Here’s a topic of interest to me and perhaps others who inhabit Amtrak’s Sleeping Cars. How clean are the accommodations?
An article (“Your Road Buddies: Zillions of Germs”) in today’s New York Times got me to wondering yet again about the standards Amtrak uses in their regularly-scheduled maintenance.
If any member of this forum has some factual knowledge or evidence, I’d like to know about what happens behind the scenes at, say, Sunnyside Yard. I’d like to know, for example, how often the mattresses are cleaned? How cleaned? How often are they replaced? How often are blankets cleaned? How cleaned? I must say that I have always found freshly laundered linen in my room and clean towels, but let’s go on.
How often is the sink cleaned? What about the shower in the bedrooms? How cleaned?
It seems to me that the carpeting, especially near the too-small sink areas is frequently moistened, no matter one’s efforts. So, how often is the carpeting cleaned? How? How often replaced?
What about the mousetraps one sees, albeit infrequently, underneath the sofas in the rooms? How much of a problem is this?
Without getting too specific, what about the cleanliness of the toilets? Any statistics?
I once had a conductor advise me not to ride in Room H ( handicap room) on Viewliner Sleeping Cars. “That’s where they put every sick person, all that coughing; you don’t know what those people have,” he said. OK, I’ll grant that remark was ungracious, but is there any discernible difference in the cleanliness or cleaning of any rooms?
I suppose I’d like to hear from someone who works for Amtrak in a room-cleaner capacity. But I bet they are way too busy to read this forum; my thanks to them, nonetheless. Maybe the Vice President for Germ Control could respond, but he may have been recentl