Someone at AMTRAK has discovered marketing!
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TRAVEL/getaways/08/01/booze.train.ap/index.html
They are offering up to a hundred dollars in alcohol credits on some of the high-end sleeper trains. Hmmmm, maybe I should post this over at the Beer Barn…
So is it Amtrak or Grandluxe that’s doing the deal? If it’'s Grandluxe and their people are kept seperate from the rest of the passengers, no big deal. I don’t use Amtrak that much but do enjoy taking the train when I can and don’t recall any drunks like you can get on airlines. Much more space and comfort on the train as well. For what it’s worth i’d rather see the money spent on additional sleepers and the food in the snack car could use an upgrade. I think the employees I’ve had contact with have been professional and many have been outstanding but the worst parts of the trips have been the delays waiting for freight trains to clear the next block and the inability to run to schedule - again much better than recent airline experiences, but definitely needing improvement. In other words, free drinks aren’t the answer, but I don’t have a problem with the promotion. J.R.
I have always thought that Amtrak would get more bang for the buck if they promoted their longer trips as “ground cruises” rather than as the way to get from Alpha to Omega. How well getting their riders sloshed would contribute to that is a ???.
Of course the MADD spokesperson had to object! Maybe she doesn’t realize that the passengers don’t run the train. It’s a safe bet she couldn’t quote Rule G!
Chuck (who thinks that getting there by train is a lot more than half the fun)
Looks like I picked the wrong year to quit drinking![:D]
The profits from the bar car used to pay the trains operating expenses on the SP Daylight runs.
Just think how much extra you have to pay for those “free” drinks.
They should upgrade their Observation cars to a totally new level.
Build NEW cars that have a whole Upper deck as a FISHbowl type layout.
On 1/4 part of one end of those Cars, they should have a PHOTO-Safari Platform. OPEN AIR.
How about a MOVIE theater. Strange EH? but you know those 100’ flat panel LCD are JUST LIKE A Theater.
How about a tour of a MOCK up of the TYPICAL ENGINE. (light weight car converted.) I am talking a mock up that would make a gear head DROOL. Cut aways/moving parts. Real controll panels. Not just a cheapo disney ride.
But most of all, if you can get somone from Philadephia to Chicago in 8 hours that would sell more tickets than anything else.
I’m glad to know this. I’m planning on a fall vacation out west, and wouldn’t mind being “loaded” most of the trip. Of course my diabetes will act up real bad, but what the heck. That’s why they make doctors and hospitals isn’t it…
Tracklayer
Great ideas.
Personaly, I always thought that they should mount a video camera, on the engine, and wire it to a screen, so that passengers can see what it look like from the locomotives point of view, going down the track.
GregH.-Great idea! Too bad people would spend too much time gasping at the monitor every time some idiot went around a crossing gate and came too close to getting creamed by the loco. (or got hit by)
The way I figure it, it’s just more people avalable as witnesses in defence of the train.
Besides no one is forcing them to watch as someone get’s turned in to red goo.
Add someone on a speaker system, giving various details of what is seen on the Locomotive Cam, and it would give a entrly new feel to train travel - that might boost the number of passengers.
In the olden days, when steam engines were the motive power, the protocol for sleeper use on the New York to Chicago overnighters was to have an after dinner drink (or two) in the bar before retiring. That helped to muffle the ding diing diiiing of the crossing bells.
Amtrak had some very cool tv commercials with song “jingles” from the 70s thru the early 90s. Sad that Amtrak’s budget is so “squeezed” by congress that commercials outside of the NEC are far and few in between. Those of you over 30 might remember them:
1. “We’re making the Train fun to ride again!”
2. “See the Country! Travel Amtrak!”
3. “America is getting into Training…More and More everyday…Training the Amtrak Way!”
4. “Take the “A” Train!” (Auto Train)
Anyone else notice that Amtrak is offering this “option” on the trains with probably the worst on-time records?
Keep the passengers drunk and maybe they won’t notice how far off schedule the train is.
Sounds like a dumb idea (dumb like a fox). [:O]
Amtrak is killing it’s self to an extent, eliminating small town service to the point that the Greyhound is the only form of long distance transportation that many of them have.
I looked into train travle about 18 months ago, for the family vacation, and the only way to get back home had a 12 hour lay over in Sacramento - 12 Hours of sitting around in a station! Please, that’s not something people riding solo are going to put up with, let alone a family with kids.
Until Amtrack become more rider friendly they are going to continue to lose riders.
We don’t even have Greyhound stops round here anymore, have to drive 40 mile for one.
The CSX [Pennsy], Indy-St. Louis tracks run right through here, no Amtrak. We have to drive 40 mile for it too.
Which if you’re going to Chicago or Carbondale is all right. It’s kinda out of the way to go to St. Louis by rail, when you have to go north to Chicago, then come back south to St. Louis. They even add 2 more trains. Now instead of running 4 almost full, they run 6 less than half full.
24 hours by train or 3 hours by car, that kinda leaves rail travel out for that trip, Indy’s the same way
Hmmm…
Maybe things have changed, but, I remember that Greyhound drivers had the option of picking up passengers along the route from non-station places and dropping them off at non-stations places as long as it was reasionably close to the route.
When I was a kid, I took the bus with my dad, and it droped us off, right in front of my grandparents place ( of course the entire town that my grandparents lived in was only 10 min wide - on foot so it realy didn’t matter where they droped us off ), and it was 5 min off the main hwy, but still on the way from station to another.
I wonder if it was schedualed far enough in advance if they would still do it?
When I was a kid back in the 50’s into the early 60’s, I can remember Greyhound stopping in Marshall at the Archer House [ILL oldest hotel], twice in the morning and evening, east and west, and once in the morning and evening north south. Even remember riding a few of them alone from there to Terre Haute In. [16 mile] or down to West Union, Il. [14 mile] , and family picking me up. Some times the bus would stop along the way n pick people along the road. They’d give the driver a couple bucks for the ride. Now if Greyhound got any of it, I don’t know for sure??? Bus service end there in the 70’s as I remember.
There were passenger trains coming through, Pennsy east west [Vandalia line] and the NYC [Cairo line] neither had passenger stop there, but the stations were still around [I got to hang around both some], there was some mail stops as I remember, think those ended in 60 or 61.
There are two special trains I remember stopping both were returning the bodies of service men that had died in WW2 [ in 57 or 58]. The only reason is, Dad was a Korea vet and belong to the AL. an all of the vets n reserve units around turned out to welcome them home [must have been 500 plus uniforms there]. It made a very big impression on a young boy that I carry today still.
I best get out of here afore I get into a long story.
Last time I was on the bus and on Amtrak, I recall stops at satellite stations. They were unmanned except if durring certian times of the day.
The satellite for the train was 30 miles SouthEast of Cheyenne WY, since the train didn’t actualy enter Cheyenne, it was nothing more than a platform and a small building ( 20x20 ft - over sized shed? ) for shelter. Passengers met at the ticket office in town and was driven to the platform by the ticket agent in an oversized passenger van. The train didn’t stop there unless there were passengers to pick up or drop off.
The satellite station for the bus was even smaller, and was located in OR. The building was no bigger than 10x15, and reading the sign on the window was open from M,W & F from 10-2. The bus stoped every day, and would hang around for 20 min, waiting to see if the anyone was going to get on. Payment worked several ways for the ticket- 1) Pay on line and get the tickets in the mail. 2) Get a ticket from the agent when he/she was in. 3) Pay the driver cash ( $20 or so ) for the cost of the ride to the next town that had a ticket office and when you arrived you then paid the ballance for the ticket for the rest of the trip ( this let the ticket agent know that the driver was paid money for the first part of the trip ).
As the Italian immigrant and my granddaughter both learned: There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch!
Jay Leno was joking about this on his Friday night monologue; he said that this policy would enable the passengers to feel the same thing as the train crew felt. Resounding laughter!!!
Phoenix is the largest city in the U.S. without AMTRAK service; SP/UP embargoed a hundred miles of what was known as the ‘Wellton cutoff’ about ten years ago - I was living in Tempe at the time and went down to Phoenix Union Station to see the last Sunset depart westbound. Sad occasion; Phoenix now has the largest ‘satellite station’ in the country. Transcontinental access is provided by bus to a place called Maricopa which is showing phenomenal growth as a ‘bedroom community’ but used to be little more than a wide spot in the road with a very large pig ranch - over 100,000 head when I visited in the '70s - which is, I would suppose, probably gone by this time. Trains go east and west on alternate days to La La Land and The Big Easy but there is a substantial wait at both those points to go any place else.
This is one of the main reasons I have hesitated to try to go anywhere by AMTRAK. Now if my ticket allowed me to start drinking before I left Phoenix and allowed me to continue drinking through La La Land or N’arlins . . . . . . . . . . Hu-u-u-u-u-m! New incentives appear to have arisen!!! Hu-u-u-u-u-u-m!!!
They be better off buying “Light Jets” and create a new “AM-Jet” service and flit from airfield to airfield in less time it takes to fight airport security, endure train lateness, or drive somewhere for a half a day.
We need not to have alcohol at home, on the train or anywhere because it is destructive to both of us. I think this new marketing goes over like a lead balloon.