Amtrak Diner and Food Service Discussion

I've written to Amtrak to register my opinion on the diner cutbacks -- for me, having freshly-cooked meals in the dining car and chatting with fellow passengers is an distinctive part of the train travel experience, and the cutback of this service takes away one of the most charming and enjoyable experiences Amtrak has to offer.

I really do hope this is temporary.

I'd encourage all of you to write to Amtrak and express your opinions.

Mr. DCIPJR, Mr. Anderson has added a new word to the vocabulary of many around here including myself - experiential.

Immediately, you address the experience of the full service Dining Car. Whoever the "showrunner" at Amtrak is at present, he has determined the experience is to be that of moving passengers efficiently between "Eh and Bee".

The experiences of the Diner and Pacific Parlour are to be relegated to the history books. Sorry about the cold shower, but this appears to be the cold facts.

I think Anderson has misinterpreted the body of Amtrak’s LD ridership. Cafe fare is fine on the Corridor for business and casual travelers alike. It is inadequate for the “fast” overnights between WAS-CHI, WAS-ATL, and NYP-CHI, where Diner Lite is really the minimum for a progressively older and more experience-focused clientele. (Could he responsibly not serve hot food to travelers on the 20 hr flight from MSP to Tokyo??) Out west, both a full diner and a cafe are necessary, until Amtrak can figure out how to do justice to both sit-down and take-and-go customers in the same car.

I think I figured out how to turn this fiasco into lemonade. It's the new AMTRAK DIET! You've all seen the plethora of diet program ads on the TV. Now we have the Amtrak Diet. Board on the east coast and pick your loop - e.g., west on the California Zephyr . . . back on the Southwest Chief. You only eat the new fresh contemporary meals and you are guaranteed to lose 10 pounds in one week. See America and lose weight at the same time! It's brilliant.

The word is "experiential" --not experiental, BTW--has been around a long time, as in the phrase "experiential learning". An interesting term to apply to long-distance travel, as Mr. Anderson has done.

Do any overnight trains in the UK or continental Europe have full dining cars with chefs making food onboard?

If not, then Amtrak is running against the tides of economics and history.

Best compare with Eurasian LD trains in the Russian system, since there’s nowhere else that runs trains comparable to Canada or the US. Few services even offer sleepers anymore.

Australia too, though it has been pointed out to me that my wish list train journey on the Indian Pacific is a once a week departure.

Not interested in looking to Putinland for anything.

If nobody else is running sleeping cars paired with full dining cars, maybe they’re onto something?

I’d be happy with a first class meal from American Airlines, preplated but hot.

SouthernRailway wrote:Not interested in looking to Putinland for anything.

Trains as an interrogation tool?

SouthernRailway wrote:I’d be happy with a first class meal from American Airlines, preplated but hot.

Quite. It’s the “but hot” part at issue.

In addition to my prior comments about the types of travelers on LD trains vs domestic flights, the model is all different too. Everyone on a plane is going from Point A to B, so you can plan reliably the amount of food and beverage you need (even if it is literal peanuts - but those aren’t even that popular anymore re: nut allergies.) Can’t do that on a train where you might be traveling POU-SYR or POU-SOB and still expect at least one meal of some sort, so to some extent you will always need a rolling commissary. Doesn’t need to be prepped fresh, you’ll go bankrupt in expired steaks, but it does need to be somewhat shelf-stable.

Online ordering and enroute meal pickup sounds more and more appealing, with limited backup food on board in case of delay.

Surely it isn't too much to have a supply of frozen meals and microwave or convection ovens to cook them. Doesn't seem to require a highly paid chef to do the cooking either. Now maybe ancient RR rules require overstaffing of food service operations, but perhaps that could be dealt with; not all rules are carved in stone and not all labor/management negotiations have to be fruitless. Save the fruit for desert.

Have the on-board food staff been reduced? I.e. did they lay people off & now have to recall them?

BandA wrote:Have the on-board food staff been reduced? I.e. did they lay people off & now have to recall them?

No, and no. At least not yet.

SouthernRailway wrote:Do any overnight trains in the UK or continental Europe have full dining cars with chefs making food onboard?

If not, then Amtrak is running against the tides of economics and history.

We're 'Murica, dammit, we don't care what frog loving cheese eating surrender monkeys do with their trains.

Pass the freedom fries, tell me how far we have to go in MILES, not Kilometers, and don't try to sell me on socialism!

So far as I know, countries that no longer have this sort of train have replaced them with something! You can still take a train between those places.