Leaving NYP the LSL only serves dinner and breakfast. The Crescent serves five meals one way and four the other. The Star and the meteor also serve more meals than the LSL. Perhaps it was a bean counters choice to utilize the heritage diners to he max.
To be fair, the same question could have been posited should the dining car have been removed from one of the other trains.
That reasoning actually seems to make sense. It stinks for th LSL, but it makes sense.
A Diner-lite car. Basically, looks like a Amfleet lounge car.
What made up for "lack of choice" was the crew and mostly a guy named Alex. That guy hustled, had a great sense of humor and made the downside of no choices and upside with his attitude!
Yup. What I fond totally unacceptable is that the food is often sitting on the counter with passengers walking right by. Passengers should never be allowed to be that close to the food preperation area.like this?
Might be something you could pass on to the Food and Drug Administration. They almost shut down Amtrak after finding rats in the lounge cars and sleepers quite a few years ago. (Back when each sleeper pax was given a snack pack~ apparently the rats were fond of them too!) I believe Amtrak had to sign an agreement to clean things up~ in a hurry.Yup. What I fond totally unacceptable is that the food is often sitting on the counter with passengers walking right by. Passengers should never be allowed to be that close to the food preperation area.like this?
We're getting a dinner and a breakfast in there, I'll put up with the experience for the views on the Hudson.
That's my attitude for the whole x-country trip,
I looks like an Amfleet lounge car because that's what it was, an Amfleet II lounge car. They changed a few things around, added an extra refrigerator/freezer, put in a steam table, and called it a Diner-Lite car.
Another data point for the same thing: the LSL 48 was out of half the entrees (2 of 4, or 3 of 5, I forget which; plus no appetizers, despite their being on the menu) for my mid-June trip. They did have both flavors of ice cream, thank goodness!
Because the scrambled eggs are pre-made and reheated. There is no grill, so they can not make an omelet!
I guess you should have been able to ask for a "poor man's" omelet (no fillings). :lol:
I think I can improve upon this answer:
The last time I was on a Silver, they had to substitute a different than normal dining car.
The only other single level "dining" car that Amtrak has is the Diner-Lite, so that is definately what you experienced, and has far less tables than a normal Heritage diner. And yes, that is exactly what has been steadily occuring for the past couple of years. As Heritage cars become too expensive to maintain and too unreliable to place on a revenue run, Amtrak simply retires them. This caused a huge deficit in the diner fleet, which prompted the refurbishment of Amfleet II lounge cars into "Diner-Lite" so that single level LD trains could still guarantee having a diner in the consist. To make it easier and predictable, the LSL permanently stripped of Heritage diners and replaced with the new cars. The Cardinal was also given a new lounge as an "upgrade" from its typical cafe car. There are two possible scenerios for your experience. 1: The Heritage diner was bad ordered and the diner-lite car was simply taken off from the LSL to fill in for it, or 2: The LSL consist from the previous day was used as that day's Silver Star/Meteor as a result of accident or hastiness.
Sorry Rich, but what you were told is bunk! I rode the LSL on the 5th of July, and they were out of most things and that included the vanilla ice cream. And when I rode it last October. they were out of things too.
Actually when Amtrak first introduced SDS they had pre-plated omlettes on the menu until the chef's protested and convinced Amtrak that they could still make omlettes without impacting overall service. And they manage to serve them on Acela in the past too without a grill. Not sure if any of the current Acela menus carry an omlette on them.
Needless to say, he was tipped very well for his extra effort.We were disapointed in our "choices" on the EB LSL. The menu's handed to us had duct tape crossing out most of the menu items. We could have chicken and we could have chicken and dessert was vanilla ice cream and....vanilla ice cream!
