Either that and I am getting older and wider…I did not notice a handicapped space in the Cafe/Club Car/Buisness class either. You would think that middle aged pouched railfans is a huge chunk of Amtraks buiness. No room for beer bellys on Amtrak. This seems to be a recent problem on newer cafe cars.
I doubt that a beer gut qualifies as a disabling condition. As an aside, drug abuse and alcoholism are not qualifying conditions for Social Security disability benefits.
Not a handicap issue, but it sure is a customer service issue.
Another reason to offer only freight transportation.
The simple answer is: NO, you do not have a valid issue for an ADA complaint, and if the aisle is wide enough for a wheel chair to pass through then it meets the criteria as you can always eat at your seat.
If one is wider than a wheel chair - it is likely that the wheel chair won’t support you.
Someone else can verify this anecdote from recent history, but I’ve read that after Cunard Line’s Queen Mary 2 was placed in service, about a year or so later a large number of the chairs on board had to be replaced because the many American plus-sized passengers had broken them.
We are a large nation, in several respects.
You cannot really appreciate this until you have been to Lambert’s Cafe in Sikeston (the home of sorghum on your throwed rolls). That was the first place I saw actual spherical people, something I thought only existed in L. Frank Baum.
Lamerts Cafe in Sikeston MO is now on my bucket list (need transit/train info) -
https://www.americansorghum.com/7-benefits-of-eating-sorghum/
I think you might be able to get there from the City of New Orleans, and for some reason I think Megabus has a road stop near there on the road to Chicago from Memphis.
You could probably hitchhike safely if you had a sign that referenced going there to EAT. Someone in a big enough car will stop to help you…
Sorghum! Sorghum on your rolls!
(As bad as “Punch, brothers, punch with care; punch in the presence of the pass-en-jare”…)
Just lose the weight before Amtrak recruits you as a LD train Conductor, it’s really not that hard to lose weight.
It’s not difficult. Exercise more, eat less. Don’t use salt.
I belive Cairo IL is the closest Amtrak/Freight Yrd to Sikeston which is 28 miles to/from there. I also see on Google Maps that Cape Girardeau Missouri birthplace of Rush Limbaugh is nearby as well and is a scenic town in its own right.
As a Weight Watcher that has lost 100 lbs, I know what over weight prople go through. A catagory of people that still get discriminated and have bad jokes made about them. I am not asking for sympathy, just that too many foods are fattening today. And resturants portion sizes are excessive. That said, Some memories that I can never forget:
Back in the late fifties, while riding a Cincinnati trolley bus, I was the only passenger on the four passenger bench seat over the front door side wheel. A lady got on the bus and she was so overweight that she had to turn sideways to pass through the door. She sat down next to me and occupied the three seats next to me plus. And while she sat as close to the door as she could, I was still squeezed and needed to move.
Also remember the Classic NEW YORKER cartoon depicting an Atlantic City boardwalk GUESS YOUR WEIGHT attraction with a scale tripod chair and two men looking down at a big hole in the boardwalk, the chair seat shredded, and the caption “FATEST WOMAN I EVER SAW” Which was what I thought about the lady on the bus.
I think that employers might want to offer weight loss programs for employees similar to smoking cessation programs. A case might be made that safe operation of a vehicle or train might require an operator to be healthy and simce overweight people are (in my opinion) more prone to strokes and/or heart attacks and that could be a rational for a job weight limit.
My original post was that it seems that the cafe tables are even too small for your average American and whoever engineer drew up the plans sits in a AC office somewhere in California goes to Planet Fitness every morning and drives to work. Where these cafes car are built in Hornell NY and Elmira NY have not had a Amtrak Train since the 1970s…compare these sparten Amtrak cafe cars with what we had on the Pennsy in the 1940s-1950s and those cars were BUILT for HUSKEY Women and BURLEY WW2 Soilders…
So, perhaps this explains the new “Superliner” cars with the Schnabel undercarriage?