Silver Star sleeper update

[greatcats]

I brought my own dinner from a deli in Basel, Switzerland station last year and had it in my sleeper room. It was not as tasty as I thought it might be. I did purchase a small bottle of wine from the measly snack bar on that train, which I believe has since been discontinued from Basel to Copenhagen. As I wrote in a trip report, I was disappointed in the train, although it was otherwise an effective means of transport between those two cities. Maybe the fares on these sleepers on the Silver Star will make it a fairly good deal, but i would certainly bring some of my own food on a trip like that, not relying on the mostly junky food in the Amtrak lounge cars. The most common item I purchase there is the hummus and crackers.

 

[Bob Dylan]

I have never purchased anything in the cafe on an Amtrak LD train, and never will as long as they continue to serve crap @ above 7-11 prices!

The best snack stuff I've encountered on Amtrak trains are in the Bistro Car on the Cascades, on the Downeaster, the Surfliners and on the Maple Leaf once the changeover is done in Niagara Falls,ON to a VIA crew and Canadian products in the cafe! ( including Coke and Canadian Beer and Liquor!)

 

[Bjartmarr]

There aren't really any "convenient" mid-route locations for restocking. Contracts with suppliers and procedures are set up for economies of scale at the terminals. To open up new intermediate ones will add a lot of cost - and delay the train.

Is the cost of getting sandwiches delivered to a station really so high that it outweighs the lost opportunity cost of not having those sandwiches available for sale, which is the case now?

As far as storing food, even non-perishables, in the baggage car, wouldn't that add a whole new level of inspection and cleanliness requirements? After all, since the inside of a baggage car is open to the weather at baggage handling stops, there's no way to keep that stuff from getting covered with dust, at least. And how do you maintain inventory control in an open baggage car? I suppose the new baggage cars could be retrofitted with locked and sealed food storage lockers, but that adds more cost as well.

Indeed, here on the harsh desert world of Arrakis, even the spare beer and napkins must wear stillsuits to reclaim water and keep out the harsh, everpresent dust. At times, even Amtrak's escort of Dothraki warriors in Stormtrooper armor is insufficient to keep the vicious Tusken Raiders at bay, and an entire shipment is lost.

More seriously, is dust really a pervasive problem on the new baggage cars? I have a hard time believing that. If it's really that bad, throw a sheet over the food, which is likely double-wrapped in plastic anyways. As for locking up the food...really? We're talking potato chips and Budweiser here, not heroin and golden ingots. If OBS is prone to steal stuff, they're likely rifling through passengers' luggage, not stuffing their pockets full of plastic forks.

 

[VentureForth]

Out of curiosity, just where are the commissaries located? If they added one in Savannah or Jacksonville, they could restock

Not in Savannah. Palmetto has to be stocked in NYP for the Southbound AND following Northbound trip! No wonder they often run out of food going North!

There aren't really any "convenient" mid-route locations for restocking. Contracts with suppliers and procedures are set up for economies of scale at the terminals. To open up new intermediate ones will add a lot of cost - and delay the train.

Is the cost of getting sandwiches delivered to a station really so high that it outweighs the lost opportunity cost of not having those sandwiches available for sale, which is the case now?

Not only scale costs, but also time to load. Savannah only has a 5 minute dwell. No palette loading, so everything has to be brought up steps (no high platform, either) and hand carried in. I don't think the Cafe Car has a door, so they have to bring it through a coach. Maybe I'm wrong there.

I also still support Waffle House taking over the diner with their full menu AND crew and see if they can't turn a profit.

Unfortunately, such reports aren't the exception for Waffle House.

Not gonna spend a whole lot of time with an anonymous guest. ANY chain can have bad reports. Period. At least you can see them cooking in front of you. I've never got sick at one, and even managed to lose weight having good food there. Besides, it's tongue and cheek as most of the regulars here know that I've made the claim that Waffle House can run a better diner than Amtrak for several years now.

 

[Guest]

Let's go ahead and squash the idea of putting refrigerators in the baggage cars. NOT going to happen. Neither will non-perishables be stored there. Do you really think LSAs will count inventory in two places, be accountable for inventory in two places and schlep it back and forth as needed? Absolutely not. Plus all the time spent in the baggage car is time away from the counter with the line building up. There is quite a bit of storage space in the lounge cars if utilized effectively. Not saying it is always sufficient on heavier days. It's all up to the LSA and how well they sort, arrange and pack the merchandise.

 

[Big Iron]

Again...the issue isn't whether sleepers include meal service as a fixed item . I don't think that "bundle" has ever been that much of a big deal (the benefit of the sleeper space is the private room and/or the ability to lay flat). Rather, the issue is the general availability of food service on the train at an acceptable level. Remember, Amtrak can't seem to wrap their minds around the fact that even with meal service included in the sleeper, 40-50% of diner traffic is generally from the coaches (and that is often actually limited by space availability...if a train is packed, you'll often get sleeper pax turned away from the diner).

What I would like to see Amtrak experiment with would be removing the inclusion of meals but not axing the diner in conjunction with the delivery of the Viewliner II sleepers. A decently-priced sleeper space sans meals ought to be spectacularly popular, which is the issue that Amtrak is (on purpose, rumor has it) confounding with the presence of the dining cars on the trains.

I am all for that. That would also force them to make the offerings in the Diner more attractive and better priced since there would be no captive users of it. At present because they believe that they have a bunch of hapless Sleeper passengers stuck with whatever they will dole out in the Diner, they have little incentive to improve anything. That is the reason that they tend to foolishly ignore the 40-50% and potentially more users from Sleepers

Count me in this camp too. Having ridden slumbercoach on the Broadway and paid for my meals in the diner and ridden the Twilight Shoreliner and got free food in the cafe I would gladly pay for food in the diner.

 

[OlympianHiawatha]

Let's go ahead and squash the idea of putting refrigerators in the baggage cars. NOT going to happen. Neither will non-perishables be stored there. Do you really think LSAs will count inventory in two places, be accountable for inventory in two places and schlep it back and forth as needed? Absolutely not. Plus all the time spent in the baggage car is time away from the counter with the line building up. There is quite a bit of storage space in the lounge cars if utilized effectively. Not saying it is always sufficient on heavier days. It's all up to the LSA and how well they sort, arrange and pack the merchandise.

The OBS crew on a train should be expected to work as a TEAM! If something is running low in the Cafe, the LSA there can make a "shopping list" and hand it to another OBS that is free. That OBS takes the locker keys, walks up to the Bag, fills the list, tallies whatever inventory control system is used and brings the supplies back to the Cafe. Same for the Diner which can be restocked in between meals.

And if OBS thinks that is too much work, they can be reminded there are likely plenty of apps on file from folks who want to work.

 

[NE933]

Droughts in California and Texas, where a lot of crops are, are causing food shortages and thus a surge in price. Add to that fracking waste water being dumped into California's groundwater is killing what does grow there, and now we have a perfect storm of rising food costs on Amtrak, and America, and possibly a small famine in our future.

 

[The Davy Crockett]

IMHO: This 'test' service is just Amtrak trying to put a over the fact they screwed up, as some of the heritage diners are in too dire a shape to last until the new diners come on line.

 

[me_little_me]

Droughts in California and Texas, where a lot of crops are, are causing food shortages and thus a surge in price. Add to that fracking waste water being dumped into California's groundwater is killing what does grow there, and now we have a perfect storm of rising food costs on Amtrak, and America, and possibly a small famine in our future.

You forgot the global warming, troubles in the middle east, Chinese hackers, Ebola virus and the drop in the Euro. Then there is the increase in domestic violence and bad TV shows.

Amtrak will never survive these.

 

[Rail Freak]

Being a relatively Amtrak New Comer, I'm not gonna judge & cross my fingers hoping that it all works out for the best!!!

 

[AlanB]

There has been a lot of talk about lack of capacity for food in the cafe car, but this is not quite the big issue that many think it is IMHO.

First, a big part of the issue isn't capacity to store cold stuff; but rather simply failure to put enough into the cars in the first place. This is the fault of both Amtrak and the commissary with their rather conservative approach to not putting too much food on so that there is little to return and therefore little chance that anything spoils/reaches expiration date before it gets sold.

The Maple Leaf has always been a big problem, it often runs out of food on the return trip to NY from Canada. I always thought that it was a lack of capacity. A lack made worse by the fact that Amtrak must leave 1 fridge and 1 freezer empty at the border going north so that the VIA Rail crew has a place to put their stuff. I was dreading one weekend when my mom & I were returning from Toronto because it was a holiday weekend and I figured that food would run out even earlier than normal for this train. I even advised my mom that we needed to eat both lunch & dinner early to try to maximize our available choices. In the past I'd seen the Leaf cafe run out of pizza by the time it got back to Buffalo, or shortly thereafter.

I was greatly surprised to find out that we still had pizza as a choice by the time we got to Albany. And most other choices for lunch dinner will still available too. On one trip in the past, I had breakfast for dinner, as that was the best choice left that year. But not this trip!

Being we were in BC I started chatting with the attendant when she wasn't busy and learned that the reason we still had food was because she had ordered extra from the commissary knowing that it was a holiday weekend, Labor Day, and she knew that she would sell more food than normal. And she was right! We did run out of many things by the time she closed up approaching NYP; but this smart & excellent employee had played things smart and had many happy customers simply because she took a bit of initiative.

My point in that long story is of course the simple fact that the storage is there! The problem is how much food is being loaded onto the car.

Second, as part of the Diner-Lite conversions, one of the things modified for the Amfleet II cafe cars was to add even more cold storage.

So while I'm sure on a busy train that they still might run out of things, especially if one misjudges what will be the most popular item, I don't think that Amtrak needs to be thinking about putting extra fridges & freezers in baggage cars or sleeper cars, or any place else. I think that the bigger problem with running out of things is simply how the car is being stocked by the commissary and not the cold storage space.

If one attendant can make the food hold out by requesting extra to go from NYP to Niagara (short 1 & 1) and back then there is no reason for the Palmetto to ever run out of food as that run is about the same length. And the Palmetto can restock in DC; the Leaf has no place to restock anymore.

Heck, I've seen crews run out of things on the Auto Train's cafe. Those Superliner cafes have even more storage than the single level cafe cars do. They can store enough to go two nights and three days on runs from Chicago to the west coast. So how can they not store enough food not to run out on the overnight AT?

Again, the problem isn't storage, but rather the way too conservative loading of the cars! And with the loss of the diner on the Star, Amtrak & the commissary need to double down and then some!

 

[StriderGDM]

IMHO: This 'test' service is just Amtrak trying to put a over the fact they screwed up, as some of the heritage diners are in too dire a shape to last until the new diners come on line.

I suspect there's more truth to that than some may think.

Though I think it's more a "don't bother doing another inspection" on several diners.

And I think it gives us an idea of when the new diners will start to show up.

 

[Anderson]

As I think I noted before, I think some of this is down to the bid cycles. If I were in Amtrak's shoes I'd have put off this move until late August/early September...but I think a bid cycle probably comes up on July 1, hence the cut being timed for that. The January end...is probably more down to "traffic in January stinks" than anything, though I would expect the bid cycles to be roughly Jan. 1 and Jul. 1 (or otherwise synced six months apart)

 

[Anderson]

You know, while I'm aware of the Star/Meteor situation...if Amtrak wanted to trial the "no included food service" thing in all seriousness, why didn't they try it on the Cardinal sooner? That's one train where the included meals probably aren't (normally...I got to enjoy the one exception though I was so busy with scenery that I forgot to grab dinner on my way into CVS) worth the cost.

 

[Train2104]

Also note that the full ridership/revenue impact might not be felt in this short trial period - if someone rides it in July and says "never again", that likely won't be seen as a lost customer until this person doesn't show up in next July's ridership count, since vacationers are a good segment of the market.

 

[William W.]

You know, while I'm aware of the Star/Meteor situation...if Amtrak wanted to trial the "no included food service" thing in all seriousness, why didn't they try it on the Cardinal sooner? That's one train where the included meals probably aren't (normally...I got to enjoy the one exception though I was so busy with scenery that I forgot to grab dinner on my way into CVS) worth the cost.

The Cardinal would be the perfect train to try this on, considering that it already doesn't have a real diner.

As mentioned earlier in the thread, the real reason for this "experiment" is likely to be that the heritage diners are in serious need of maintenance. Why not use this as an opportunity to test a different food service approach? If it fails, Amtrak has evidence that Congress is wrong. If it succeeds, they've found a way to dampen dining losses.

One thing I will say though, you won't see me spending money or points on the Silver Star until it gets full services back.

 

[rtabern]

My prediction... this concept will spread to other one night LD trains... the Texas Eagle and City of New Orleans will be next. Think about it... the trains that have the CCC cars will have them go back to being snack cars again... instead of diners. Amtrak saves money on crews... passengers save money... and Amtrak can finally justify the poor decision to make the CCC. Cant you see it coming too?? I see traditional diners staying on two night trains for now... but any LD train with a CCC better watch out.

 

[AlanB]

You know, while I'm aware of the Star/Meteor situation...if Amtrak wanted to trial the "no included food service" thing in all seriousness, why didn't they try it on the Cardinal sooner? That's one train where the included meals probably aren't (normally...I got to enjoy the one exception though I was so busy with scenery that I forgot to grab dinner on my way into CVS) worth the cost.

The Cardinal would be the perfect train to try this on, considering that it already doesn't have a real diner.

Yes, in some sense the Cardinal makes more sense. But in other ways it doesn't.

Using the Star gives you a 7 day a week train to sample, instead of a 3 day a week train. And the Star probably sees more seniors than the Cardinal. Plus the Cardinal hasn't had a real diner in forever; so the impact on ridership/customer satisfaction would be less.

Finally, with the Star to some extent you get an extra control as you can compare things to the Meteor; as well as note the impact on ridership on the Meteor. Does it start selling out a lot more because of this experiment? Or not?

So while the impact would be less for the Cardinal on the public and Amtrak's bottom line, it doesn't test things near as well as using the Star does.

 

[Anderson]

The Texas Eagle seems less likely because of the distances involved, as well as the through cars to/from the Sunset Limited which would make a real mess of things. For example, how do you handle folks in the through sleeper? Do they get meals included...but only west of SAS? Do only they get meals included (and not folks in the "regular" sleepers)?

The CONO would represent its own issues with Iowa Pacific running service on a regular basis there...though if Amtrak really wanted to gamble on an experiment they'd cut the diner on the CONO and do a deal with Iowa Pacific to cross-list IP's sleeper service (with included meal service) while letting them run as close to daily as IP is willing to and let them let people on/off at several intermediate stations (I'm sure you could pick out the larger ones...Carbondale, Memphis, etc. come to mind...which would either not require a double spot or are already long stops as is). Honestly, that would be as close to a perfect experiment as you could manage...but it would also run the risk of a catastrophic backfire (what happens if Iowa Pacific's service is suddenly shoved into being a runaway hit as a side-effect?).

 

[jphjaxfl]

The Texas Eagle seems less likely because of the distances involved, as well as the through cars to/from the Sunset Limited which would make a real mess of things. For example, how do you handle folks in the through sleeper? Do they get meals included...but only west of SAS? Do only they get meals included (and not folks in the "regular" sleepers)?

The CONO would represent its own issues with Iowa Pacific running service on a regular basis there...though if Amtrak really wanted to gamble on an experiment they'd cut the diner on the CONO and do a deal with Iowa Pacific to cross-list IP's sleeper service (with included meal service) while letting them run as close to daily as IP is willing to and let them let people on/off at several intermediate stations (I'm sure you could pick out the larger ones...Carbondale, Memphis, etc. come to mind...which would either not require a double spot or are already long stops as is). Honestly, that would be as close to a perfect experiment as you could manage...but it would also run the risk of a catastrophic backfire (what happens if Iowa Pacific's service is suddenly shoved into being a runaway hit as a side-effect?).

When the City of New Orleans was a single level train back in the 80s and 90s with a 10/6 heritage sleeper and Amfleet coaches, they carried an Amdinette similar to what the Lakeshore Limited had for a while. Sleeping car passengers were served "tray" meals similar to the Portland section of the Empire Builder.

 

[jis]

You know, while I'm aware of the Star/Meteor situation...if Amtrak wanted to trial the "no included food service" thing in all seriousness, why didn't they try it on the Cardinal sooner? That's one train where the included meals probably aren't (normally...I got to enjoy the one exception though I was so busy with scenery that I forgot to grab dinner on my way into CVS) worth the cost.

That is because it does not reduce the number of Diners required in service, and possibly the associated staffing.

There are two drivers for this:

1. (My speculation) A few Heritage Diners are coming up for major mandatory maintenance which would be a waste of money given that their expected life after the overhaul is short. So just taking them out of service save money. But with those gone there is not enough Diners to provide that service on all low level LD trains. So what to do given the delay in the delivery of VLII Diners?

2. Being forced into such, might as well (stated reason) see if the experience with the Cafe service in trains like the Palmetto, which runs almost break even on F&B probably, can be repeated on the Star, and also see if it adversely affects revenue too much, compared to a train that is substantially on the same route with full service Diner.

Neither of these is addressed by doing anything with the Cardinal

 

[PRR 60]

I think the idea is to have this trial on a train that now has full-service dining and compare the revenue and expenses before and after. The Florida route has a unique attribute in that they can have the two levels of service operating side-by-side. They can examine the booking patterns of the two trains and see if there is a shift either to the lower cost option or to the higher service option. The duration of the trial provides a variety of expected passenger loads and types from family vacation to seasonal migration. It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out.

While us old rail travel types think a dining car is essential to the train travel experience, we may be in the minority. The lower cost of sleeper travel may trump that. If so, look for this experiment to continued and expanded.

 

[Guest]

IMHO: This 'test' service is just Amtrak trying to put a over the fact they screwed up, as some of the heritage diners are in too dire a shape to last until the new diners come on line.

I suspect there's more truth to that than some may think.
Though I think it's more a "don't bother doing another inspection" on several diners.

And I think it gives us an idea of when the new diners will start to show up.

If true, then there is hope.

Hope that the Dining Car food service (included or not included in the Sleeper fares), will return when the Viewliner Dining cars arrive.

 

[Guest]

I think the idea is to have this trial on a train that now has full-service dining and compare the revenue and expenses before and after. The Florida route has a unique attribute in that they can have the two levels of service operating side-by-side. They can examine the booking patterns of the two trains and see if there is a shift either to the lower cost option or to the higher service option. The duration of the trial provides a variety of expected passenger loads and types from family vacation to seasonal migration. It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out.

Don't forget there is actually a third Florida train, the Auto Train. And the Auto Train, is actually the complete opposite, with dining car service included for even the Coach passengers.