You could just make an existing coach the Quiet Car.
But you still have the issues of seating being assigned at boarding (at minimum, the conductor or attendant directs coach passengers to a specific car.) Especially on LD trains, conductors will group people going to the same destination together in order to make it easier to find them when it's time to disembark. This is important at night when people are sleeping, but passengers still need to be woken and disembarked/re-embarked.
There has been annoyingly loud talking and activity on LD trains I've been on - in particular the LSL. I am not suggesting a quiet car be provided, but I do wish that the car attendants would do a better job of making people shut up after 10 pm.
What happens if I fall a sleep and snore in the quiet car? Lol.
So maybe we start assigning them at purchase like most airlines do. I'd love that, especially if it allowed me to chose the side of the track I wanted. Ideally the next version of Amtrak sleepers would be setup with electronic room numbers that could move around depending on the orientation of the cars and trains with two sleepers would have one sleeper in each orientation so that no reorienting would be required.
I've got an idea. Why not simply make every car but the lounge car a "quiet car?" Works for me. ^_^
I don't think anyone is expecting library levels of sound. Just some honest effort to be reasonably quiet in an era of endless noise pollution.
Not if we stop assigning the seats at boarding. Who else does that? You can't assign the seat you want at booking but you also can't just sit wherever you want at boarding time. It's kind of absurd when you think about it.
Wait, what? Who needs to be woken up to be "re-embarked?" What does that even mean? :wacko:
I can certainly understand why you would think there's no easy way to fix a problem you remain convinced never existed.
Still wouldn't help all the time. Yes, if the train is always turned by using a wye or a loop track, you'd know which side your seat would be on; assuming that Amtrak first orientated all cars in the same direction. However, if a train were to be turned by turning the seats, then the right hand seat you thought you had booked would instead be a left hand seat.
Huh? :unsure:
In the past you've said that it's impossible to know what side a given seat will be on because Amtrak switching crews don't pay any attention to the orientation of the car relative to the direction of the train, correct? And that taking the time to physically reorient cars is too difficult and/or time consuming and/or otherwise unworkable. Well, in the case of coach cars the seats can simply be turned around. So, with the exception of seats that are opposite stairwells or other one sided fixtures, most seats could be sold with a specific track side in mind. Assuming of course that the seat and aisle displays were electronic and thus easily adjusted. As for sleeper cars, on the trains I ride half the sleeper car holds bedrooms and the other half holds roomettes. That's not something that's easy to swap physically because those compartments aren't movable. However, if you assumed that a given train had an even number of sleepers and you always attached your sleepers in opposite orientations you could assume that half the bedrooms would be on one side and half would be on the other side. So long as the room numbers and car numbers were electronic signs everything could be spun around logically even though the cars themselves would never move. Obviously there would still be issues on trains with an odd number of sleepers, but I still think it could work better than the "anybody's guess" system we have today. It's not like this is my number one priority for Amtrak and it's certainly no the "best" way to assign seating. It's just a little exercise to see what might work better than what we have today. And, to be perfectly frank, I haven't slept in a very long time so I might not even know what I'm talking about anymore.
Of course there actually is no such policy, so any LSA doing that is actually violating Amtrak policy.
The car numbers aren't just there for passenger convenience. They are assigned in a logical order so that the crew always knows where a particular car is within that train's consist. So a last minute renumbering would not be a good idea.
Well I don't. Loud conversation, fine. But people can be plenty loud without a cellphone. It's not the LSA's job to enforce some arbitrary opinion of "manners" that don't affect the safety and operations of their charge. Plus, when I'm waiting on my meal, why shouldn't I be able to text someone? Where is it written in the contract of carriage that I must stare at whatever is across from me and do nothing else?
Half the time the car numbers aren't even updated, so I'm not sure what exactly you're afraid might happen. Would employees suddenly become confused and argue over who gets to service a given car? Would fights break out? Would employees end up on the wrong trains entirely? Just how critical are these numbers anyway?
Suppose Mr A has a medical incident in the Lounge car and the crew needs to find Mrs A ASAP. Would help if the crew knew which order the cars are lined up to facilitate finding Mrs A in her room(ette). Oh, by the way, using the PA to page her won't help because she's deaf/HoH.
The fact that the number board isn't changed doesn't really matter to the crew, which is why it gets forgotten half the time anyhow. The number board is most useful to the passenger; not the crew.
