west point wrote:Arlington:
It may be entirely different with more sleepers, or a baggage dorm allowing more sleeper passengers per train set with same number of sleepers, more coach passengers, etc.
Someday Florida trains could have a consist of locos, 1 baggage or bag-dorm, 5 sleepers, lounge, full diner, 7 - 8 coaches. Mainly it require a different set up in diner calling for 45 minute max time at seats, more sittings, additional cooks and wait staff and probably restocking diners en route from new vendors. That might reduce line items food loses,
I'm imagining a future with more sleepers per train too...it just often happens to have no diner at all and so you never have to worry about diner productivity or costs when thinking what the right number of sleepers is to add to a consist. If there's a big sleeper load day or month, run the sleepers on that train (and tweak the "cafe" catering at WAS southbound JAX northound or whatever) That's real operational flexibility.
It would be a very good thing if the Star experiment forced innovations elsewhere to ensure that the kitchens and cooks do a better job of paying for themselves on those trains that merit a diner, such as in-room touch-pad or toll-free ordering (so that tables are only used for eating, not for menu-reading, not for order-taking nor waiting to be served)--your meal itself can be relaxed, but floor plate and kitchen & staff are too expensive to have you sitting and killing time at a table or to have cooks ever idle due to how things are playing out at the tables. There's also delivering food to rooms (and maybe among the V-II tweaks should be touches that making dining in-room more attractive). I'd love to see the Meteor operate with 5 sleepers and one (busy) diner. I'd also like to seethe diner on the Crescent only operate ATL-NYP. IF the savings are $5m/year the yard upgrades in ATL or CLT or wherever would quickly pay for themselves.
You could also offer lower fares on diner trains to passengers willing to accept off-peak meals, or between city pairs that naturally eat at odd times (if you board at 10am, 2pm, or 7pm can I sit you right down to your cheap meal? Or assume you've eaten and offer you a meal at the next 2pm, 7pm, or 10am seating?) If you've been to Disney's EPCOT and not booked your table in advance, they're not shy about asking you to eat your dinner at 3pm. Best Japanese meal I ever had was at 3pm and I was grateful to get a seating then (and as a result of such capacity restraint, Disney's premium restaurants are packed ALL DAY LONG)
As these things get perfected, it will likely still make the most sense to have dining on some trains and not others. It'd be great to get 5 sleepers on the Meteor using 1 diner. It'd also be pretty sweet to have 1 or 8 sleepers on the Star and fill them all and not need to care about diners at all.
