Well yes, because those are the only things offered in the diner. Amazing how that's what they get there. However, I'm willing to bet that there's an awful lot of people who would be willing to use a vending machine for breakfast, especially if they can pop out a decent hot breakfast. It's not like it'd be an expensive experiment for Amtrak to run, could even be free for them on how they contract it, so there's no harm in making the attempt.
OIG: Opportunities to Enhance Decision-Making for LD Equipment
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You're too young to remember the infamous SP Automat Trains! No thanks!!!
Ryan
Court Jester
Perhaps rather than snarky questions and petty bickering about posting styles, you can explain why you think that things would be different this time around?
I've never seen breakfast in a vending machine worth eating. I can't imagine anything that would be.
I've never seen breakfast in a vending machine worth eating. I can't imagine anything that would be.
Because it's been 53 years and food science and vending machine capability has advanced just a wee bit since then? For one thing, the countertop microwave oven wasn't around until 1967 and that opens up rather more capability for vending machines. Tombstone pizza vending machines were acceptable eating as I recall (it's been quite sometime since I last used one), there's no reason that you couldn't engineer breakfast food for reheating that way (and several vendors appear to offer precisely that, not to mention the Burrito Boxes).
Its your right to be happy with eating micro waved crap for breakfast, but IMHO Breakfast is the Best Meal served on LD Trains! As the old saying goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it! It's evident you feel differently.
Well for starters, it is broke. You may have noticed how Congress is less than pleased with how the current F&B service loses money hand over fist? I'll also note that I proposed it as an experimental addition with a special view to seeing whether it had a substantial impact upon coach patronage of the diner, not as a replacement.
Ryan
Court Jester
If Congress told said the sky was blue, I'd go outside just to double check. I wouldn't use them saying F&B is broke as a yardstick for anything.
M
Metra Electric Guest
Guest
Oh yeah, that IS right. But it would make so much more sense for it to be at the slopes! At least you can go to the Frazier Brazier!
Neroden says:
"Those looked like a bad idea anyway. Have I mentioned that the sleeper price from NY-Chicago is typically the same as the sleeper price from Chicago to LA? Despite the running costs being about twice as much from Chicago to LA as from NY-Chicago?"
Average trip length on the western long distance routes are 700 miles, so the Chicago-LA train is normally sold out 2-3 times per trip. It generates more than twice the revenue of the eastern routes despite the fact that few of the customers ride the full length of the line. And it needs more cars to meet the existing demand.
Anyway, east vs west is a losing game. Both sides of the country need more equipment.
"Those looked like a bad idea anyway. Have I mentioned that the sleeper price from NY-Chicago is typically the same as the sleeper price from Chicago to LA? Despite the running costs being about twice as much from Chicago to LA as from NY-Chicago?"
Average trip length on the western long distance routes are 700 miles, so the Chicago-LA train is normally sold out 2-3 times per trip. It generates more than twice the revenue of the eastern routes despite the fact that few of the customers ride the full length of the line. And it needs more cars to meet the existing demand.
Anyway, east vs west is a losing game. Both sides of the country need more equipment.
Let's assume, then, that dining car demand is around 100% of sleeper traffic and about 20% of coach traffic. Based on the few times I've taken coach, this seems to match up well. This is probably an over-estimate by about 10% of actual demand (I've slept through breakfast more than once and I know some folks just aren't hungry at noon after a big breakfast at 9 AM), but it's a good yardstick that could be tweaked on a route-by-route basis (it might, for example, be a bit higher on some of the Western LD trains where you've got at least some passengers who ride for over a day in coach; it might be lower on other trains with a lot of shorter-distance coach traffic).
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The East vs. West issue is an artificial problem in many respects, down to the Superliner/Viewliner issue. It's not really plausible to order 100 Superliners at a go right now (though possibly a batch of 25 or so Superliners would be doable as a piggyback on the multi-state bilevel order since the line is already up and running?); if a NEC coach order was being planned, one or two of the eastern LD trains could be flipped to single-level as a short-term measure. However, this is largely neither here nor there...
I'm going to run at least a second year of sleeper data as well as a year of "full train" data, but as things stand the numbers seem to indicate that the Eastern trains provide the best return on investment for LD equipment. As far as I can tell, adding a sleeper to the Silvers gives you a return in somewhere between 9 months and 12 months. Same with the Cardinal; the Cardinal really ought to have a variability more in line with the LSL or Cap (i.e. +/-25%, not +/-10%) based on location.
Honestly, based on the monthly ridership patterns of the Superliner trains you're looking at getting a good return on new equipment for the SW Chief, the CONO, the Sunset, and the Auto Train. The Auto Train is playing out (the experiments with adding a coach and a sleeper). The others could plausibly play out as well if a batch of equipment could be procured, at least on the sleeper side of things.
Looking at the other trains, Cap looks like decent investments in this regard. It's worth noting that Amtrak has examined adding equipment to the Cap on at least a seasonal basis and been stopped from doing so in no small part by the shortage of equipment out there. IIRC, when Amtrak looked at adding an extra sleeper to the Cap on a seasonal basis, the analysis was that adding one roughly six months out of the year would net about an extra $500k/yr net of any expenses. The Cap also has the Pennsylvanian through car project, which should basically do a lot of what we're talking about.
However, by the same rubric the Coast Starlight and California Zephyr look like lousy investments considering how massively they spike in the summer (the Eagle less than the others)...the issue is the intrusion of lousy results deep into the spring (both trains are towards the bottom of the pile in October, November, and April). On both trains you're basically looking at getting decent use out of added sleepers. The Eagle is a toss-up (and Lord only knows how the through sleeper to the Sunset is actually handled). I'm inclined to reserve judgment on the Builder given the FUBAR that the Hi Line has been, but if I had to assign it right now it would fall into the "dubious investment" category as far as car counts go.
By contrast, the only Viewliner train that has such a ridership dent is the LSL...and the LSL could easily add the extra sleeper in summer but kick the extra cars to the Silvers in winter.
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The East vs. West issue is an artificial problem in many respects, down to the Superliner/Viewliner issue. It's not really plausible to order 100 Superliners at a go right now (though possibly a batch of 25 or so Superliners would be doable as a piggyback on the multi-state bilevel order since the line is already up and running?); if a NEC coach order was being planned, one or two of the eastern LD trains could be flipped to single-level as a short-term measure. However, this is largely neither here nor there...
I'm going to run at least a second year of sleeper data as well as a year of "full train" data, but as things stand the numbers seem to indicate that the Eastern trains provide the best return on investment for LD equipment. As far as I can tell, adding a sleeper to the Silvers gives you a return in somewhere between 9 months and 12 months. Same with the Cardinal; the Cardinal really ought to have a variability more in line with the LSL or Cap (i.e. +/-25%, not +/-10%) based on location.
Honestly, based on the monthly ridership patterns of the Superliner trains you're looking at getting a good return on new equipment for the SW Chief, the CONO, the Sunset, and the Auto Train. The Auto Train is playing out (the experiments with adding a coach and a sleeper). The others could plausibly play out as well if a batch of equipment could be procured, at least on the sleeper side of things.
Looking at the other trains, Cap looks like decent investments in this regard. It's worth noting that Amtrak has examined adding equipment to the Cap on at least a seasonal basis and been stopped from doing so in no small part by the shortage of equipment out there. IIRC, when Amtrak looked at adding an extra sleeper to the Cap on a seasonal basis, the analysis was that adding one roughly six months out of the year would net about an extra $500k/yr net of any expenses. The Cap also has the Pennsylvanian through car project, which should basically do a lot of what we're talking about.
However, by the same rubric the Coast Starlight and California Zephyr look like lousy investments considering how massively they spike in the summer (the Eagle less than the others)...the issue is the intrusion of lousy results deep into the spring (both trains are towards the bottom of the pile in October, November, and April). On both trains you're basically looking at getting decent use out of added sleepers. The Eagle is a toss-up (and Lord only knows how the through sleeper to the Sunset is actually handled). I'm inclined to reserve judgment on the Builder given the FUBAR that the Hi Line has been, but if I had to assign it right now it would fall into the "dubious investment" category as far as car counts go.
By contrast, the only Viewliner train that has such a ridership dent is the LSL...and the LSL could easily add the extra sleeper in summer but kick the extra cars to the Silvers in winter.
neroden
Engineer
Anecdotal information from travelling in June and in February on the LSL. The drop from summer to winter is quite severe, *but it's mostly in coach*. The sleeper occupancy goes from full to mostly-full and fares stay relatively high. The coaches go from nearly-full to less-than-half-full.
I'm not sure how true this is on other trains like the CZ, I can only speak for the LSL. Anyway, it's pretty easy to adjust the number of coaches on the train in the winter and send the extras to other duties.
I'm not sure how true this is on other trains like the CZ, I can only speak for the LSL. Anyway, it's pretty easy to adjust the number of coaches on the train in the winter and send the extras to other duties.
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I can't speak to anecdotes; I'm only going by what I got for CY13 off of the MPRs. It is possible that you have some different behavior involved (i.e. less TOL-CHI/CLE-CHI passengers and more through ones, ergo less turnover; dropoffs during the week but not weekends; more single passengers traveling), but I do not have the data to analyze that deep into things.
seat38a
Engineer
Oh I think we had this discussion earlier in the year regarding the Sunset Limited totally gutted before Amtrak took over. http://discuss.amtraktrains.com/index.php?/topic/61493-sunset-limited-pre-amtrak-with-automat-lunch-counter/
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WoodyinNYC
Conductor
I'm so out of my depth here LOL, but my dumb question:
How much different will the LD versions of the Midwest
bi-levels coaches actually be?
What more is involved in building them than fewer seats
with less cramped spacing for the riders?
And I'd expect that sleepers would be quite a bit different
than coaches. But maybe not. Call RailPlan and see what
modules they can fit into the same shell as a coach or what?
In the Fleet Plans, Amtrak emphasized the economies of
scale from replacing the whole batch of Amfleets at once,
600 or so iirc, and the whole batch of Superliners, 500 or so,
at about 100 cars per year. Large orders would amortize over
a broader base the heavy start-up costs of a new assembly
plant, training hundreds of new workers, etc.
Now if the order for 175 (plus options) Midwest bi-levels has
basically covered the start-up costs for Superliner replacements,
that changes the outlook entirely. And if All Aboard Florida
(or the Viewliner iis) has eaten the start-up costs on a single-
level assembly line ...
I had expected Congress in its wisdom to do what's possible to
sabotage Amtrak's efforts to buy hundreds of cars at bargain
prices. But maybe there's been an end run around the haters.
Amtrak can get bids from Nippon Sharyo (with the open bi-level
assembly lines) and from Siemens (with the All Aboard Florida order)
and/or from CAF (with the Viewliner lines open) and from anybody
else who wants to bid. Then buy smaller batches and get more
coaches into the fleet without paying boutique prices.
With respect to coaches, I don't think an LD coach order would be so different from a corridor coach order as to cause problems. You might need bigger tanks on the toilets and/or an extra restroom, but that's about it in terms of requirements. The issue is in sleepers and "amenity space" (i.e. cafe seating areas, the SSLs, diners, etc.), and those cars are different.
To be fair, one could probably convert a coach into a cafe with a major remodeling (I oversimplify, of course, but only marginally...converting, for example, the downstairs seating area into a cafe space could probably at least be done on paper). A diner is a more complex issue (kitchen space and all). Sleepers are really the issue at the moment, because I think the interiors are just different enough from all the others to be a bit of an issue on this front. You'd also want the Superliner door position instead of the corridor doors (though I suspect that's a minor detail that could be worked around).
To be fair, one could probably convert a coach into a cafe with a major remodeling (I oversimplify, of course, but only marginally...converting, for example, the downstairs seating area into a cafe space could probably at least be done on paper). A diner is a more complex issue (kitchen space and all). Sleepers are really the issue at the moment, because I think the interiors are just different enough from all the others to be a bit of an issue on this front. You'd also want the Superliner door position instead of the corridor doors (though I suspect that's a minor detail that could be worked around).
neroden
Engineer
A "long-distance" coach is pretty much the same as a corridor coach. If I'm not mistaken, the bilevel order *specified* that the seats and the overhead lighting controls would be on tracks (so that seat pitch could be easily adjusted). One would hope that AAF would have the same sort of specs, though there's no way to know.
The bilevel order *includes cafes*, so the problem of cafe configuration is arguably solved.
The door issue is a small issue; it might just be solved by deleting one of the two doors on each side (easier than relocating the doors to the center, which could run into structural problems).
Sleepers: Some significant modifications would certainly be necessary. Amtrak probably wants a removable-module design like the Viewliner rather than a "built-in" design like the Superliner; as a result, it would probably be necessary to provide hatches to insert the modules. This could necessitate some complex design work. But you don't need to move the doors or the stairways or mess with the structure -- unless the windows are poorly located to line up with the room modules, I suppose. That could be a structural issue.
Dining cars would require large changes (the kitchen and everything associated with the kitchen equipment, and there's a lot of that). And sightseer lounges, obviously, those overhead windows are a pretty major design change; if they're easily accomodated in the structural design, that's one thing, but if they aren't, major problem.
The bilevel order *includes cafes*, so the problem of cafe configuration is arguably solved.
The door issue is a small issue; it might just be solved by deleting one of the two doors on each side (easier than relocating the doors to the center, which could run into structural problems).
Sleepers: Some significant modifications would certainly be necessary. Amtrak probably wants a removable-module design like the Viewliner rather than a "built-in" design like the Superliner; as a result, it would probably be necessary to provide hatches to insert the modules. This could necessitate some complex design work. But you don't need to move the doors or the stairways or mess with the structure -- unless the windows are poorly located to line up with the room modules, I suppose. That could be a structural issue.
Dining cars would require large changes (the kitchen and everything associated with the kitchen equipment, and there's a lot of that). And sightseer lounges, obviously, those overhead windows are a pretty major design change; if they're easily accomodated in the structural design, that's one thing, but if they aren't, major problem.
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Ziv
Conductor
I have enjoyed an Amy's breakfast wrap, they are actually kind of tasty even though they are nuked. I buy two or three at a time and they tend to supply a breakfast a week when I only have 5 minutes to eat before I leave for work. I would still rather have an omelet in the diner, but it would be a palatable option for a cheaper meal.
What's wrong with just using the corridor café cars that are currently being ordered?
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