Here's the short version, but I will get a more detailed one out soon. Four of us took this trip, two adults and two teenage (15 and 18) kids.
Left Rutland, VT on #290 at 8am on 2/28 in Business Class. We had two sets of tickets, one with Guest Rewards to Albany and one we bought from ALB-NYP. Made it down the Hudson to NYP on time. Tried to turn in our return tickets (paid for) to ALB and get on #49 at NYP. They wouldn't do this without releasing our sleepers and trying to grab them again so we opted to ride Business Class again from NYP-ALB. Made our connection in Albany fine and headed west to Chicago in one big room and one small one.
Snapped some good pictures of a derailed coal train along the way. Got delayed on this leg and arrived in Chicago at 2:30p instead of 9:45a on March 1st (Thursday). We were following the Capitol Ltd into the station so we had no issues missing our connecting train that evening. Freight traffic delays from the storm 2 weeks prior was the main problem. We visited the Navy Pier and had our pizza overlooking the partially frozen lake.
Hopped on the Capitol Ltd around 7pm and headed to DC. Again we had a big and small room in the Superliner. After Pittsbugh, when the passengers to Philly were offloaded (we were late so they were bused) our sleeping car attendant moved us into rooms B&C and opened the wall so we had a double suite the rest of the way! This certainly earned him an extra tip.
We had a 5:30pm connection in DC which we missed by an hour. I had talked to the conductor about this and she said they were going to put on a train to New Haven, CT and taxi us to Springfield, MA. We visited Customer Service to exchange the tickets at the station and found we had another option. We could stay the night in DC and catch a morning train if we wanted. This would mean getting home late Saturday evening instead of Saturday morning. Due to schedules we had to get home sooner than later so we took the late train. Went in coach to New Haven and taxi to SPG.