So I just attended another TEMPO meeting today in Temple, Texas. It was in the beautiful Santa Fe depot there. If you ever get a chance to visit Temple, go inside and the visit the museum. It's quite impressive.
Latest Texas Eagle news:
Hope, AR will be put on the timetable this October as stop "TBD." The city is still working out issues with platform contruction to be legal and ADA compliant. Hopefully concrete can be poured in the next two months.
Schulenburg, TX about halfway between Houston and San Antonio is really hoping for a Amtrak stop. I think its kind of ridiculous that there never has been an Amtrak stop between Houston and SA. Hondo and Uvalde, TX seem to be interested too.
Amtrak managers are going to propose that the dining car staff stay on all the way to San Antonio to serve meals at a reasonable hour. They said this could add $300,000 a year to operating costs, but could really improve the performance index they are looking for on this route. They'll have to see if the board will go along with it.
The Texas Eagle will now run the route 30 minutes quicker! New arrival in SAS is at 9:55 pm. Pretty much they took out the padding in east Texas, so pretty much all stations from Marshall onward for #21 will be 30 minutes earlier. All this is already loaded into Amtrak.com. I was hoping they would move the Chicago departure back to something like 3 pm but that didn't happen. Maybe next year. The other bad part is that this makes the layover in SAS ever longer for both directions.
Also good news: The westbound Sunset Limited will have am hour earlier arrival in to LAX! Which means a guaranteed connection with the northbound Coast Starlight! yay! Eastbound SL is still at 2:30 pm. No connection there.
End of October: A brand new Amtrak.com website will roll out! Do you ever wonder which days will have the lower buckets and you have to sit there and play with different dates until you can get the best rate? Or do you wonder how many sleepers are left on your train. Well the fancy new Amtrak.com will allow to see which days have the best price! And even tell you how many rooms are left on your train.
Dining car orders: Amtrak already has in hand, electronic menu devices. This means instead of the LSA's and servers hand writing every order, they will all go on to a computerized system, making for easier transactions. Look for pilot programs to start on select LD trains in the next few months or next year.
And the best for last.
Daily Texas Eagle to LAX was on everyones mind. From what they said, managers are going to do a formal presentation to the Amtrak Board about the daily service of the Texas Eagle all the way to LAX. He said they are hopefull, but about 50/50 on what they might say about it. Talk from others folks at the meeting say that there's one VP that has no interest in daily service and is blocking the idea. Others say, he's just the messenger from other higher ups. He mentioned maintenance costs would be a little more then anticipated, but ridership and revenue would improve significantly which is a no brainer.
Thats all I can think of. So discuss!
Latest Texas Eagle news:
Hope, AR will be put on the timetable this October as stop "TBD." The city is still working out issues with platform contruction to be legal and ADA compliant. Hopefully concrete can be poured in the next two months.
Schulenburg, TX about halfway between Houston and San Antonio is really hoping for a Amtrak stop. I think its kind of ridiculous that there never has been an Amtrak stop between Houston and SA. Hondo and Uvalde, TX seem to be interested too.
Amtrak managers are going to propose that the dining car staff stay on all the way to San Antonio to serve meals at a reasonable hour. They said this could add $300,000 a year to operating costs, but could really improve the performance index they are looking for on this route. They'll have to see if the board will go along with it.
The Texas Eagle will now run the route 30 minutes quicker! New arrival in SAS is at 9:55 pm. Pretty much they took out the padding in east Texas, so pretty much all stations from Marshall onward for #21 will be 30 minutes earlier. All this is already loaded into Amtrak.com. I was hoping they would move the Chicago departure back to something like 3 pm but that didn't happen. Maybe next year. The other bad part is that this makes the layover in SAS ever longer for both directions.
Also good news: The westbound Sunset Limited will have am hour earlier arrival in to LAX! Which means a guaranteed connection with the northbound Coast Starlight! yay! Eastbound SL is still at 2:30 pm. No connection there.
End of October: A brand new Amtrak.com website will roll out! Do you ever wonder which days will have the lower buckets and you have to sit there and play with different dates until you can get the best rate? Or do you wonder how many sleepers are left on your train. Well the fancy new Amtrak.com will allow to see which days have the best price! And even tell you how many rooms are left on your train.
Dining car orders: Amtrak already has in hand, electronic menu devices. This means instead of the LSA's and servers hand writing every order, they will all go on to a computerized system, making for easier transactions. Look for pilot programs to start on select LD trains in the next few months or next year.
And the best for last.
Daily Texas Eagle to LAX was on everyones mind. From what they said, managers are going to do a formal presentation to the Amtrak Board about the daily service of the Texas Eagle all the way to LAX. He said they are hopefull, but about 50/50 on what they might say about it. Talk from others folks at the meeting say that there's one VP that has no interest in daily service and is blocking the idea. Others say, he's just the messenger from other higher ups. He mentioned maintenance costs would be a little more then anticipated, but ridership and revenue would improve significantly which is a no brainer.
Thats all I can think of. So discuss!
