For one week around Thanksgiving 2012, VIA Rail Canada leased a total of 12 cars to Amtrak to operate on the Adirondack so that Amtrak could in turn, lease Amfleet I coaches to New Jersey Transit for the busy Thanksgiving Day holiday week. New Jersey Transit had suffered a severe shortage of usable equipment after Hurricane/Superstorm Sandy had damaged it back in late October. Amfleet I Coaches have the ability to have all doors open at once to facilitate the quick loading and unloading of passengers on commuter trains which is very important due to the high numbers of passengers that use them.
  In this day and age, the internet is the place where railfans tend to get most of their information. Amtrak eventually did put out a press release saying they were leasing equipment from Canada to operate on the Adirondack. This equipment would consist of a total of 12 cars (so each train would have 6). The equipment would consist of 8 Budd HEP-1 Coaches, 2 Budd HEP-2 Coaches, and 2 Park Dome cars that would be used as cafe/lounge cars. VIA had the equipment available since they unfortunately took a cut in funding themselves and had to scale back service of their own. So with them having the equipment available, Amtrak (which has been in desperate need of equipment for years), was happy to lease these cars for the Thanksgiving Holiday time frame. I decided after initially reading about this online through the railfan circles, that this could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to ride in a VIA Rail Park Dome car, without breaking the bank doing so! These cars are normally mainstays on VIA's premiere train "The Canadian" as well as on VIA's train "The Ocean" as well. To those of you who aren't familiar with these dome cars, they were built by Budd in the 1950's for Canadian Pacific and are round-end observation cars with a Vista-Dome in the center of the car that has 24 seats and feature lounge seating in the Observation end. The cars also feature a small galley with some tables for food service on the lower level along with a triple bedroom and 3 regular bedrooms which VIA normally sells on the Canadian but would not be available for sale on this train.
  Knowing all this, I decided I needed to find a way to go ride this while I had the chance, so I ended up using 8,000 Amtrak Guest Rewards points since the trains I would need to ride are all in the "Northeast Zone" so I wouldn't need that many points to put this trip together. I would ride Amtrak Empire Service Train #280 from Buffalo-Depew Station to Schenectady, then connect with the northbound Adirondack - Train #69 and take that to Port Henry, NY. I chose Port Henry as my stop because this would allow me to get back on the southbound Adirondack - Train #68 to get back to Schenectady where I would then ride the Lake Shore Limited - Train #49 back to Buffalo that night. I planned this trip on the Monday before the actual day of the trip. This would also be my first trip with e-tickets! Amtrak switched to electronic ticketing in July of this year meaning that most trains are ticketed now electronically verses getting a paper ticket. You get an e-mail from Amtrak when you book tickets online (or over the phone) that contains an Adobe PDF file that is your boarding pass complete with a QR Code that the conductor scans with a specially modified iPhone. If you lose your boarding pass, no big deal, just print up another one. Back in the days of "paper tickets", if you lost them, you had to "buy 'em Again". You can also print up a boarding pass at a "Quik Trak" machine or ask the ticket agent in the station to print one up for you. They are still printed on the old ticket stock but they are still considered to be just boarding passes printed on ticket stock that contain the code needed for the conductor to scan. You can also still buy e-tickets at any staffed Amtrak station, and they will print the boarding passes for you on the aforementioned old ticket stock. You can also just open the e-mail on your phone and it may be possible for the conductor to just scan your phone screen showing the QR code, so it can be a truly paperless form of ticketing! This whole concept of paperless ticketing is really not new as airlines have done this for years but it's all new to Amtrak and has benefits like reduced paperwork as well as in an emergency, Amtrak is able to know exactly how many people are on the train at a given time with 100% accuracy.
  Amtrak Guest Rewards does have blackout dates during the holidays but just my luck, the 2 days before and the 2 days after this trip were blacked out but not November 23rd! My thought is not that many people are traveling on Black Friday, rather they're all out shopping for a $1200 HDTV on sale for $299 (Picture it, 1,000 people waiting for that TV and the store has 10 in stock, sounds like the makings of an interesting YouTube video!). In the end, the trip cost me nothing since I paid with points (though the tickets were going for around $200 had I had to pay for them). AGR put the reservation together under one reservation number and e-mailed me my e-ticket which I could print at home and show the conductor so he could electronically "lift" my ticket rather than having to punch a paper ticket (as stated earlier). The whole process with AGR couldn't have been easier! Every experience I've had with AGR over the years has been quite good! It is a very well-run program that if you are a regular traveler, or even if you take one big trip a year, you should join! They also offer a credit card that lets you earn points (that's where I earned most of mine). This trip would end up being a record breaker for myself as I have never before rode 4 Amtrak trains in a single 24 hour period all in the same state! I would also add 742 miles to my "Odometer" of miles travelled on Amtrak so far in my life, and what do you know, this would also be my 50th Amtrak trip since my first in July 1996! So now, I only had to wait until Friday morning for this to all happen!