The Room/Diner Model

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Joined
Jul 23, 2014
Messages
976
Location
Arlington, MA (near Boston)
My son Eric and I are on the Lake Shore Limited, on a four night cross country trip from Boston to Portland Oregon, bedrooms all the way. I've taken the California Zephyr many times, so we thought we'd try the Empire Builder, which I last took about 30 years ago. But Amtrak took the EB Portland leg out of service, and rather than end our trip with an eight hour bus ride, we changed to the CZ and then the Coast Starlight north to Portland. Nothing wrong with a CZ/CS run.

We are doing this now, because I think the handwriting is on the wall for long distance bedroom and diner train travel. I was riding in bedrooms and eating in the diner since before I can remember. My family had a room on the original CZ, back in the Zephyrette days.

Amtrak has kept the room/diner model going for 48 years, far longer than anyone could have imagined back in 1971. We went through some hard times, I remember some pretty horrible airline style tray meals back in the Reagan era. When that happened, I ordered a pizza delivered at Ogden. Try that without a cellphone or internet. But while we may complain about the menu or the occasional rude attendant, generally as the song goes, nothing could be finer.

We've been through the “death of Amtrak” so many times, I've screened it out. Every financially conservative administration has tried to kill it, and the political expediency of being in almost every continental state has kept it going.

But now NARP/RPA has gone strangely quiet about the long term prospects. I thought they'd raise a fuss about the “Contemporary Dining” but they've just quietly documented the changes, and mumbled about trying to improve the product. Does anyone doubt that CD or even cafe car service will be the norm nationwide within two years?

Do we really need bedrooms? Of course we do. We love them, and there's nothing like it. But as much as I'd like to think that there's a demographic that really needs them, in reality I bet that a large percentage are occupied by people like myself, riding them just because it is fun and because we can.

I hope I'm wrong. I pray I'm wrong. But perhaps it is finally time to move on, and make the 21st century Amtrak the best passenger service it can be.

You don't need to convince me that it would be great to keep the room/diner model. But is it time to let it go, and start preparing for the future?
 
But is it time to let it go, and start preparing for the future?
Whatever the future may bring it's likely to follow the rest of the Western hemisphere. Which is to say, buses for people of limited means/abilities with personal vehicles and commercial aircraft for everyone else. A few states will continue to maintain their own passenger rail networks, and the NEC is virtually guaranteed to remain largely intact, but history shows us that no new national network will be built on the ashes of Amtrak once it's gone.
 
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trains are really in this weird middle ground where you’ve got greyhound passengers on one side, and first class air passengers on the other. (This is true for VIA rail as well in my experience).

Creating a model that caters to both of those types of passengers has got to be tricky.
 
My son Eric and I are on the Lake Shore Limited, on a four night cross country trip from Boston to Portland Oregon, bedrooms all the way. I've taken the California Zephyr many times, so we thought we'd try the Empire Builder, which I last took about 30 years ago. But Amtrak took the EB Portland leg out of service, and rather than end our trip with an eight hour bus ride, we changed to the CZ and then the Coast Starlight north to Portland. Nothing wrong with a CZ/CS run.

We are doing this now, because I think the handwriting is on the wall for long distance bedroom and diner train travel. I was riding in bedrooms and eating in the diner since before I can remember. My family had a room on the original CZ, back in the Zephyrette days.

Amtrak has kept the room/diner model going for 48 years, far longer than anyone could have imagined back in 1971. We went through some hard times, I remember some pretty horrible airline style tray meals back in the Reagan era. When that happened, I ordered a pizza delivered at Ogden. Try that without a cellphone or internet. But while we may complain about the menu or the occasional rude attendant, generally as the song goes, nothing could be finer.

We've been through the “death of Amtrak” so many times, I've screened it out. Every financially conservative administration has tried to kill it, and the political expediency of being in almost every continental state has kept it going.

But now NARP/RPA has gone strangely quiet about the long term prospects. I thought they'd raise a fuss about the “Contemporary Dining” but they've just quietly documented the changes, and mumbled about trying to improve the product. Does anyone doubt that CD or even cafe car service will be the norm nationwide within two years?

Do we really need bedrooms? Of course we do. We love them, and there's nothing like it. But as much as I'd like to think that there's a demographic that really needs them, in reality I bet that a large percentage are occupied by people like myself, riding them just because it is fun and because we can.

I hope I'm wrong. I pray I'm wrong. But perhaps it is finally time to move on, and make the 21st century Amtrak the best passenger service it can be.

You don't need to convince me that it would be great to keep the room/diner model. But is it time to let it go, and start preparing for the future?

I'm sorry you didn't get to ride Empire Builder, since for sure that is a nice train route that I'd recommend all others should ride at least once. I only noticed the alert about the cancelled Portland EB half of the train between Spokane and Portland(due to I think track work?), a day or 2 back. Honestly as much as California Zephyr and Coast Starlight get a lot of attention and hype, even other long distance routes have interesting scenery in certain portions of the route(i.e. Southwest Chief along the Raton Pass in northern New Mexico and IF you're lucky on westbound train #3 and it runs late, seeing the Cajon Pass in California), Sunset Limited in western Texas and over the Huey Long bridge west of New Orleans, City of New Orleans running over Lake Pontchitrain(sp?), etc).
 
With all of the talk from Amtrak management about downplaying the long distance routes, I doubt if they will be discontinued. About 31 million passengers use Amtrak every year and some routes extend to cities and towns where there is little to no public transportation. If there was a vote in congress to end long distance service it would not pass. It would be political suicide for Senators and House representatives to vote to end train service in their states.
 
It would be political suicide for Senators and House representatives to vote to end train service in their states.
Didn't seem to be suicidal for Senator McCain who for a while, wasn't even aware apparently, that Amtrak served his state!!! Just sayin' ;)
 
Just finished our Boston-Portland Oregon trip, will post some sort of trip report elsewhere.

There has been a lot of discussion about cancelling the long-haul trains, always with the observation that lots of towns need the service and that the local and state politicians wouldn't allow it.

What I was wondering in this thread was if Amtrak might consider removing the rooms/diners, and turning the trains more into a long and somewhat more comfortable Greyhound service. I was reacting to the "Contemporary Dining" abomination and the strange fact that NARP/RPA doesn't seem to care. From an east coast perspective, it is easy to imagine them rolling it out nationwide which would essentially kill the premium room/dining model, especially for the long distance tourist/rail fan market.

But I just got off the CZ, and the dining service was actually better than ever. I was surprised to see actual tablecloths, real silverware, and some nice menu updates.

So my question in this thread isn't about removing the trains completely but if Amtrak is going to try to deliberately kill the room/diner model.
 
Pointing out the obvious: Running trains through the night without an option for sleeping lying down, requiring sleep next to a random stranger with not even an armrest between you, reduces the potential pool of riders considerably.

Also should be obvious: If you're running a train for 1 or 2 days straight, most people really do need something to eat beyond the snack food offered by the cafe car. Eliminating the diner thus means ... replacing it with something more substantial than one snack bar for the whole train. In other words, some sort of dining car.
 
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Perhaps the idea of "Contemporary Dining" is not such a bad idea ... if it is done correctly :eek:

It could be that, instead of giving first class "Contemporary Dining" and eliminating dining from coach - a better idea would be to add a diner car to the train instead of removing one. o_O

Keep the full diner, complete with fresh cooked meals for 1st class.

Add a "Contemporary Dining Car" for coach and sell the boxed meals without the frills of the 1st class dining.

Keep the lounge car and let it concentrate on actual snack items instead of trying to offer what they pass off as "fast food" like they do now.

Maybe, by offering a better product instead of reducing the product - ridership and profits would increase ... especially if they advertised the enhancements for the LD trains.
 
Um, well for once on 8/4/19, when we pulled out of Denver and went through the Moffat Tunnel about 9 hours late. They said they didn't have time in Denver to take on the full dinner service so we got the paper and plastic treatment. But the menu, food and service were fine.

I was working from my experience on the East coast, where I haven't seen a cloth tablecloth for years, even before the Contemporary Dining fiasco. Now in the East we're lucky to sit in a beautiful new diner, with that new car smell, and enjoy our box dinner with slightly heated beef lumps.

I'm old enough to have seen everything in a diner, from the original CZ in 1966 with Zephyrettes, to the Reagan era, some 40ish years ago with CZ service (in a pre-Superliner diner) in an airline style tray, to the menus we have today. I'm happy to have dinner in the diner no matter what.

With all my experience, I can't figure out where Amtrak is going with all this. "Contemporary Dining" is horrible, but the CZ, and presumably other western trains, are still pretty nice. I don't know how newbies to Amtrak, and especially people from overseas, can figure out what to expect with their $300 a night rooms.

Anyway, my son and I had a great experience on the CZ, and were happy to burn through half my Amtrak points. Guess I'll save the rest for Acela runs to Washington.
 
Perhaps the idea of "Contemporary Dining" is not such a bad idea ... if it is done correctly :eek:

It could be that, instead of giving first class "Contemporary Dining" and eliminating dining from coach - a better idea would be to add a diner car to the train instead of removing one. o_O

Keep the full diner, complete with fresh cooked meals for 1st class.

Add a "Contemporary Dining Car" for coach and sell the boxed meals without the frills of the 1st class dining.

Keep the lounge car and let it concentrate on actual snack items instead of trying to offer what they pass off as "fast food" like they do now.

Maybe, by offering a better product instead of reducing the product - ridership and profits would increase ... especially if they advertised the enhancements for the LD trains.

You are assuming that coach passengers don't want full dining car service. Believe it or not, out here in flyover country there are people who make business/work trips on trains and do not want to book a room in order to get a full meal. And as described in the next paragraph, there are times when sleeper space is sold out and a segment in coach is needed to complete a big itinerary. One of the things that distinguishes rail coach travel from bus travel has been the food service, including interesting people one meets in the dining car.

Some others here seem to think that sleeper rooms are occupied exclusively by railfans and tourists. After the World Parkinson Conference wound up in 2015 the lone sleeper on Train 28 out of Portland was sold out for three days, mainly with people who find air travel to be painful. I helped an elderly man use the bathroom in Union Station on the third day. He and his wife were going home from the conference to New England. With parallel Train 26 having been taken off back in the Clinton days in order to equip trains out of DC, one would think that Amtrak would try to respond to major events with an extra car, but the best they can do is sell a coach segment.
 
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