Is there anyone out there that has taken the Pullman car service offered on the City of New Orleans and if so what was the experience like and was it worth doing? Rode Pullman service years ago, last time on M.P.from St. Louis to Monroe La. Thanks John
Try reading some of the blog posts that Fred has put out on this site.
It’s on the front page of the Travel Section in today’s New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/travel/all-aboard-for-a-trip-to-the-past.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0
Excellente writeup, and I do hope and pray that the passenger count increases.
My wife and I rode an abreviated consist between Christmas and New Years. Our bedroom was over the wheels while the crew had one of the rooms in the center of the car!!! Go figure. The ride was rough and sleeping was impossible.
One issue puzzles me: What is Ed Ellis doing differently with Pullman Rail Journeys from the late American European Express that will allow him to continue as an ongoing business?
Did you bother to write a complaint letter or otherwise notify Mr. Ellis? I would have tried to reach him via cellphone as the train was leaving the station and let him or any company official I did reach talk to the crew. I am certaini that what you experienced is against their policy and could have been corrected on the spot.
If you write a complaint letter, I will bet you, and this is a real ten dollar bet, that you will get at least a partial refund. But you have to be specific with all the details you can on the trip in your letter to Mr. Ellis.
I had a similar experience many years ago on the New York Central or Penn Central “Steel Fleet,” the unnamed train the replaced all the through trains from New York and Boston to Chicago, Cincinnati, Chicago via Detroit, St, Louis, and Toronto. I had booked a center single room in the Slumbercoach, Grand Central Terminal to Chicago. I was late leaving my White Plains office, and so my partner drove me to Croton-Harmon on his way to his home in Peekskill. I think I had called the railroad reservation office just before leaving the office, but I think I was put on hold, and could not wait and still catch the train while having my partner drive safely. When I boarded the slumbercoach and showed the attendent my ticket, he took me to an end room. I told him I had the center room. He said that he had a right to use that room because I did not board at GCT. I sat in the room until the conductor came through, and he straightend the situation out thoroughly at that point. The attendent moved my stuff to the center room for which I was ticketed, and I went to the dining car for dinner or to the lounge car to wait for dinner. This was in the days when the NYC and then the PC ran their own sleepers, not the Pullman Co.