New Silver Service Menu

[Paulus]

The variety ought to be increased, not decreased.

Sure, you can build a new style cafe car with the appropriate storage, but at that point you've basically reinvented the dining car.

If some things do not sell well while you are facing a problem with other items frequently selling out, then the variety ought to be decreased if the inventory space can be better used and there's no other way of storing more of those better selling items.

Why would we have to build it? If all we need is some more storage, that should be able to be retrofitted into the current cafe car, perhaps at the loss of some lounge space.

"build" in the sense or either a new car or rehab of an existing car. Either way, not workable with the existing cars in their existing layouts.

If you want to take the basic design of a current diner, fire all the staff, save for one or two workers in the food storage/prep area (a.k.a. "kitchen"), and call it an "enhanced cafe", that's fine for medium distance trains.

But the current cars, with their current configuration and staffing are unsuited to providing meals for trips that cross multiple meal periods.

And yet the Palmetto, Surfliner, Carolinian, Pennsylvanian, Adirondack, Acela, Northeast Regionals, Empire Service, and San Joaquins do just fine and dandy despite using a cafe for multiple meal periods and the Coast Daylight is planning on a cafe, not a diner.

 

[Palmland]

The cafe cars would be ok for a daytime trip - if the quality was better. Why is it state services can do better than Amtrak? A Downeaster trip this summer had great selections that tasted better than a regular cafe car fare. Same for the food on Cascade service. Will be on the Palmetto this weekend FLO-RVR and will carry on a Subway selection NB and something from the food stand in the station SB.

 

[neroden]

We took the 97 last Tuesday to Florida and the salad was a handful of iceberg lettuce and one cherry tomato. On yesterday's 98, we had to request a salad but we were shocked when it came out...romaine lettuce, two pieces of onion, two carrots and three tomatoes with croutons in a bowl about twice the size of last week's salad. Substandard in a moderately priced restaurant, but light years ahead of previous Amtrak salad.

I'm very much looking forward to that, myself.

Also, last week they only had cheesecake, yesterday gelato, cheesecake or chocolate mousse.

My fiancee is allergic to dairy. Amtrak used to have sorbet; back then, she ordered dessert, now of course she can't...

 

[neroden]

And yet the Palmetto, Surfliner, Carolinian, Pennsylvanian, Adirondack, Acela, Northeast Regionals, Empire Service, and San Joaquins do just fine and dandy despite using a cafe for multiple meal periods

No, they really don't.

Nearly all of those are used almost exclusively for trips which only run across one meal period. I dug into the station to station ridership before. I believe the Palmetto has the largest two-meal-period ridership among those trains, and it's noticeably anemic, with riders on those runs often preferring the Silver Meteor; most of the traffic is shorter hauls.

And, by the way, I just picked the LSL over a particular Empire Service train because of the two-meal-period issue [which in this case would not have been an issue if the trains had been running on time, but they've often been running hours late], and that particular Empire Service train appears to be running low volume and low ticket prices.

Now, for the sake of argument, I'll take the other side, and show the problems. The Acela food service is probably actually good enough in quality (based on the menu; I haven't tried it) to be a substitute for the dining car. (The Empire Service cafe really, really isn't, and the long-distance cafes are worse.) So, just for the sake of argument, suppose you upgraded all the other cafes to Acela quality. But then you have the problem of volume.

Acelas are SHORT trains. Just stocking the cafe for everyone on the LSL is going to require a second cafe car. So now you have two cafe cars, and to handle the demand without delay, two attendants. At some point -- and yes, this point is probably a pretty long train, running for a pretty long time -- a dining car starts to make a lot more sense.

Can a train as short as the Southwest Chief support a dining car? Probably not, but the problem there is that the train can't get enough passengers to support the train, period.

As the Silver Service, LSL, and Capitol Limited get fuller and fuller and longer and longer -- a trend which should return once the OTP disaster is resolved -- people will start to laugh about the absolute silliness of the idea of running such trains without dining cars.

Of course, there are a lot of ways of running a dining car better than the way Amtrak has been running them. I still don't know why they haven't implemented the PIP recommendations about "point of sale" accounting -- for goodness sake, most restaurants on land already have point-of-sale accounting! Even little non-chain operations!

 

[Ryan]

Quiet, neroden. You're letting facts getting in the way of Paulus' ideology.

The variety ought to be increased, not decreased.

Sure, you can build a new style cafe car with the appropriate storage, but at that point you've basically reinvented the dining car.

If some things do not sell well while you are facing a problem with other items frequently selling out, then the variety ought to be decreased if the inventory space can be better used and there's no other way of storing more of those better selling items.

If some things do not sell well, you get rid of them and replace them with things that still sell well. You still need the variety.

If there's a limited number of choices, you can make do with snacks or skipping the meal if you're only on the train for one meal period. Once you're on the train across multiple meal periods, that isn't an option.

 

[neroden]

Your personal tastes in food (edit: which is my understanding of why a cafe car isn't ok) do not make diners a requirement for coach passengers

Yes, they do. I'm very smart; I know when my tastes are idiosyncratic, and this isn't one of those times.

(as, as always, the Palmetto and lengthy corridor runs prove).

Nope. Those runs have very few end-to-end passengers, and those who are pay low prices.

If the cafe cars tend to run out of stuff, that's an indication for better stocking in some fashion.

As in, making more space to put stock in? Designing, say, a car where half the space is food storage? You've just reinvented the dining car.
Next, there's the problem of lines at the cafe car. This is already causing problems on several of the California routes (as was discussed elsewhere). So, hire more attendants to man the counters...

Then there's the problem of people jostling around trying to carry the food between cars and spilling it due to the car moving, so you hire attendants to bring the food to people....

Then there's the problem of people who want to eat comfortably filling up the lounge, so you want more tables.... now you've reinvented dining car service entirely!

Amtrak's dining cars are certainly *not* operated optimally. I've seen tourist trains which run their dining cars more efficiently than Amtrak does. I am of the opinion that operational improvements could make a big difference; if they could run the dining car more like a restaurant and less like a 19th century formal club, it would probably help. Oddly, some of the problem procedures are actually new to Amtrak and weren't practiced by the 19th century railroads. ?!?

 

[neroden]

I'd like to perseverate on a particular point, which Paulus seems to have trouble with.

Most riders on most trains do not ride end to end.

Therefore, the question regarding what coach passengers will typically demand is not whether the train runs over multiple meal periods, but whether the *target market* is riding over multiple meal periods.

(This has some subtle implications for some of the trains.)

 

[Paulus]

And yet the Palmetto, Surfliner, Carolinian, Pennsylvanian, Adirondack, Acela, Northeast Regionals, Empire Service, and San Joaquins do just fine and dandy despite using a cafe for multiple meal periods

No, they really don't.

Nearly all of those are used almost exclusively for trips which only run across one meal period. I dug into the station to station ridership before; I believe the Palmetto has the largest two-meal-period ridership among those trains, and that's still a bit anemic; most of the traffic is shorter hauls.

That's true of every train with lengthy runs (except I think the Capitol Limited). Tends to have more to do with people preferring to fly that distance due to speed and the general low number of trips for that distance (the shorter the distance, in time, the more frequent the journeys).

And, by the way, I just picked the LSL over a particular Empire Service train because of the two-meal-period issue, and that particular Empire Service train appears to be running low volume and low ticket prices. So, uh, no, just wrong.

I'm aware of what you did (though if I'm not mistaken, doing the LSL means taking a train over only a single meal period, so an Empire Service train in that same time slot would've been quite acceptable). My point was that your personal preference was less than relevant to the question of whether diner service is actually required.

 

[keelhauled]

Nearly all of those are used almost exclusively for trips which only run across one meal period. I dug into the station to station ridership before. I believe the Palmetto has the largest two-meal-period ridership among those trains, and it's noticeably anemic, with riders on those runs often preferring the Silver Meteor; most of the traffic is shorter hauls.

Hmm. According to the PIP in 2010, the Meteor carried 352,286 people. The Palmetto carried 189,468. Overlapping station pairs that Amtrak broke out were Charleston-NYP and Savannah-NYP, The Palmetto carried 7% of its passengers between Charleston and New York, or about 13,263 people. The Meteor carried 2% of its passengers on this pair, or 7,046 people. Between Savannah and New York, the Meteor carried the same 7,046 people, while the Palmetto carried 5,684.

Further, the Meteor report breaks out individual station pairs as low as 1%, or about 3,522 people. To be fair, this low the numbers can be fuzzy. That 3,522 is a hair less than 2% of the Palmetto's ridership. So we can assume any station pair that makes up 2% or more of the Palmetto's ridership represents an even split or more people choosing the Palmetto over the Meteor. As it happens, there are several of these, including Fayetteville and Florence to NYP, as well as Charleston, Fayetteville, Florence and Savannah to Washington. (Also Charleston to Richmond and Richmond to Washington) These trips range from seven to twelve hours (excepting richmond-washington, obviously)

The point I'm trying to make is that on fairly long haul trips (all of them, incidentally, longer than NYP-SYR), the presence or lack of diner does not appear to significantly sway passengers. And also that the statement "riders on those runs often preferring the Silver Meteor" is demonstrably false in most examples (SAV-NYP appears to be the only case in which more people too the Meteor).

 

[neroden]

And also that the statement "riders on those runs often preferring the Silver Meteor" is demonstrably false in most examples (SAV-NYP appears to be the only case in which more people too the Meteor).

SAV-NYP is a three-meal-period run, I guess, and there's a very clear preference there.
I guess the data you found shows that two-meal-period runs have a preference for the Palmetto. *But the Palmetto's schedule is substantially better* for most of these trips -- the Meteor arrives in Fayetteville at 1:34 AM, for example. (And then, of course, there's pricing, which I haven't looked into on this route.)

Other things equal, these trips should show a strong preference for the Palmetto, as they do on other corridors with night stops vs. day stops.

I guess it's true that there are riders who will tolerate anything; and arguably, due to terrible service quality, that's most of Amtrak's ridership these days. (Sigh.)

But if Amtrak wants to attract more riders than that, most would-be coach passengers are not willing to tolerate crossing multiple mealtimes without reliable access to food. But most of them aren't willing to tolerate trains scheduled for 1 AM which routinely get in late, either.

I guess it's all about what you're comparing it too. At the moment, Amtrak compares favorably to Megabus or Greyhound; but in order to expand, Amtrak needs to compare favorably to driving. There are people who pack two meals in their car and eat on the move, but they're *weird*.

The problem of the cafe car running out -- and frankly simply not having enough room to stock more, which is the current situation -- is much more serious than Paulus seems to realize. Is the solution to operate the dining car in a less labor-intensive, "cafe car" fashion? Well, I have nothing against that, it sounds fine to me.

Remember how mad people get when a train is so late that the dining car runs out of food? Imagine trying to deal with that with only a cafe car. It's happened a few times; people get *furious*.

Frustratingly, a vast number of problems could be solved if the trains ran on time; the cafe cars could be restocked consistently at multiple points midroute, for example, or the Indian Railways approach of having fresh food prepared off the train and brought onboard at the station could be used. But we've spent 40 years unable to make the trains run on time. And yes, that's corridor trains as well as "long-distance" trains.

 

[neroden]

I'm aware of what you did (though if I'm not mistaken, doing the LSL means taking a train over only a single meal period, so an Empire Service train in that same time slot would've been quite acceptable).

Absolutely true.
The alternate time slot Empire Service which I could have taken is *supposed* to cover only one meal period, but with the likelihood of 2-hour-plus delays was likely to go over two. Discussed this with my fiancee and she said "don't risk it". :-( Damn CSX...

....this loops back to my oft-repeated statement that the correct way to get rid of the dining cars is to run the trains faster, and reliably on time, so that people no longer want anything like them. There may be no hope for the Transcons; but honestly, with dedicated passenger tracks you shouldn't need to eat more than one meal onboard from New York all the way to Chicago.

 

[Anderson]

On the recent desserts, I quickly gathered (amid rumors of a menu overhaul) that Amtrak was running stocks down in advance of the menu switch.

As to the Meteor situation, there was a certain amount of uselessness in the PIP's numbers since you got a lot of ORL/TPA-South Florida ridership and a lot of NEC-somewhere ridership. It would have been really interesting to see what the numbers look like for "everyone boarding/disembarking north of ALX" or "everyone boarding/disembarking south of TPA".

Neroden: That assumes an overnight schedule. Informally allowing for about a 100 MPH average (i.e. not a bullet train, but perhaps a 125 MPH express on purpose-designed tracks with only a few stops) you're looking at 9-10 hours NYP-CHI. That'll probably involve dinner or breakfast if the run is overnight; if it's a daylight run, I'd assume two meal periods (breakfast/lunch or lunch/dinner).

As to the stocking issue, you could at least manage that with the cafes as-is. Restocking at WAS or ALB is not unheard of, for example. At the moment, however, the only corridor-ish operation that is long enough to justify a midpoint restock off of the NEC would be KCY-STL-CHI (assuming the trains ran through), and that only deals with about two trains per day. Two trains per day do not an intermediate commissary make. Likewise, if we had serious multiple-daily LD trains...let's look at the Silver Service. You could put a restock facility at JAX or SAV without too much trouble, at least in theory. Another possible location, if the trains mostly hit it, would be RGH. Place the facility so it comes not long after the dinner hour for several trains and those train can easily run 6+ hours late without running into a major problem stock-wise, while any later-running trains still have a buffer. The problem is having enough trains hit somewhere that it makes sense to worry about stocking a commissary.

 

[jphjaxfl]

IN pre Amtrak private railroad operations, dining cars were stocked as needed. I remember when traveling from St. Louis to Hot Springs, AR on the Mopac and waking up in Poplar Bluff, MO and seeing the bakery truck delivering supplies to the dining car. We usually had breakfast around Hoxie or Newport.

 

[Anderson]

IN pre Amtrak private railroad operations, dining cars were stocked as needed. I remember when traveling from St. Louis to Hot Springs, AR on the Mopac and waking up in Poplar Bluff, MO and seeing the bakery truck delivering supplies to the dining car. We usually had breakfast around Hoxie or Newport.

True, though didn't most routes have multiple daily trains as well? That seems to be a factor in a lot of this.

 

[neroden]

When the trains are running on time, stocking them at an intermediate point doesn't require much staffing. You tell the bakery to show up with a truck at 7:03 PM daily, the company happily does so.

When the trains could show up at any time, it requires a lot more staffing. No bakery will tolerate waiting around for hours for the train, they have work to do.

There are so many possibilities for service delivery changes which are foreclosed by the inability to run trains reliably (close to) on time. But the only thing which has consistently proven to help with that, on every line during every year, is for a government agency or Amtrak to own the tracks.

Which is why I keep getting back to that: passenger-priority lines controlled by the government. It seems like it's the only way to solve the problems permanently.

This is, of course, what Metrolinx in Toronto decided a few years ago, just before going on a massive buying spree and buying up nearly all the rail routes they run on in the Toronto area (with billions in provincial funding). Some statements I've read indicate that AMT in Montreal may have recently decided to start doing the same thing (though they haven't got the funding yet). Other commuter operators, states, and Amtrak have done this before, of course, but they were mostly buying off of near-bankrupt or bankrupt companies eager to unload; whereas Metrolinx decided that they needed to get everything they could even if it was expensive and CN kind of wanted to keep it.

 

[neroden]

On the recent desserts, I quickly gathered (amid rumors of a menu overhaul) that Amtrak was running stocks down in advance of the menu switch.

Well, I hope they have dairy-free and less-rich desserts back in a few months. We'll see, I guess.

 

[pennyk]

No dairy free desserts on yesterday's 98.