On March 17th my wife and I went from Philadelphia to Ft.Lauderdale
on the Silver Star. Our 50th anniversary . so we went on a cruise with
our family who flew. My wife had a VERY serious operation just
before the trip, so we booked the deluxe bedroom. After leaving
Washington I went to the washroom & it had a strong odor, I thought
it would go away but only got worse and pervaded the whole room.
An on-board supervisor (She said there were only four of them left
on the entire system) said she sould disinfect the toilet and room,
but my wife is allergicce to bleach. She did find us another room
and cleaned up the mess & I noticed another psgr boarding about
an hour later & getting that room (hopefully cleaned up).
On returning from FtLauderdale after a beautiful cruise, we gotr
on the Silver Star once again. This time there was almose no
hot or cold water for the sink, toilet or shower. Thought this
was only in our deluxe bedroom but 'twas on the whole car.
the toilet did not flush. I had to go to the dining car three
times each day to get cups of very hot water for my wife to
clean her medical supplies so that she would not get another
serious infection. Imagine the stench of a toilet not being
flushed for two days. A mechanic tried to fix the problem
in Savannah, something broken under the car. He was unab;e
to repair it & said the car would be put in the repair yard at
Sunnyside. N.Y.
As there was CSX track work being done we by-passed
Lakeland & Tampa and were to arrive in Phi.one hour earlier.
However a freight in front of us had a broken coupler and
then lost air pressure & held us up for 3 hours after Orlando.
However CSX gave us a clearance through all the work
areas and we arrived in Phi. around 5pm.
Phoned Amtrak when we arrived home and they were very
sympathetic
I’ve ridden both the Silver Star and Silver Meteor and had overall good experiences.
A big part of the problem you’ve experienced is that Amtrak is basically running its equipment into the ground and performing “barebone” maintenance in some situations due to the paltry funding. Tampa, Florida was an Amtrak maintenace facility just a decade ago. My friend Rhonda Kelly (rest in God’s peace, girl) was the supervisor. There were parts available for passenger cars and locomotives. It was shutdown thanks to Amtrak being forced to “downsize”. Sad that the modern “Viewliner” cars have been showing wear and tear.
Though they were old, those Heritage Fleet Cars seemed to have held up far better after the major rebuilds back in the early 80s than these Viewliner and Amfleet cars. IMHO, the riding quality was superior to the more modern cars. A shame most have been retired.
As long as Norm Mineta is the transportation secretary we’re not going to see much improvement in Amtrak, period.
What’s so funny is that I just saw an ABC news story on tv where airline complaints are at an all time high, service quality is deteriorating, but Mineta still insists that there is no need invest in Amtrak LD trains as an alternative.
Sorry for the poor trip experience. I am hopeful that the crew was most helpful in accomodating the need for good water etc for the recovering spouse.
I have a spouse who is in remission from cancer and would hate to put her thru what you all went thru. Due to risks (Low cabin pressure changes lymph fluid activity) from flying we might be taking trains in the future and hope that Amtrack gets it’s act together.
If not, there is always a rental RV and a week from point a to b.
just a few more remarks about our trip on the Silver Star.
On the trip south, had a miserable waiter. Often told us they had run out
of several items, such as the cheese cake, or strawberry topping for
the ice cream, or that we could not get ice cream with the chocolate cake.
We found that the other waiter was serving these items & we would wait
for an oportune time & just point to the other table & would get the above.
What is the difference between a canoe and a Canadian ???
A canoe tips. I showed myself a true Canadian to this waiter.
Found food very good on the trip.
On the return trip the room had blue carpeting & upholstery,
The back panel on the back part of the sofe was apparently
torn or soiled & was replaced wwith a dirty green panel.
Room attendents were non existant most of the trip.
when I mentioned in my phone call on returning home
about having to go to the dining car for hot water for
my wife, the supervisor was suprised why the car
attendant wasn’t doing this for us.
Other small annoyances such as this. Employees
seemed very disgruntled about Gunn’s firing. A few
of them also gave an equally good report about
President Claytor.
Thanks for the remarks about Tampa, but wouldn’t it be better
at tis point in time to use an Amtrak bus to Lakeland & Tampa.
Not that many miles and spent considerable amount of time
at the wye in Tampa having to get the clearances and okay
from the dispatcher.???
Would we take another Amtrak train/ dsifinitely yes.
Probably next year to get to Port Canaveral area for another
cruise. Even is we have to eat hot dogs, hamburgers
or pizza from a buffet car.
My take on what is being said about Amtrak and Norm Mineta is that we have all been down that road before.
I was a member of NARP back in the late 60’s and early 70’s – let’s say that is a long time ago. Back in the day you had railroads subject to regulation, losing money hand over fist on passenger operations, and a lot of the same drama. Railroads losing money on passengers – not so, the railroads are cooking the books, they are dumping all kinds of costs on passengers ops and claiming to lose money. Fast forward to today – Amtrak has its RPS, but the claim is Amtrak is cooking the books and that LD trains don’t lose anywhere the money claimed. Railroads not wanting to continue passenger service – they were deliberately downgrading service to drive passengers away. Bad experience on Amtrak? That is the fault of Sec. Mineta because he doesn’t have his heart in the right place.
NARP told a narrative that the sorry state of passenger rails was all a conspiracy on the part of the railroad companies – it was claimed that if a railroad would only answer its phones, people would be reserving seats and riding its trains. Well, NARP got what it wanted in the form of Amtrak, but as soon as Amtrak happened, NARP was fuming about how this wasn’t right and that wasn’t right, and that was the last of my NARP membership. Sure, Amtrak was half-a-loaf, and it was a mass discontinuance of trains. But Amtrak did answer its phone and take reservations and refurbish passenger cars and purchase new locomotives and purchase new train sets, so if there was to be some kind of future for passenger trains, Amtrak would be it.
As to demonizing Secretary Mineta, the current Amtrak network is a mass discontinuance of trains compared to what happened back in 1971, and this shrinkage happened under presidents liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, and they weren’t all named George Bush – maybe only some of them.
This argument that a very bad experience for first-c
Again, Amtrak Money Pit and Black Hole is the NEC, it needs 20 to 30 Billion dollars to get it into A Shape again plus 350 New Cars for the NEC for 2007 or 2008. Sale the NEC and leave the rest of amtrak lone.[2c]
Toilets on board Amtrak trains that don’t work or can not be flushed is nothing new. In October of 1989 I rode Amtrak betweeen Lincoln, Nebraska and Fort Morgan, Colorado, and while the car that I was riding in appeared to be fairly new, the toilets in the lower section of the car were not in working order and using them was not a pleasant experience. With Amtrak being continuously underfunded the way it is, I would not expect any major changes in the future when it comes to the daily maintenace of it’s passenger car fleet.