neroden
Engineer
Went down SYR->NYP on Sun. Dec 21st on #284. Uneventful, pretty crowded.
Went back NYP->SYR on Mon. Dec 22nd on #49.
First, there was the 15-minute wait in the baggage check line. Apparently the baggage check at NYP is understaffed.
They used the usual dumb procedure of funnelling everyone down one escalator. For goodness' sake, they should have at least used two...
Anyway, the train was extremely crowded. There were five coaches out of NYP. The car attendant was assigning seats; the first time I've seen that done. There were maybe 2-3 seats free in each coach out of NYP.
The dining car was a disaster. The server told me that they had been given 70 side salads for 400 passengers, and he was therefore refusing to serve salad to paying customers (hoarding them for sleeper passengers). One of the sleeper passengers gave me half of her salad. The decaffinated tea did not exist. The caesar salad which is supposed to be available as a dinner option did not exist.
I called Customer relations immediately to complain, because it is not acceptable to be missing half the menu at the first seating of the first meal. Apparently whoever is stocking the dining cars for the LSL is trying to make sure they lose money. Customer Relations said that they would get this complaint to the management of whoever was responsible for stocking the dining cars.
Some people at later seatings had delays of 40 minutes before being served.
This was a case where the dining car had enough business to be profitable -- lots of turnover -- but had been shorted on stock. This is completely ridiculous.
At Albany, in addition to attaching the Boston section, two extra locomotives were attached to the rear, being taken to be dropped off as protect engines at Syracuse. I'm not quite sure why, but apparently an eastbound Empire Service train was disabled somewhere west of Rochester and causing all kinds of trouble and that may have had something to do with it.
At Schenectady, the train was so full that a whole bunch of passengers (maybe a dozen) were seated in the cafe car because there were no seats left in either the Boston or the New York sections! They got seats at Utica, where more people got off than on. (I didn't think Amtrak overbooked like that.)
The train was practically on time out of Utica, but lost 20 minutes into Syracuse on jointed track #7. And then it lost *far* more time *at* Syracuse -- detaching the two extra locomotives, unloading 60+ people through two doors (one in the Boston section, one in the NY section), loading 60+ people through two doors, stopping a second time for the sleeper cars and the baggage car...
There's a serious problem with the way Amtrak runs these operations. Putting all the Syracuse passengers in one car superficially seems to make sense, but it actually slows down unloading and loading by funnelling everyone through one door. More doors need to open, and people should be evenly distributed across the cars. This might require *re-hiring coach attendants* rather than skimping by having one attendant for multiple cars, but the current procedure is *delaying the trains*, which is a really bad idea.
Anyway, the company was great, I chatted with a number of nice people. Still wouldn't go to NYC any *other* way.
Went back NYP->SYR on Mon. Dec 22nd on #49.
First, there was the 15-minute wait in the baggage check line. Apparently the baggage check at NYP is understaffed.
They used the usual dumb procedure of funnelling everyone down one escalator. For goodness' sake, they should have at least used two...
Anyway, the train was extremely crowded. There were five coaches out of NYP. The car attendant was assigning seats; the first time I've seen that done. There were maybe 2-3 seats free in each coach out of NYP.
The dining car was a disaster. The server told me that they had been given 70 side salads for 400 passengers, and he was therefore refusing to serve salad to paying customers (hoarding them for sleeper passengers). One of the sleeper passengers gave me half of her salad. The decaffinated tea did not exist. The caesar salad which is supposed to be available as a dinner option did not exist.
I called Customer relations immediately to complain, because it is not acceptable to be missing half the menu at the first seating of the first meal. Apparently whoever is stocking the dining cars for the LSL is trying to make sure they lose money. Customer Relations said that they would get this complaint to the management of whoever was responsible for stocking the dining cars.
Some people at later seatings had delays of 40 minutes before being served.
This was a case where the dining car had enough business to be profitable -- lots of turnover -- but had been shorted on stock. This is completely ridiculous.
At Albany, in addition to attaching the Boston section, two extra locomotives were attached to the rear, being taken to be dropped off as protect engines at Syracuse. I'm not quite sure why, but apparently an eastbound Empire Service train was disabled somewhere west of Rochester and causing all kinds of trouble and that may have had something to do with it.
At Schenectady, the train was so full that a whole bunch of passengers (maybe a dozen) were seated in the cafe car because there were no seats left in either the Boston or the New York sections! They got seats at Utica, where more people got off than on. (I didn't think Amtrak overbooked like that.)
The train was practically on time out of Utica, but lost 20 minutes into Syracuse on jointed track #7. And then it lost *far* more time *at* Syracuse -- detaching the two extra locomotives, unloading 60+ people through two doors (one in the Boston section, one in the NY section), loading 60+ people through two doors, stopping a second time for the sleeper cars and the baggage car...
There's a serious problem with the way Amtrak runs these operations. Putting all the Syracuse passengers in one car superficially seems to make sense, but it actually slows down unloading and loading by funnelling everyone through one door. More doors need to open, and people should be evenly distributed across the cars. This might require *re-hiring coach attendants* rather than skimping by having one attendant for multiple cars, but the current procedure is *delaying the trains*, which is a really bad idea.
Anyway, the company was great, I chatted with a number of nice people. Still wouldn't go to NYC any *other* way.
