Amtrak Thinks This Thanksgiving Will Beat Last Year’s Record

Amtrak is heading into Thanksgiving expecting to break a record it set only a year ago. Over the 2025 holiday the railroad carried more than 1.2 million customer trips, up nearly 6% on 2024, and it says demand this year is running even hotter. Interim president Byl Herrmann described the railroad as experiencing record demand, and the company is urging travelers to book now rather than wait. Thanksgiving is Amtrak’s busiest stretch of the year, and the trains that matter most to holiday travelers, on the Northeast Corridor, tend to sell out first.

To make room, Amtrak is adding cars to select Northeast Regional trains across an 11-day window from November 20 to November 30. It is also running two extra Northeast Regional round trips between Washington Union Station and New York Penn Station on November 24–25 and November 28–29, the days on either side of the holiday. Amtrak expects those extra trains to fill quickly. Fifteen NextGen Acela trainsets are now in service, the most ever, and on the West Coast the Amtrak Cascades corridor is running its new Airo fleet on four daily trips.

Timing still makes an enormous difference to price. In a sample of one-way fares, Newsweek found New York to Washington at $155 on November 26 but just $45 on November 24, and New York to Philadelphia at $68 on the Wednesday versus $10 two days earlier. Refund rules are worth reading before you buy: Value fares return 70% on cancellation and Sale fares 50%, though anything bought directly from Amtrak can be fully refunded if cancelled within 24 hours of purchase.

Amtrak recommends arriving at least 30 minutes before departure, and earlier at the busiest stations, and reminds riders that the allowance is one personal item plus two carry-ons. The surge is part of a bigger trend: ridership for the fiscal year through July reached 30.6 million, up 7.2%, while seat capacity grew only about 1.5%. That gap is exactly why the peak days go first, so anyone planning to travel on the Wednesday before or the Sunday after Thanksgiving should lock in seats now.

Sources: Amtrak Media, Newsweek