Schedules mailed?

Question for regular commuters: Is there any way to get MARC to put you on a mailing list for new schedule timetables? I am an occasional rider and I often don't know a schedule change has taken place until I arrive at a station and notice the schedule posted looks different from the one I am holding. On a few occasions the train I was looking to ride had been changed.

Since they only change the schedules a few times a year does anyone get them mailed?

BEFORE anyone mentions checking the internet I am often not at a place with that ability just before needing a train. Also I don't live very close to a station so driving to a station for a printed schd. is hit or miss, I have done that in the past and the rack was empty.

You can sign up for email alerts, so that you'll be informed when the schedule changes. But, you'll end up getting far more emails than you'll need. The best guess is probably to just hang out here, usually schedule changes get discussed when they come out.

Yeah, email alerts is the best way, but as HokieNav said you can be flooded with emails. I subscribed to the alerts back when they would hardly tell you anything (maybe one email a week) and it would be 2 hours too late. When they overhauled the system I signed up for texts as well. Now if a train is 2 min. late they'll email you. Talk about too much of a good thing.

Fortunately you can customize and fine tune the contact settings, such as your travel window. I'm also pretty sure you can set it up so that you only receive service announcements and not train status info. But even then you still get a lot of messages. Just this week I got 5 emails regarding a power outage at Germantown, 1 on an early closure at Odenton, about 20 related to MARC and the weather, a few on the elevator at Silver Spring...

edit: also check the MARC LED board regularly (not the Amtrak flat panels throughout the station) at Union Station, if that's where you travel. They always have schedule and holiday service info on it a couple of weeks before the fact.

realtype wrote:They always have schedule and holiday service info on it a couple of weeks before the fact.

Usually. The 19 January change was kind of short notice, there was a bit of blowback from that.