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Welcome, and the Rules and Guidelines of the Mileage Tally


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#1 BillMagee

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Posted 02 January 2009 - 10:15 AM

Welcome to the Amtrak Mileage Tally forum. We invite you to join us and post your Amtrak mileage as we track our members in our little friendly contest.

Please use this forum only to post your Amtrak mileage and questions about the same. This forum should not be used for general Amtrak discussions or news.

If you haven’t already done so, please take a minute to review the official rules and posting instructions, which can be found below. Should you have any questions relating to trip posting or mileage tracking, you may post them in this topic created specifically for your questions.
 

The Rules and Guidelines for the Amtrak Mileage Tally

*** Updated 4/27/2016 with minor changes and editorial corrections.

How do I join the Tally?

First, you must be a member of OTOL. Sign up for OTOL and you are eligible to participate.

How do I post trips?

Once you have joined OTOL, you can post trips for credit. Each month a new topic will be started in the Amtrak Mileage Tally forum for you to report trips. Just add a reply to the presently open Amtrak Mileage Tally topic and describe the trip you took. We will confirm your entry, add it to our data, and report back your totals and position.

If you are a first time participant, please provide your actual name for our database. If you prefer not to publicly post your name, you can PM your name to me instead. You actual name will not be used in the posted results unless you normally use your name in OTOL discussion board postings.

What information do I need to supply to get mileage credit?

For each train or bus segment being submitted, you should provide:

- The departure date of the train or bus segment.

- The Amtrak train or Thruway Bus number. For Thruway Bus service, the bus number is on your ticket and is generally but not always shown in the System Timetable. If you do not know the train or bus number, simply provide the scheduled departure time or, for bus routes, the connecting train info. We should be able to figure the rest.

- The departure and the arrival station. Either the Amtrak three-letter station code is or the station name is OK. If you do not know the code and the city has two or more stations (Boston, for example), identify the station used (Boston South Station, for example).

An example of a submission using codes is:

1/3 #2100 PHL BOS

But an entry can be informal too:

On January 3 took train 2100 from Philadelphia to Boston (South Station)

Do not get too tied up in the details. If we can figure things out from the information you provide, we will. If we can't, we will ask you for some help.

When can trips be posted?

You should post your trips as soon as possible to get your miles recorded and your standing updated, but trips can be posted anytime during the current calendar year, and even for a month into the next year. The books for each year will remain open until January 31 of the next year, so for trips taken in 2016 you will have until 1/31/2017 to post your miles. New members of OTOL may submit all trips taken during the calendar year of when they registered.

Which trips will count?

The short answer is that all mileage on an Amtrak train and almost all on Amtrak-ticketed connecting trains and busses will count. Almost all mileage on trains and buses that are not called Amtrak will not count.

The following segments are eligible for Amtrak rail mileage credit:

- Any segment traveled on a scheduled Amtrak train is eligible.
- Any segment traveled on a scheduled Amtrak Thruway bus when traveling on an itinerary including at least one Amtrak rail segment is eligible.
- Segments on the NJ Transit Atlantic City Line, Altamont Corridor Express and the Grand Canyon Railway when part of an itinerary with Amtrak train travel and when the partner service is shown on Amtrak.com are eligible.
- Segments on an Amtrak train or Thruway bus within Canada when the origin or destination of the segment is within the USA are eligible.
- Amtrak train segments used to and from Newark Airport as part of a trip ticketed by United Airlines are eligible.
- Any segment traveled on a private railcar when the railcar is transported by a scheduled Amtrak train is eligible. For these trips, provide the Amtrak train number for your host train.

The following segments are not eligible for Amtrak rail mileage credit:

- Commuter and other non-Amtrak trains are not eligible whether or not they travel on Amtrak routes and tracks. Travel on NJ Transit (except for the Atlantic City Line exception above), Metro North, Virginia Railway Express, Metrolink, and METRA are examples of trips that are not eligible.
- Via Rail Canada trips are not eligible (except for the Maple Leaf between Niagara Falls and Toronto when ticketed to and from an Amtrak station in the USA).
- Trips on the NJ Transit Atlantic City Line, Altamont Corridor Express or the Grand Canyon Railway that are not part of an itinerary with Amtrak train travel or are not shown on Amtrak.com.
- A Thruway Bus segment on an itinerary that does not include Amtrak train travel is not eligible.
- Private rail trips that are not attached to a regular Amtrak train are not eligible.

And, here are some rules for special circumstances:

- When there is a substitution for all or part of a rail segment (bus or other alternate transportation), the mileage credited for the disrupted segment will be the rail distance of the regular route.
- If a train is detoured onto a special route, you will be credited with the normal route segment mileage.



#2 BillMagee

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Posted 16 April 2014 - 07:24 AM

I made three minor tweaks to the mileage rules. One recognizes the Altamont Commuter Express (San Jose - Stockton CA) as an Amtrak Thruway service eligible for mileage. I've been crediting these trips for several years, but this makes it official. The second change eliminates the requirement that train trips on the NJ Transit Atlantic City Line, Altamont Commuter Express and Grand Canyon Railway be ticketed by Amtrak to be eligible. As long as the trip is part of an Amtrak itinerary it will still count even if you buy the Thruway service ticket separately. Since having a trip like ACE ticketed by Amtrak blocks all Amtrak e-ticketing, it does not seem to be realistic or necessary to require Amtrak ticket stock. Once again, I suspect most of the Thruway train trips submitted have been taken using tickets issued by the local carrier, so I'm just making it official. To be clear, this only applies to the three train partners. Thruway bus segments still must be booked through Amtrak to be eligible for mileage credit. The final revision changes the former Continental Airlines codeshare at Newark Airport to United Airlines.

#3 KevinKorell

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Posted 16 April 2014 - 10:23 AM

Thanks, Bill. Altamont Commuter Express renamed itself Altamont CORRIDOR Express a couple of years ago, so you may want to make that official in the rules as well. For a short while, they had stopped being a ticketable "Thruway" service, so one was required to buy ACE tickets to travel. (At that time I think we agreed upon removing ACE from the above documentation.) Then they reinstated the privilege. However the oddity of this one is that it only functions as a "Thruway" in one direction, the evening trips towards Stockton. It is not a "Thruway" in the direction of San Jose, so one must travel using an ACE ticket. So, your relaxing of that rule does make it easier to use ACE as part of a longer Amtrak-involved journey. With NJ TRANSIT Atlantic City Line, there were good reasons to go back to purchasing NJT tickets rather than using Amtrak stock. Amtrak stopped giving AGR points for the segment; in fact when it was offered the trouble in calling them to have it credited was not worth the time. And with the advent of e-Ticketing, with this segment still requiring the old paper Amtrak ticket, it meant that the Amtrak train portion purchased in conjunction with the NJT segment also had to be a paper ticket. Lastly, it was difficult to buy a through ticket because the NJT portion does not allow for discounts such as AAA to be applied; thus the discount could not be applied to the Amtrak-run portion of the trip either.


Kevin Korell


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Lakewood, NJ


#4 BillMagee

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Posted 17 April 2014 - 02:22 PM

Thanks, Bill.

Altamont Commuter Express renamed itself Altamont CORRIDOR Express a couple of years ago, so you may want to make that official in the rules as well. For a short while, they had stopped being a ticketable "Thruway" service, so one was required to buy ACE tickets to travel. (At that time I think we agreed upon removing ACE from the above documentation.) Then they reinstated the privilege. However the oddity of this one is that it only functions as a "Thruway" in one direction, the evening trips towards Stockton. It is not a "Thruway" in the direction of San Jose, so one must travel using an ACE ticket. So, your relaxing of that rule does make it easier to use ACE as part of a longer Amtrak-involved journey.

With NJ TRANSIT Atlantic City Line, there were good reasons to go back to purchasing NJT tickets rather than using Amtrak stock. Amtrak stopped giving AGR points for the segment; in fact when it was offered the trouble in calling them to have it credited was not worth the time. And with the advent of e-Ticketing, with this segment still requiring the old paper Amtrak ticket, it meant that the Amtrak train portion purchased in conjunction with the NJT segment also had to be a paper ticket. Lastly, it was difficult to buy a through ticket because the NJT portion does not allow for discounts such as AAA to be applied; thus the discount could not be applied to the Amtrak-run portion of the trip either.

I tweaked things a bit to require partner trips to be shown on Amtrak.com with an associated Amtrak train number. Thanks for the suggestion.

#5 BillMagee

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Posted 27 April 2016 - 08:37 AM

I made some minor changes to the rules, including:

  • Removal of the bulk entry option (just listing the number of trips in a month without train numbers or dates - I didn't know that was still in there);
  • Allow new members to post all trips taken during the year they join, and;
  • Some minor editorial rewording to make things clearer, particularly with the submission of non-Amtrak services like NJ Transit Atlantic City trains.

I also put Alan's original "Welcome" message as a preface to the rules thus removing one pinned topic.






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