip and ask to better understand the reason for the rejection.

The closest I came to this was flying from Denver to Cartagena Colombia via Atlanta. My flight was via Atlanta. On arrival in Denver, Delta didn't have bike boxes but I was able to get a box from United instead. Delta also wouldn't check the bike box/luggage all the way through since my layover was more than five hours (I arrived in early evening and departed 11 hours later, early next morning - and had booked an in-concourse hotel "Minute Suites" with that assumption). So I slept on the floor in the International Concourse. The next morning, the Delta agent wasn't sure my bike box (70x40x10) would fit through the doors of their 737-800 (48x36). I could look up the sizes like I've written here and knew I had flown a same-sized United box on a 737-800 before. However, the gate agent wanted to wait until they could get someone to go out and measure the cargo doors. When they couldn't get anyone to do that, they eventually gave up and agreed to check the bike with the proviso that they would call me if it didn't fit.

I also had an example on a Russian train from Samara to Penza. However, that was more situation that not every train coming through had a separate baggage car - so we went on the passenger car (coming from Tashkent) and the bike came a few hours later on the next train.