Now that the fifth coach is in service on the train and a fourth dinner service has been started, it has become difficult to keep meal seatings on time. They were theoretically reduced from 2 hours (5:00; 7:00; and 9:00) to 1 hr. 30 minutes (4:30; 6:00; 7:30; and 9:00), but each meal service has tended to take about 1 hr. 45 minutes minimum, so that the last seating has frequently been starting around 9:45 or 10:00 pm. This has required the crew to rush through their work and frequently give up any meal break for themselves. A number of crew members have expressed concern about the inherent safety concerns and their own health. There is concern that removal of the lounge will mean a dramatic increase in foot traffic through three busy, crowded dining cars during meal service. Additionally, there have been times when obs staff have had to resort to a waiting list for people waiting for breakfast. Without the extra lounge car, where will they wait?
Predictable results. Hell, I predicted it upthread.
Hopefully, Management will address these issues.
I certainly hope so. It seems like ****-poor planning on management's part. This is a good way to drive patronage away and force reduced prices.
Nathanael: Are you seriously proposing that we replace the AC systems on all of the A-T's passenger cars? That's 34 cars in service, plus the spares kept in reserve to cover shop time. Because of the unique design of the Superliners, they would all have to be custom-built. Big news: Amtrak doesn't own a gold mine.
Well, in the long run, it's replace the A/C or replace the Superliners. Which is what Amtrak's planning to do, I suppose. I believe the Viewliner A/C (and everything else) is a lot easier to retrofit due to the modular design. Arguably it's not worth spending a penny on Superliner retrofits and they should just be scrapped and replaced.
But if Amtrak is going to keep the Superliners around -- if Amtrak can't afford to replace them -- then they're going to need some major retrofits fairly soon anyway. Retrofitting the A/C is a very logical retrofit because it could have very large energy savings. Most A/C from the 1970s uses something like 1.5 times the electricity of modern A/C, for the same result. This is a big energy efficiency difference.
Besides, I don't know whether that would reduce the strain on the cables sufficiently. As I said, it's not my field.
I don't know that either because I don't know what percentage of the strain is actually from the A/C. But as I say, the energy efficiency savings is enormous. Switching to LED lighting would have large savings as well and might be easier to retrofit.
Of course, all this is moot if the real limit is the 50-car limit rather than the HEP limit.
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Further question about the dining car service, if you don't mind. Is the first limitation on speed *number of tables*, *waiters*, *cooking staff*, or *kitchen facilities*?
From the description of the situation, I strongly suspect that the limitation is either number of tables or waiters. If it's number of tables, Amtrak should add a second table car. If it's waiters (I forget Amtrak's technical term), hire another waiter. (I've seen Amtrak trains where the tables in the dining car are seriously underused -- half empty at any given time -- basically due to lack of waiters to fill and clear them. Inefficient.)
It gets harder if it's possible to seat everyone but the food can't come out of the kitchen fast enough. If the limitation is cooking staff, then go ahead and hire an assistant chef. If it's kitchen facilities, then that gets substantially more complicated and expensive to address, obviously.
There are economies of scale at all levels. Adding a table car (with no additional staff) is a pretty cheap way to expand diner capacity, for instance, if that's what works. Even adding a waiter still leverages economies of scale if you're using the same sized kitchen staff.
