On my ride on #14, the Coast Starlight on Sunday, there were at least three incidents on board that required the presence of the Conductor. I was not witness to any of these but we could all tell they were occuring by intercom announcements.
I overheard the conductor and staff talking about the first .A drunken woman in the dining car complained about some sauce, became belligerent and then threatened one of the diner staff with her fork. I don’t know what the result was–the conductor and his assistant talked about getting some “form” to throw her off.
During this episode, I saw the conductor talking with a big guy in a t-shirt and jeans. He had an Amtrak ID badge slung around his neck. I am not sure if he was train crew or undercover security/law enforcement.
Later, our new conductor made a long announcement that you could not smoke in the lavatories nor drink alcohol purchased outside the train.
Beyond that, there seemed to be a few sleeper passengers a bit too fond of their drink. At least they didn’t cause a commotion.
I’ve read in a trip report on On Track On Line about several passengers being tossed for smoking marijuana.
Not having ridden a non 403(b) Amtrak train in over 22 years, I was a bit surprised to see the number of incidents in a relatively short time.
Does anyone else have similar stories or was this an unique circumstance?
Drugs, alcohol, and fightin’. Sounds about how I remember my last Amtrak trip. There was one other element missing, that also occured on my last trip, but we will keep this clean. I guess I should add that none of it involved me.[V]
That sounds like a heavy dose for one train. Once, on no 9 I threw a guy off for lighting his headrest on fire with a lighter. There was a time on no 9 when it was a night train where we stopped at Sturtevant, I put the step box down and said, “Come on in and make yourselves feel at home.” So this guy gets on, finds a seat and takes his pants off. We had a group of ladies traveling to Chicago for a bowling tournament once on no 8. They took over the entire big-dome car, got 10 plastic cups and watermelon, and were conducting their own bowling set right there in the dome. And then there was the time on no 7 when there was a duplicate sale in one of the sleepers. A well groomed family boarded and occupied a bedroom. At Glenview another well dressed family got on with the same room, and there were none left to spare. Both families squeezed into the room and started to battle. I couldn’t settle the matter, so I closed the door and waited for the cops in Milwaukee. The room sounded like a bad-order washing machine with a load of sneakers in it.
Of course drunks are a special problem. We had to “goose” a drunk one evening on the 6.55 to Fox Lake in order to get him to leave the train. And then there was this fellow who boarded the midnight wearing a huge sombrero. He sat down, swivled his head from side to side, took off his sombrero, looked into it, and unloaded his evening meal. He then put the hat back on.
This all happened in the seventies. Boorish behavior is nothing new.
Any of the above behaviors would be a boring day on the Metro (subway) in DC. ALL of the above behaviors would be a tame day on the Metro in DC. The Metro Police do a good job with the numbers they have, but they can’t be everywhere.
I don’t think so. You have everything from drivers contending NASCAR style for road space to such pleasant things as gas stations, mini-marts, and fast-food restaurants.
I also think the comment goes in both directions. Some people on this site speak with horror of bus travel or auto and regard train travel as the ultimate in proper accomodations.
Travel is travel, and all modes have their drudgery, their boorish fellow users of the facilities, etc. Airplanes look really neat from the outside, but I don’t really look forward to riding inside them apart from having to get someplace. If train travel seems like the antidote, well I guess we aren’t riding trains as much anymore to get the full measure of them.
Paul,
Did you see the “60 minutes II” report about the market research guru last week? Among other things he’s helping Boeing to make its 787 Dreamliner people friendly. Wish Amtrak could hire him to develop a rail service for today.
Had some trouble with your link on dialup – may try it on broadband from somewhere else.
I wish Boeing the best of success with their Dreamliner. The most important comfort issue for me when flying (or any other public mode involving multi-hour confinement) is that the person next to me is not coughing and sneezing with a cold or flu that is going to make me sick for the next 10 days after getting off the plane. Colds are only supposed to be transmitted by touching your face after touching a surface, but try not touching your face for 6-12 hours (lengths of various overseas plane trips), and there must be some viruses that are airborne anyway.
The worst part is the confinement – I did 40 hours in coach on the Southwest Limited a long time ago – that was confining – as was any trans-Atlantic or trans-Pacific flight. I remember telling my papa once on a trans-Atlantic flight not long after the Kosovo War about how things could even be worse – Little Rock, Arkansas to Belgrade (and back!), non-stop, 6 mid-air refuelings would be a somewhat more confining journey.
Was that for training or punishment? (My return ride from Nam was a C-141 non-stop from Yakota to Travis. Love those planes with 6 and 6 seating, facing backwards watching the luggage pallet in the tail rocking with the motion of the plane. And from where I sat, I could see the window.)
What makes Amtrak’s future so dire is the imminent arrival of very light jets (VLJ), a new type of airplane made possible by miniaturized jet engines. Eclipse, Adam, and Cessna will soon have them certified and start delivering. Eclipse alone has 2200 orders for their Eclipse 500. These planes are so cheap to operate that they’ll be used as air taxis from any airport to any other in most of the US. They handle like light aircraft but have the avionics of airliners. Here are the specs for the Eclipse 500:
Price: $1.3 MM
Max cruise speed: 375 kt
Range 1280 nm
Useful load: 2250 lb
I guess that’s the flip side of cheap fares. The riff-raff can afford it.[:D] Frankly, I think the standards of decorum have deteriorated much more on airplanes, but that’s going back to the '60s for comparison.
On the other hand, I’ve wondered what people today would make of the formal atmosphere of the 20th Century Limited, for example, and where everyone behaved so correctly. Even the accents were different.
For Amtrak’s sake, that would be the hope – “a rising tide lifts all boats”.
The market that VLJs address have airports that are either underutilized or don’t have control towers. Mostly they’re in small towns, rural areas, or outlying metropolitan areas, e.g. Ely, Minn. to Frankfort, Mich. The main issue to their acceptance, as I see it, would be to overcome a perception of safety. Some would fly under visual flight rules, outside the control system. For controlled flight, the traffic system is evolving towards a point-to-point model.