Experiences with Rail Tours and Group Travel on Amtrak

[mycalpal]

Hello All, I am riding the Lakeshore Limited as I write this and the post brought back memories of past trips. I have only encountered a large tour group on the train twice, and it actually was the same group on two different trips. I boarded the Lake Shore at Chicago headed for Boston, staying in the Boston Sleeper. There was a group that had bought out three of the coach cars headed to NYP. The group were very nice people but the problem was the dining car. I arrived early for Breakfast 6:30am, but I had forgotten that the LakeShore started the service at 6:00am. They managed to seat me, but as most of the group wanted to sit down to breakfast, the diner could not serve them and the passengers from the three sleeping cars. They ran out of food very early and some of the sleeping car passengers did not get breakfast. For lunch the crew had us show up early at 11:30am so we could be accomodated. Of course, the group has as much right to sit in the diner, the reality is the train could not seat them all. Has anyone else had an experience like this? Thank you!

 

[PVD]

Obviously, they knew they were coming, and tour groups usually make advance arrangements for food, and they (Amtrak) failed to put enough stock on the train. And now there is even less flexibility because they are using a split car for B/C and cafe so if it happened now you can't even use one end for extra tables.