If I want to take the Coast Starlight up the West Coast from LA to Seattle, can I get off the train along the?

Question

way and stop over? For example, on the way to Seattle, if I want to stop in the Bay Area and a couple cities in Oregon for a few days, how do I buy a ticket? In increments or what? Or do I get a ticket from LA to Seattle and get on and off at my choosing? How does that work?

Answer 1

yes

Answer 2

Buy your tickets in increments. The only way around it is to buy the 30 day travel anyplace ticket By the way...if you get on in LA get a seat on the left side. The scenery just north of Santa Barbara is awesome.

Answer 3

If you are willing to commit to a travel itinerary in advance, I believe Amtrak has some fare packages that will allow you to make stopovers.  Worst case just buy separate tickets for each segment.  This will be more expensive than straight through, though.

You're allowed to hop off before your ticket's destination.  Say you get a ticket from LA to Portland.  You can hop off early at Eugene.  However at that point the Eugene-Portland portion is wasted and non-refundable.   You'd have to buy another ticket for Eugene-Portland, and you could be told the Coast Starlight is sold out.  (in that case, you could just take the Cascades train which runs on the same route and is unreserved, I believe.)

It would really suck if you booked from LA to Seattle then bailed off at Santa Barbara... you'd waste 90% of the trip.

If you make a travel plan and want to change the date, call Amtrak -- I have done that very thing, adding a stopover on a Coast Starlight ride halfway through my travel.   It originally was on the 27th, I said "I want to travel from Oakland-Sac'to 3 days early on the 24th, and lay over in Sac for 3 days."  (this was before the Capitols existed, so I needed a Starlight reservation added to the 24th train.)  No problem if space is available.

Now, cancellation and change policies vary depending on the tickets you get, so discuss your needs when buying your tickets.

Oh, and if you do anything unexpected, tell them what you're doing!  If you bail off at Eugene, tell your car attendant so he knows he has an available seat, and isn't searching the train for you.  If I had not told Amtrak about my plan to board the 27th train at Sac instead of Oakland, I might've found myself with no seat.

You seem to want to engage in wanderlust, just doing "whatever" anytime you like.  The Coast Starlight itself is not friendly to that.  However, most of the route there are other Amtrak services that are. The only gap in coverage is Weed-Eugene, but not much out there anyway.  So, engage in wanderlust, if the Starlight is full just book the other train or bus.  It'd work better if you travel in the less busy travel times, like right now.  

Have you considered satisfying your wanderlust in Europe?  Youth hostels and Eurailpass were *made* for you.