Jamie's trip report PART 3

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amtrakmichigan

Lead Service Attendant
Joined
Oct 5, 2003
Messages
444
Location
Plymouth,Mi
11/18/03 Washington DC to Kississmee,FL

Train #97 "Silver Meteor" 2 Viewliner Std. sleepers. #5 & 6

TRAIN CONSIST

(front of train)

1) #24 Genesis locomotive

2) #1750 Baggage

3) #2513 Herritage Dorm/Sleeper

4) #62035 Viewliner Sleeper ("Shoreview")

5) #62038 Viewliner Sleeper ("Springview") <OUR CAR

6) #8510 Diner

7) #28005 Amfleet Lounge / smoking

8) #25099 Amfleet II Coach

9) #25029 same

10)#25010 same

11)#25012 same (empty/closed off)

We departed WAS on time this night, which is 10:59pm for the Meteor. At this time I was getting pretty tired. Danielle was getting tired too, Kim put her PJ's on and she was off to bed in about 15 minutes. Kim and I enjoyed a mixed drink or 2 before bed time and walked down to the smoking lounge for a few minutes. This was the first time I have been in one of these "smoking lounges". It looks like it would be pretty cost effective to convert more of the lounges to smoking cars. Basically 2 walls, a std. sliding door thats used at each end of a passenger car and a simple venting system.

At times I wondered where Jerry Springer finds his "guests" for his shows. I always thought that they were low budget actors that he would recruit to play out a story line. Well I shot that idea out the window. I now have a strong feeling he recruits them from the smoking areas of Amtrak trains! There is some, lets just say "intresting" people hanging out in these smoking rooms, if you catch my drift.

After keeping to myself and pretending I wasn't listening to these people I left and went back to my sleeper. Will Watson our attendent who worked for the railroad for 31 years (started with the SCL RR) had our beds ready to go when we boarded in WAS. Me and Will talked about Amtrak for a little while, basically about the subject of inconsistencies on different Amtrak routes. Will agreed with me 100% about how Amtrak needs to sort out through there policies and enforce ALL rules on ALL trains. Will showed me a Special bedroom, since I never seen one before on a Viewliner, then showed me a DLX room after Jacksonville when someone got off. After chating for about 15 minutes I climbed in the bed, read the paper for a short time and fell asleep. I woke up at about 7am with a USA TODAY paper under my door (Thanks WILL !)

Before I go any further, I need to explain that this was my first ride in a Viewliner car. I was VERY impressed with the good engineering that went in to the making of these cars. The lighting system by itself was very neat, and offered more then enough lighting when all of them were on. I liked the single control panel next to the chair for controling everything in the room. The toilet and sink was designed so well that when put away, you would never know that they were there. The toilet makes an excellent stand for bags too. The "tapered" bed toward the foot of the bed was a very good but simple idea. it gives you plenty of leg room to excess the top bunk without sticking your rear end in the asle. because we had 2 rooms for the 3 of us, I put all of our bags on my top bunk, while Kim and Danielle slept in the other room. This is one of the reasons why we like the 2 room idea, even more then a DLX room. In my opinion a Deluxe room is more crampted because a lot of space is used for the toilet/shower room.

Amtrak should look into the idea of taking say rooms D and E of a superliner and taking out the toilet and showers and adding another full size sofa/bed, to sleep at least 4 adults. Amtrak could probably sell these rooms for double the going rate of a normal DLX room. Then have the passenger use the "comunity" toiliet and showers in the car. The only thing I didn't care for in the Viewliner STD room compared to the Superliner STD room was there is no curtain to close in a Viewliner. If you want a little privacy, you have to shut the whole doorand drop the shade. I don't really ever close the door to my room except for sleeping, but do like to close the curtain during the day at times. I found closing the door will make the room stuffy at times. The ride of the Viewliner car was very quiet and smooth. Infact it was pretty close as far as ride quality to a superliner car on the upstairs without the sway. There was more road noise of corse then a Superliner, but still thought it was exceptional for a single level car.

Anyway, (I will stop playing Amtrak Fleet Manager now) after getting up, I went to take a shower. Will said everything was in there that I needed since I was the first to use it for the day. I found the Viewliner shower to be very nice! It kind of gave me a feeling that I was in a nice hotel or something, with the shower door and soft lighting.

We then headed off to the Diner for breakfast. All 3 of us had the quiche which was excellent ! Now if you read PART 2 of my trip report (and if you didn't ...shame on you) I asked you to notice that I ordered 2 sides of meat. 1 bacon and 1 sausage with no problem. I did the same thing this morning and was REFUSED ! "I am sorry, but your only allowed 1 side per order unless you want to pay for the second". HUH ??? This was a new one to me! I never was refused to sides of meat for breakfast. So is this Amtrak's little rule, or a LSA rule on this train ?? The waitress was nice though, kind of gave the attitude of "I am just following my orders from my boss". I told her I sure wasn't going to pay for it. I also told her in a kidding way that I was in a room by myself, and up to 2 people are allowed to have a meal free of charge at no additional cost, so I want to order it for my absent roommate. Well she kind of got a kick out of that response and said that I could take it up with the LSA if I wanted to. I wasn't in the mood to get into an arguement with a LSA about 3 pieces of bacon, but it was the whole point of spending a total of almost $300 for 2 rooms, and being told you can't have the bacon too! I didn't catch our servers name, but like I said she was nice and performed her job very well.

SERVICE: A-

FOOD: A

and while I am grading.........

WILL'S SERVICE: A

We went back to our sleeper and Will had our beds all made up. I listened to the scanner for a while, at this point we were traveling through Georgia where it was raining on and off. The engineer reported the engine was constantly slipping on the wet rails south of Savanah. Between WAS and JAX the latest our train was running was 14 minutes late and that was at Savanah.

Right after we departed Jacksonville, we hit the diner again for lunch. I ordered the burger with swiss, Kim had the Ham and cheese and Danielle had the Mac and Cheese. The burger was out of this world! The only thing I miss in the diner with lunch is a good bowl of soup to go with it. Amtrak took soup off the menu with there new menus. Kim's ham and cheese was HUGE! I ended up eating part of it :rolleyes: . and Danielle rated her Mac and cheese as "Yummy" :p . As we ate our lunch we passed a huge track repair gang that must have lasted almost a mile just south of the Jacksonville station. I dont think I have ever seen such a big gang of track workers working on such a long section of track. This delayed our train about 20 minutes. We had the same server for lunch as we had for breakfast.

LUNCH SERVICE: B+

FOOD: A+

There isn't really anything else to write about for this portion of the trip. We arrived in Kississimee right on time to the minute. We got off the train, and found we had a small walk across a railroad crossing to get back to the station area. The Kississmee Agent came out and gave us a hand with his cart to get our 7 bags back to the station. As we got up to the station, our train already left. The crossing gates remained down for sometime after the train departed with no trains approaching. Just at the time I was going to say something to the agent about this, he pulled out a remote control transmitter (looked just like a garage door opener transmitter) pressed the button aiming toward the crossing, and the gates went up. HOW COOL! I told him with a smile "I saw that" he in return smiled back and said "don't tell anybody" B). My father retired from CSX in the late 80's and I would often visit him at work while I was growing up. Prior to Amtrak , he was the ticket agent for the C&O railroad here where I live in Plymouth,MI. There is 2 streets that cross the tracks at each side of the depot (where he worked and continued to work after C&O discontinued passenger operations) he still had his key for the crossing gate control box even some 10 years after he needed one. I remember bugging him sometimes to let me put the gates down when I was a kid. So he would go out there unlock the box and let me pushbutton the gates down ! Yes how cool it was to stop half the traffic in the town by putting the crossing gates down when your 10 years old. :ph34r: I had to mention that, because it brought back many memories of a child when the Agent at the Kississmee station had his little transmitter to put the gates up and down if he wished. And if your wondering why he had one of these cool devices, it's because he had to drive his baggage cart back from the baggage car to the station a lot of times after the train pulled out. So instead of having to wait for all of the traffic to clear after the train left, the railroad wired it up so he could have control over them to make his life easier.

DISNEY WORLD

Well I'm not going to get involved with this topic except for this. It was very nice, but also very expensive. My parents met us downthere with there motorhome and camped at Disney's Fort wilderness campground. We brown bagged our lunches except for 1 day and ate all of our breakfast and dinners at the campsite excapt for 1 day. $4.00 a hot dog and $2.50 for a bag of chips is enough to send somebody into bankruptcy, especially after being there for 5 days in the parks. I enjoyed mom's homecooking especially after being married and on my own for almost 9 years, it was a treat! Not that Kim is a bad cook, It was just real nice to eat mom's cooking for 6 days straight.

I will continue Part 4 in a few days. Up to this point everything has almost been perfect on the train (except for "Mike" in part 2 and the 1 side order rule on this train) Things start to get more intresting in part 4, stay tuned !

Jamie
 
Jamie,

First, thanks for the continued series of reports. :)

Secondly, you must have gotten one of the original, unmodified Viewliners. The originals had the window shades for both the door and the corridor window. However since those shades are very expensive to fix when they break, Amtrak is replacing those shades with the typical curtains that one finds in a Superliner sleeper.

My best guess is that about half the Viewliners now have the curtains. Sadly they are also replacing the coffee pots where coffee is actually brewed, with the new fangled hot chocolate styled coffee makers.

Personally, I prefer the original Viewliner style. I like the shades better, as they make the room darker at night, than the curtain does. Additionally I don't care for the oily coffee that the new machines provide. I'll actually walk to the other Viewliner for my coffee, if that car still has the original coffee pot.

I also like the original Viewliner door lock, as the door will stay closed even if it's not locked. The converted cars have the Superliner style lock, which won't stay closed unless they are locked.

Just my two cents. :)
 
AlanB said:
My best guess is that about half the Viewliners now have the curtains. Sadly they are also replacing the coffee pots where coffee is actually brewed, with the new fangled hot chocolate styled coffee makers.
Personally, I prefer the original Viewliner style. I like the shades better, as they make the room darker at night, than the curtain does. Additionally I don't care for the oily coffee that the new machines provide. I'll actually walk to the other Viewliner for my coffee, if that car still has the original coffee pot.
If I remember correctly, the new coffee maker is quite large and takes up a lot of space, with little room for other drinks.
 
Yeah, the new coffee maker is larger than the old one. So it does take up more space in what is a rather cramped area. However in my experience most attendants put all the drinks into the sink anyhow. Otherwise they would just land on the floor.
 
I like the window shades and the locks on the older style Viewliners better also. I especially like the shades better because it gives more privacy in the day as well as at night, the curtains flop around too much. Guess that new coffee thing is taking up too much room, also since there are not as many "other goodies" as there used to be.

Between the "goodies" in the Acela Lounge or Metropolitan Lounge, plus those in the sleepers, one really had it made. Meals included, man, that is living!! Maybe there is an unsold room on The Crescent out of here tonight!!!!!

Amtrakmichigan, glad you are getting into the spirit of how much fun a train is overall.
 
Bill Haithcoat said:
I like the window shades and the locks on the older style Viewliners better also. I especially like the shades better because it gives more privacy in the day as well as at night, the curtains flop around too much. Guess that new coffee thing is taking up too much room, also since there are not as many "other goodies" as there used to be.
Between the "goodies" in the Acela Lounge or Metropolitan Lounge, plus those in the sleepers, one really had it made. Meals included, man, that is living!! Maybe there is an unsold room on The Crescent out of here tonight!!!!!

Amtrakmichigan, glad you are getting into the spirit of how much fun a train is overall.
I agree with Bill, I don't like the "refurbished" Viewliners, I prefer the white shades, since the Purple curtains do a bad job at keeping light out. The originail locks could be opened outside (and thus locked from the outside), the other ones can only be opened/closed from the inside.

Jamie, thanks for your trip report, I enjoyed reading it.

:)
 
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