I’m new to this so I hope that this topic about Amtrak fits the profile.
Last week I found it necessary to take a whirlwind trip from Omaha, NE to Washington DC. Overall, the trip and service were good. I notice that the California Zephyr is still plagued with on-time problems. Have they been able to identify why. In spite of this problem the ridership on the Zephyrseems to be quite good. Going in both directions ridership was high.
Now to my dining car experience. In a way I found that prices were a bit high with little sign of the improvements that I read about. Question: Why, in this time when Amtrak is really making progress, that paper and plastic are still being used for service. I found this to be the same both for the Zephyr and the Capitol Limited. I heard several comments about this from fellow passengers. I’m a railroad brat from way back. My Dad worked for the Rutland railroad I’m very proud of the strides Amtrak has made and know a true renaissance is in the making. It’s amazing how such a seemingly tiny problem is so evident to passengers. Any comments please?
As someone who has a railroad heritage you must have ridden on your family pass and enjoyed the excellent food which was served on the dining cars prior to AMTRAK. My heritage is with western railroads, primarily Santa Fe with their FRED HARVEY service. I also road the UP and the CB&Q as well as B&O’s Capitol and IC’s Panama Ltd. The food and service was always Great to Excellent and each RR had their own special recipes.
The AMTRAK food is about 3 or 4 on a scale of 10, and the service is sometimes less than that. Whatever the fiscal numbers which caused AMTRAK to downgrade to where it now finds itself it would seem that those losses were a small percentage of their overall loss. Perhaps they could benefit by emulating their predecessors and serve food with a service they could look upon with pride. Or perhaps they look at the airlines and see no competition, hence no need to improve.
[#welcome] Well, that’s first ! Hope you come to enjoy it here as much as most of the rest of us do.
I like your screen name - any one of the Big Boys in particular ? (I think more were saved in Nebraska than just the one in Kenefick Park at the Missouri River crossing ?) You’ll find that there are quite a few members here with ties to the Cornhusker State - but I’ll let them say “Hi !” and introduce themselves.
Yes, there’s a separate “Passenger” Forum here, at:
That said, I don’t check out that Forum too often, and so the occasional post over here is welcome - at least to me - as a sampling of what’s happening over there. And just a few mninutes ago I started a new thread on the new NJT tunnel under the Hudson River to NYC. [#oops] So I don’t think there’s anything terribly wrong - and if there is, you’ve got company of sorts.
Thanks for the trip report. Most of my Amtrak travels are within the NE Corridor, so I don’t have the opportunity to sample to long-haul service elsewhere very often.
My personal experience related to dining car meals on Amtrak is limited to #7/8 to and from Minneapolis/St. Paul
I had lunch once and dinner once. The dinner was OK except the dining car seating is way too cramped and the dinner pricing was way too high when compared with hotel food pricing. The luncheon service was better but the train I was on had too few dining car attendants and so they had some of the tables closed off at the peak of the lunch hour, thus causing the waiting lines to be really long (I waited 45 minutes for a table along with three other folks with me at the time).
My wife and I have traveled as much as we could in the last few years, and we have had varied experiences with the Amtrak meals.
First, I will say that the diner meals are greatly superior to what is available in the cafe cars, even on the trains with business class service (excepting the Talgo equipment on the Seattle-Vancouver train–but this train has a diner).
It is true that the prices are high when you compare what you are served on Amtrak with what you are served in a good hotel. When I first ate in a good hotel in the East, some forty years ago, I noticed that the pricing was much the same as what the southern roads (Sou, ACL, L&N, SAL, IC) were then charging in their diners. I really do not remember what the Erie, NYC, and NH were charging then, as I had few opportunities to sample their menus.
Also, the quality of the food and service can vary considerably from one train to another in the same time frame (our last two trips covered about 9,000 miles each, with some on VIA, crossing Canada on one; our trip two years ago covered more than 16,000 miles, also with a crossing of Canada).
Let me ask this question: How many of you ate in Amtrak diners in 1982? On all the main trains that I rode that year, the service was like MacDonald’s–you paid when you ordered, and it was all served with pa
First, welcome to this forum. You raised an interesting question about Amtrak’s meal service and its pricing. I rarely ride Amtrak, but I think the answer to your question about paper and plastic instead of china and silverware in diners is to cut costs. It is much cheaper to serve food on plastic dishes than on china because the plastic dishes can be disposed of after use, and they don’t have to be washed, thus saving the cost of a crew member who has to do this job.