This topic was included in the AAPRCO most recent update (04/21/18). Does this mean dining cars are about to vanish on LD trains? If so, when is AMTRAK planning on doing this?
Dining cars are getting discontinued on 2 routes, The Capitol Limited and The Lake Shore Limited. All other trains with dining cars will keep them (for now). I believe it is supposed to happen June 1.
My personal ox hasn’t yet been gored on this one. I’m in California, and haven’t had occasion to ride the Lake Shore since 2006, the Capitol since 2001. However, once, as seems all too likely, the Anderson regeime tries similar shenanigans on the California Zephyr and Coast Starlight, they’ll have seen the last of me.
The Silver Star already lost its diner, seems like Amtrak liked the result. Wonder why they are storing them in Hialeah, quite far from every other service, Florida. Might have to check it out. ~Eastrail
I wonder if the new head of Amtrak ever took an overnight trip by train. He apparently has no idea of the pleasures found when eating in a railroad diner. During the last 67 years, I have enjoyed eating in diners, whether I traveled coach or sleeper. The current Amtrak diners do not give the same experience that existed into 1980-81; they are much superior to what I experienced in 1982–but this proposed plan is not even up to that of 1982–which was much like what you experience in a McDonald’s.
I could also wonder how many of the other people involved in this decision have ever eaten in an Amtrak diner and noted whether the others eating there were coach or sleeper. (You can’t tell by the way they dress.)
My last time on the Capitol Limited was Thanksgiving Day 2008. The diner was quiet. A special Holiday menu was available. Fresh turkey, mashed potatoes and all the trimmings. A wonderful meal. One of the most memorable meals I had ever had. I have been riding Amtrak since 1983. I saw the birth of Amtrak, the best years and now I am seeing the decline. Very sad.
Amtrak’s operating loss on its food and beverage service in 2012, according to an audit by Amtrak’s Inspector General, was $72 million. Of this amount $71.5 million or 99.3 percent was attributable to the losses on the long-distance trains.
Food and beverage revenues on the long-distance trains were $63.5 million, but operating costs were $135 million, resulting in a net operating loss of $71.5 million before application of capital expenses. Labor costs were the biggest villain. They amounted to $75.3 million or 119 percent of the revenues. The Auto Train had the biggest loss at $13.1 million, and the Palmetto had the lowest loss at $218,000.
According to the report, Amtrak reduced it food and beverage operating losses from $105 million in 2006 to $72 million in 2012. Presumably it has realized further reductions in the food and beverage operating losses since 2012, but to what extent is unknown.
Amtrak knows the number of coach vs
Remember the railroads favorite saying: Freight doesn’t have to be fed.
I can just see a new commerical coming: A young guy meats someone carrying their cold meal, and his eyes go wide, as that someone enters their sleeper room. Then BANG, said someone slams the door bring the young guy back to reality. The tag line is “First Class exists to remind you, you are not in First Class. Next time FLY First Class.”
Maybe the Capital Limited will stop on the mainline at a Burger King or Friendlys located along the tracks so the passengers can get a hot meal? Or better yet, meat a food truck or hot-dog Johnny at a grade cross to feed them? Just saying how Amtrak can feed the passengers and save millions on equipment & staff. NS and CSX would not mind the delay, right?
Hopefully with the new meal service they can start reducing some of their commissaries and replace with LSG Skychefs.
With it being the Capitol Limited - my Grandfather is spinning 78 RPM in his grave, as Superintendent of the B&O Dining Car Dept until his retirement, the Capitol was his baby.
Wonder what will happen during high travel times with V-2 sleepers lenghtening trains and the demand or lack of sleeper demand due to no traditional diners ?
Probably one of the least of the problems: since the cold meals are ‘prepared to order’ shortly before train time, they will mirror the exact makeup of the train and, likely if Amtrak gets a little experience with customer ordering service, precise requested breakdown by entree (no more running out of the beef!)
I should mention that my happiest meals aboard aircraft were during the brief (Continental Airlines?) experiment with overstuffed sandwiches plus drinks and cookies as the in-flight refreshment. For the cost of a Sky Chefs style spam-in-the-can tray meal you can make one hell of a sandwich with quality ingredients, and in my opinion it is not difficult to customize the ‘contents’ as kits to be assembled close to serving time. (It might be a short step from there to Subway-style heating of some types of sandwich…)
If the issue is, indeed, the absolute minimization of dining-car revenue loss, there are many answers that provide net positive revenue – not sure how many of them include the classical commissary system, though.
To Balts point, somewhat anyway-- I’m going to be out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in my little rubber dinghy on this one so get your pellet guns ready so you can pop some holes and send me to the abyss.
One would think, even expect in many ways, that with all the incredible rich and important history of railroading, the sheer diversity of all those independant railroads, in a free market system, the importance of it all, that ONE railroad stood alone, resisted being swallowed up, kept its pride and maintained not only its own sense of freedom with service but also a fine tradition of independant passenger service between its connecting cities. Just ONE of them against the McDonalization of it all, just ONE that drew on its vast holdings of land and property, well managed and fiercely proud of its transportation service, just one that said “no thanks” to the trends, never became one of the lemmings running off the cliff. we are who we are and we are very happy, …and that viewed its passenger service and its fine tradition of Sleepers and Dining Car Service as not only superb advertising for the brand but something highly sought after and desirable.
Do not tell me that is/was not possible in America. Even here in Canada… Canadian Pacific could have pulled it off and I say easily. They had it…they had it all and late in the game…I mean they really did have it. Beavers, hotels, a fine network, respect, boats, everything.
I look at that Part V clip of Jim Wrinn’s rail trip through PERU and the service offered, at the station and the train itself…thats PERU, as in PERU.
Talk of sandwichs and cold vegan wrap offerings as if this is some kind of progressive miracle is totally absurd. This development is ridiculous and shameful. Or shameful and ridiculous, your choice.
You know I was inspired enough to make Lobster Neuberg this winter after finding out about it on the 20th Century but a vegan wrap or some other sad
Think of it as being ‘of a piece’ with the Mica-inspired dining car shenanigans on the Florida trains: attempts to find cheap ways to look as if you’re ‘getting to profitability’. Sometimes the attempts are cynical, sometimes well-meant, but in a general atmosphere where Amtrak is apparently becoming more and more expected to ‘pay its own way’ – and we’ve been around the tree many times on how this can be done while preserving excellent dining-car cuisine and service experience, with generally depressing end results when practical concerns are included – even the appearance of a three-star restaurant on wheels that loses money hand over fist is a relatively easy target.
All it would take is a political countershift for the diners to come back into hot-food service, and I don’t believe there is any current discussion about removing equipment from the Viewliner diners… better fact-check me on that… so I’d treat it as a Dolores Umbridge headmistress situation, and plan accordingly.
Quoting from Overmod’s post on the Private Car discombobulation thread: "Our Mission Statement clarifies how we will achieve our Vision. As a company and as individual employees, our job is to provide safe transportation in a manner that improves the company’s financial security while ensuring that our customers have a consistent, high-quality travel experience.
How does ceasing to serve hot meals ensure “that our customers have a consistent, high-quality travel experience.?”
Tends to insure that customers have a ‘blah’ experience AT BEST, and more likely a consistantly hateful experience.
Will a 1 oz. bag of pretzels constitute ‘meal service’ like it now does on airlines?
If the current hot meals are worse enough replacing them with something better but cold might make the travel more enjoyable?
Regards, Volker
Closest to it was Santa Fe … and look what it got them.
In actual fact, a railroad that even attempted to optimize the passenger-service experience regardless of cost would have fallen victim no later than the '80s to ‘someone’ capable of engineering an acquisition, leveraged buyout, or ‘better use of assets’ proxy fight action.
There is an old ‘saw’ about the men who manage men manage the men who manage things, and the men who manage money manage the men who manage men. The problem is that the men who manage money men manage the men who manage money* … and there goes any hope of getting either the men or the things to do anything that does not optimize the bottom line while minimizing both risk and unnecessary expenses.
If there were a market for that kind of service, Iowa Pacific and American Orient Express would have found it … or Carnival Cruise Lines would have created