RailRoadFan.com

Can some else try going to amtrak.com, see if you are able to query to see if you can get a ticket from Spokane Washington to Bangor Michigan.
I'm seeing an error of "Problem Finding Service: The service you requested is not available because there is no same day train connection. Please try a different route or different dates.
[Error ID: 205A]"

Perhaps the 3:55pm scheduled arrival of the Empire Builder into Chicago cuts it too close to the 6:30pm Pere Marquette departure? Thought they had a "guaranteed connection" ticket as long as the long distance train had at least 90 minutes between the scheduled arrival and the departure, but this 150 minute layover is now not enough?
If you try to book Spokane to Detroit, it does allow for the 10:30pm bus service out of Chicago, but none of the Wolverine's show up as choices.

Same message

Amtrak is weird about that. I did 8 to 354 a couple years ago. When I booked they were not guaranteeing the connection, so I booked them separately. By the time the trip came around they WERE doing the connection, and low and behold we missed the connection. Amtrak took everyone for 354 and shoved us on a bus. You could book it and risk it, but with that route I wouldn’t expect a backup bus for the missed connections.

The Wolverine Services don't stop at Bangor, so that is why they don't show up.

https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/proj ... 071618.pdf

peter

The Eastbound Builder has been running late too often, and apparently they have broken the connection. They will allow a connection to the Capitol Limited, a whopping 10 minutes later at 6:40pm. I guess statistically they can guarantee a connection with a 2h 45m layover, but not 2h 35m layover!

(Conversely, you can book a westbound connection from the PM to the EB with no problem; it’s a 5h 7m layover.)

The solution is to book two one way tickets, at your own risk, using the “multi-city” function on the website. My mom did this recently to get from Minnesota to Michigan and she was lucky enough to connect without incident.