April 23, 2003 -- When is a slower train better? When it's overnight.
That seems to be the principle behind Amtrak's latest schedule juggle, and they've got a point. An overnight trip that gets you into your destination before 6 a.m. doesn't allow you much time to rest, but that was the situation with the old Twilight Shoreliner, Amtrak's overnight train between Washington and Boston. Departing Boston at 9:10 pm, it arrived in Baltimore around 5 a.m. and in Washington at 6 a.m., disgorging groggy passengers into the pre-dawn capital streets.
This week, Amtrak renamed the Twilight Shoreliner to "The Federal" and changed the departure time to 10 pm, with a 7:30 am arrival in DC. The train is now nearly an hour slower, but much more comfortable, because 7:30 am (or 6 am in Wilmington, or 6:41 am in Baltimore) is a saner time to get off of an overnight train. Northbound, the train leaves DC at 10 pm, arriving in Providence at 7:30 am and Boston at 8:15 am.
This is the only Amtrak train where accommodations are really affordable, with standard bedrooms as low as $58 on top of the train fare -- the price of a very cheap hotel. That little room sleeps two, with bunk beds. A bedroom on an Amtrak train is an origami-like masterpiece of design, with chairs that turn into beds, a desk that turns into a sink and a table that turns into a toilet (okay, the last one isn't so great), and the trip can be very cozy and romantic.
To celebrate the added sleeping time, Amtrak is offering 30% off fares on The Federal through June 30 -- with no advance-purchase or day-of-week restrictions. That means a weekday fare between Boston and Washington is $56.70; between Boston and New York, the fare is $44.80, and between Washington and New York it's $50.40. The fare on Fridays and Sundays between Boston and Washington is $74.20. Bedrooms cost extra, as described above. Book at www.amtrak.com and enter promotion code H327. Amtrak will honor all existing Twilight Shoreliner tickets on The Federal.
Lower Acela Rates
Understanding that $127 is a ridiculous price to pay for a train trip between Boston and New York, Amtrak is lowering its maximum Acela fare between New York and Boston to $99. Non-peak fares will drop to $85-92. That's still a lot to pay for this trip, considering you can take a Chinatown bus for as little as $10 (see our piece on that by clicking here), but Amtrak's targeting business travelers with this one.
If you move fast, you can also still catch a sale on Amtrak's 8:30 pm Acela from Washington to New York, with fares of $59 to New York, but that sale ends Friday. At that point, fares jump as high as $147 and the train's departure time slides back to 8 pm.
If none of those discounts thrill you, the existing 25%-off sale and One-Two-Free discount are still in effect. One-Two-Free knocks 50% off the fare of a second person in a traveling group and delivers the third ticket free. Find details in our previous column here.