Not long ago I did a post on my parents experience with Amtrak. Well my folks wrote Amtrak a letter voicing their concerns about their trip.
When they got Amtrak’s reply, they were told that Amtrak is instituting a Customer Service Department. Apparantly it will work directly with passengers to improve service on Amtrak passenger lines. It sounds like if Amtrak reps will be riding passenger trains & be in stations to help in difficult situations.
Has the inquiring minds here at trains.com have any similar dealings with Amtrak[?] Or are thigns pretty good overall on Amtrak routes[?]
I can’t really say I’ve ever had a bad Amtrak trip, though I only ride once every 3-4 years. I have arrived late once by a couple hours on a Glendale - Redding run on the Starlight, No big deal. I took a Pacific Surfliner from SD to LA 2 weekends ago and it was a nice trip and I couldn’t have driven that for the $28 the ticket cost. Those cars ride nicely and are clean. I will probably use Amtrak more often when going to LA the way gas prices are these days…
Chad. What are gas prices in LA these days[?] I’m in Calgary, where the price is over a dollar a litre. [V] [:(!] Which must be somewhere between 4 & 5 dollars a gallon. I know thie is off topic but in Quebec the gas companies are started being investigated for price fixing.
I was in San Diego a few weeks ago and I was really tempted to take the Surfliner up the coast. It was nice to see the commuter and passenger aspect of rail that I rarely get to see or dispatch.
They need to do that here too. I live in San Diego area. We hit $3.40 a gallon like 2 weeks ago (when I went to LA) and then LA was around $3.29. It has slowly dropped down a bit and is now at $3.19. There was a thread about gas prices a couple weeks ago and I didn’t see any prices higher then what we were paying. I wonder how that stands now. I think I’ll start a thread on that.
Nathan, I would recomend the trip. The cars are clean and comfortabe. The trains get up to 90mph and the coastal views are great. The price isn’t bad either. I paid $28 to go from San Diego to Van Nuys (a couple stops past LA). One of these days I am going to take the Coaster & Metrolink on that route and see how they compare. I know the Coaster gets high rateings by the people I know that use it (non-railfans).
They already have a customer service department. The new managers (more management) will be out riding trains- not to help with difficult situations, but to “find failure” with employees at a rate of 5%. A knee-jerk reaction in the “do something” department.
There are days I have to get away from it all. Sometimes to do some writing, sometimes to study or rehearse, maybe do some research (in books).
So:
I ride the Texas Eagle from Austin to Fort Worth and back. It’s about 9 hours on the train, costs 46 dollars total, you can always find a quiet spot to yourself usually an entire table in the club car. My cell phone works always, I can plug in the laptop charger in the front rows area, the food in the snack bar is pricey and ok, the coffee is very good.
I usually get the same cabin attendants - or whatever AMTRAK calls them every trip and keeping in mind that they’re waking up every day wondering if they’ll have a job the next day, the service is ok.
I brought a little Garmin Legend on one trip and the speed varied constantly from 10 to nearly 90 mph. Doubt we held any speed more than a minute or two. There is lots of traffic on that route and we either passed sidetracked freights or were ourselves sidetracked a few times.
The train makes three or four scheduled stops and each one it seems like the entire passenger load gets off to smoke.