Silver Star sleeper update

[VentureForth]

Now that's a product plan I can sink my teeth into. However, I think the diner relies on the no-show of sleeping pax to help pay for the diner to be in the consist.

Well, that's if the accounting is done right.

 

[Anderson]

The zone system is rather peculiar from the start. It costs the same to go from Chicago to Washington as to go from Chicago to Miami. To say that a discount is required for the WAS-MIA portion of the trip doesn't fit with the no-extra-cost of that leg.

Agreed. The system is overly simplistic (it is basically the same as it was when it was started in 2000 or so) and subject to all sorts of interesting exploits (for example, WAS-CHI costs the same as MIA-ELP/ABQ/DEN via the Cap, via the LSL, [assuming you can get that booked] or via the Cardinal. A high-bucket roomette in the latter cases can easily blow through $1200 whereas in the former case via the Cap you're looking at perhaps $400 on a bad day). It does need to be tightened up.

The problem is that, even though the Star is sort-of isolated in the LD system (probably a lifesaver in this case), there's still a disconnect insofar as on all 12 other overnight trains the sleeper reservation involves meals (the Palmetto doesn't run overnight, 66/67 doesn't have a sleeper, and the Auto Train is sui generis). The only case where I think you're likely to get someone connecting to/from the Star is if it involves connecting to the Crescent (which the Star has better connections to/from than the Meteor does).

 

[PupfosterG]

I could do without meals included in my sleeper fare with two considerations, first improve the sleeping class amenities and service. The quality of service varies too much between trains and between crews. (Last trip one sleeper had coffee out all day, another train only had coffee 6a-11a).

Let's ramp this a up a notch or two. Second, if I have to purchase my meals I'd like to see an improvement in the variety of the selections in both lounge car and diner and also a little larger portion size. As others have mentioned, a craft beer, or regional foods would be nice. As far as restocking enroute, I assume most major food vendors (Sysco types) are located near most national chain restaurants. Whom ever Amtrak contracts with probably has a national presence. With POS basic staple items could be restocked enroute.

 

[NE933]

I'll reiterate some previous posts in the form of hope and prayer, that this is merely a temporary way to bring speeds up to 125mph by eliminating Heritage equipment from the consist, and possibly raise speeds slightly on CSX, albeit minimal.

And yes, it will show that passengers are living creatures that need nourishing food, that an Amfleet cafe I or II will not hold enough for everyone for all 3 meals PLUS snacks PLUS a drink or two.

 

[jis]

Now that's a product plan I can sink my teeth into. However, I think the diner relies on the no-show of sleeping pax to help pay for the diner to be in the consist.

Well, that's if the accounting is done right.

Venture, as I recall from past discussions here, apparently only the charges for actual food consumed is transferred to the F&B account. But I could be remembering wrong. If that is true then all that the bundling does is puts pressure on Sleeper passengers to eat in the Diner, and the more they eat the more money is transferred to F&B.

 

[Anderson]

Now that's a product plan I can sink my teeth into. However, I think the diner relies on the no-show of sleeping pax to help pay for the diner to be in the consist.

Well, that's if the accounting is done right.

Venture, as I recall from past discussions here, apparently only the charges for actual food consumed is transferred to the F&B account. But I could be remembering wrong. If that is true then all that the bundling does is puts pressure on Sleeper passengers to eat in the Diner, and the more they eat the more money is transferred to F&B.

From what I recall hearing at the last NARP meeting from one of Amtrak's F&B folks, this is more or less right: If you consume a $3 salad, a $2 soda, and a $25 steak then $30 will be transferred from the "sleeper" account to the "F&B" account. If you just have the steak, only $25 will be transferred.

 

[SarahZ]

If they really wanted to test this, go ahead and use the star, but keep the diner and have 2 sleeper fares. 1 with, 1 without. Then either advertise heavily for coach passengers to use the diner or even offer 2 coach fares; with or without food.

I would like to see that happen on all trains eventually. Sleeper folks who buy the higher level get a bunch of vouchers to use in the Diner and for whatever else the higher level entitles them to. Just like hotels have room rates with breakfast or even other additional services included or not.

Bingo. I was thinking of that exact comparison when I mentioned the room-only and room+food idea in my post.

 

[Cina]

I've thought it would be nice to be able to get a sleeper with dinner only or lunch/dinner only included. I wouldn't mind bringing my own breakfast, and maybe even lunch. This would be difficult logistically, I'm sure.

 

[AlanB]

Again, the problem isn't storage, but rather the way too conservative loading of the cars! And with the loss of the diner on the Star, Amtrak & the commissary need to double down and then some!

Welcome home, AlanB! Missed ya!

Is it Amtrak or the Attendant making the stocking decisions? I would hope that there would be nothing in the stock that would expire outside of two weeks from when it's loaded. I would imagine that the Cafe Car Attendant would want to maximize stock to ensure NOTHING is sold out. Maximum revenue, after all, equals maximum gratuities. And if it's Amtrak's decision, I would suggest a shop steward get involved (And this is from a non-union sorta guy).

It's Amtrak and its models in conjunction with the commissary that make the stocking decision. Apparently the LSA can override the norm and request extra. I'm not sure if they can do that at any time or if it requires a special circumstance; like in my case, it was a holiday weekend.

And we got really, really lucky that we had a smart, interested in customer service LSA who exercised her option to add on to the normal stocking levels and did the right thing for her customers. I know of another LSA who plies that route, or at least used to, who would never have taken that initiative and would have been happy to run out of food and just sit down and relax from Buffalo to NYP.

Finally, while I have no actual data, I rather suspect that tips are on the small side for the cafe LSA. Dining car attendants and sleeping car attendants do much, much better in the tip department than a cafe LSA.

 

[AlanB]

The big question in my mind is how AGR awards will be affected. They can't seriously consider charging the same number of points for both experiences.

A cut in cost to 10-12K for roomettes, 20K for bedrooms would be in order.

They are not changing the AGR award levels. We already have official word on that.

Just to be clear, they are not changing the award levels for this test.

If this were to become the norm on all trains, then I suspect that they would have no choice but to change the reward levels. But to change things for just 1 train and for just 7 months or so is not worth the time & effort. Especially when there is an alternative train that most can use.

 

[Bob Dylan]

There's an ez fix for the AGR Award on the Star to Florida downgrade!

Charge the 15,000-20,000+ points and do a rebate of points ( maybe 10%??) to your account just like with the Chase AGR Master Card ( which is also in flux unfortunately!!)

Or have a goodwill e- voucher for AGR Award Customers who can't switch to the Meteor when its SOLD OUT like it frequently is!!

I've already expressed my opinion that I wouldn't ride the Star while the experiment was going on unless I was Paying, then like jis, I'd go for the savings and just carry my own food and drink!!!

 

[AlanB]

There's an ez fix for the AGR Award on the Star to Florida downgrade!

Charge the 15,000-20,000+ points and do a rebate of points ( maybe 10%??) to your account just like with the Chase AGR Master Card ( which is also in flux unfortunately!!)

Still far too much work for a temporary test!

Or have a goodwill e- voucher for AGR Award Customers who can't switch to the Meteor when its SOLD OUT like it frequently is!!

That might be viable, but I still think it unlikely to happen.

 

[me_little_me]

The zone system is rather peculiar from the start. It costs the same to go from Chicago to Washington as to go from Chicago to Miami.

And is that any different than a points ticket on an airline? Same number of points for NY to Boston as SFO to Boston.

 

[jis]

Yup. And airlines have zone system too, except that in most cases all of North America is a single zone. Other zones are Western Europe, Eastern Europe, South America, Africa, Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, West Asia, Australia, Oceania or some such, and there is an enormous table showing miles required for each origin/destination zone pair for each class discounted or regular etc.

 

[neroden]

It's Amtrak and its models in conjunction with the commissary that make the stocking decision. Apparently the LSA can override the norm and request extra. I'm not sure if they can do that at any time or if it requires a special circumstance; like in my case, it was a holiday weekend.

And we got really, really lucky that we had a smart, interested in customer service LSA who exercised her option to add on to the normal stocking levels and did the right thing for her customers. I know of another LSA who plies that route, or at least used to, who would never have taken that initiative and would have been happy to run out of food and just sit down and relax from Buffalo to NYP.

On the completely-full-train, extra-cars-added trip where there weren't enough salads (!!!), I encountered an LSA who said that he'd tried to override Amtrak's idiotic understocking decision, but that he hadn't been able to (perhaps not enough advance notice, to be charitable to the commissary).
There's a lot of incompetence at the upper management level when it comes to stocking the diners. Lots and lots.

 

[neroden]

Before there was forced Diner feeding of Sleepers I have done cross country on Cafe food several times. It wasn't really that bad.

Well, but back then, Amtrak had much, much lower ridership. As a result *the cafe did not run out of food*.

Now it does. Routinely.

If Amtrak wants to try a "cafe-only" project seriously (as opposed to "shoot ourselves in the revenue side of the ledger"), they'll have to pony up for additional commissaries to refill the cafe car midroute. Amtrak is obviously not doing that right now.

 

[neroden]

1. (My speculation) A few Heritage Diners are coming up for major mandatory maintenance which would be a waste of money given that their expected life after the overhaul is short. So just taking them out of service save money. But with those gone there is not enough Diners to provide that service on all low level LD trains. So what to do given the delay in the delivery of VLII Diners?

Well, if this is the real reason, I guess I can't argue with it. If you don't have the rolling stock you don't have the rolling stock. If this is the case, I'd expect Amtrak to be really, really working on getting those new dining cars ASAP.

I doubt it, though. Most maintenance is a yearly thing... you'd expect all the cars to be up for roughly the same maintenance this year, so pulling four off doesn't seem like it would be likely to make much difference...

 

[neroden]

There is quite a bit of storage space in the lounge cars if utilized effectively. Not saying it is always sufficient on heavier days.

There really isn't very much storage space in the Amfleet II cafe/lounges. Nowhere near enough space for a heavily patronized cafe even on a short trip like Toronto-NY, let alone one as long as the Silver Star.
Superliner lounges have gobs more space.

 

[City of Miami]

It seems to me the point is to reduce food and beverage costs which has been committed to. We all agree the main cost is personnel in the diner. By getting rid of the diner Amtrak saves far more than it could possibly lose by that action unless passengers simply go away as a result. And that is what will be discovered - will they or won't they?

 

[neroden]

This is an experiment. Maybe it will work,maybe it won't.

Frankly, no. This is not an experiment; it's sabotage, and it won't work because it's designed to be guaranteed to fail.

I could tell Amtrak how to design an experiment in food service change. Actually, people here have described several coherent possibilities which would be "experiments" (all of which would require spending some capital funding, by the way).

Just cutting dining car service and expecting people to rely on a cafe car which routinely runs out of food already... that's not an experiment, that's sabotage.

It seems to me the point is to reduce food and beverage costs which has been committed to. We all agree the main cost is personnel in the diner. By getting rid of the diner Amtrak saves far more than it could possibly lose by that action unless passengers simply go away as a result.

Which they will. We've already got three or four in this thread alone who've said they will go away.

If this were combined with some sort of coherent "enhanced cafe" plan, then it would be an experiment and I'd be all for it. But it isn't.

Here's a really, really simple "enhanced cafe" plan: run two Amfleet II cafes (back-to-back) instead of one. Only one is staffed, but the other one is full of food. Enlarge the menu with additional selections. When a selection runs out in the "active" cafe, the cafe car attendant retrieves the adidtional food from the second cafe. This would also alleviate the typical crunch on table space in the lounge/cafe and provide more room for people to line up.

 

[AlanB]

There is quite a bit of storage space in the lounge cars if utilized effectively. Not saying it is always sufficient on heavier days.

There really isn't very much storage space in the Amfleet II cafe/lounges. Nowhere near enough space for a heavily patronized cafe even on a short trip like Toronto-NY, let alone one as long as the Silver Star.
Superliner lounges have gobs more space.

Again, the Amfleet II lounges have more cold storage space since their conversion to Diner-Lite's than a Amfleet I lounge has. And if an AMF I lounge can pack enough food stuffs to last two days between NYP & TWO, then it shouldn't be that hard to pack enough for a slightly less than two day trip between NYP & Miami.

The issue isn't storage space for the NYP-TWO route, but rather the models used by Amtrak & the commissary that don't load enough food onto the cafe car for that trip. My first hand experience a few years back on a holiday weekend proved that to me.

 

[neroden]

Again, the Amfleet II lounges have more cold storage space since their conversion to Diner-Lite's than a Amfleet I lounge has. And if an AMF I lounge can pack enough food stuffs to last two days between NYP & TWO,

...which it never has done successfully....

then it shouldn't be that hard to pack enough for a slightly less than two day trip between NYP & Miami.

...for a longer train which routinely has more passengers...

The issue isn't storage space for the NYP-TWO route, but rather the models used by Amtrak & the commissary that don't load enough food onto the cafe car for that trip. My first hand experience a few years back on a holiday weekend proved that to me.

We know they don't load enough food on any of the routes heading through Albany, for some reason or reasons. Could they load enough food? Well, you hypothesize without evidence that they can...
When the LSL was running a "Diner-Lite", the storage space in both the cafe and the diner seemed to be pretty much fully used. Now try to get more food (for a longer trip) into a single Amfleet II. Good luck.

I mean, perhaps due to the cutbacks, the reduced ridership on the Star will mean that less food is needed, but again, that's not an experiment, that's sabotage. The "Cross Country Cafe" was an experiment. This isn't.

 

[AlanB]

Again, the Amfleet II lounges have more cold storage space since their conversion to Diner-Lite's than a Amfleet I lounge has. And if an AMF I lounge can pack enough food stuffs to last two days between NYP & TWO,

...which it never has done successfully....

then it shouldn't be that hard to pack enough for a slightly less than two day trip between NYP & Miami.

...for a longer train which routinely has more passengers...

The issue isn't storage space for the NYP-TWO route, but rather the models used by Amtrak & the commissary that don't load enough food onto the cafe car for that trip. My first hand experience a few years back on a holiday weekend proved that to me.

We know they don't load enough food on any of the routes heading through Albany, for some reason or reasons. Could they load enough food? Well, you hypothesize without evidence that they can...
When the LSL was running a "Diner-Lite", the storage space in both the cafe and the diner seemed to be pretty much fully used. Now try to get more food (for a longer trip) into a single Amfleet II. Good luck.

I mean, perhaps due to the cutbacks, the reduced ridership on the Star will mean that less food is needed, but again, that's not an experiment, that's sabotage. The "Cross Country Cafe" was an experiment. This isn't.

No, I have evidence. Whether or not you choose to believe me I don't care.

But I have taken the Maple Leaf many times over the years and always have seen it run out of food by Syracuse, even back when the commissary was still open in Albany. That is until the trip I took on Labor Day weekend where the LSA ordered extra and had enough food to last through Albany.

The storage capacity is there to do better! The problem is what they load onto the train. And again, one of the things added to the Amfleet II cafe cars when they were converted to Diner-Lite cars was more cold storage capacity. It was needed in order to handle the extra pre-plated meals for sleeping car passengers. The AMF II cafes have more storage capacity than the AMF I cafes do. I'm not saying that's enough to cover the lack of a diner, that remains to be seen, but the fact that the cafe currently runs out of food on a Silver train is a function of what is loaded onto the train and NOT a lack of capacity to keep things cold.

By the way, the Star has less capacity for passengers than the Maple Leaf, as the Star's sleepers greatly reduce the capacity as compared to coach capacity.

 

[neroden]

You have evidence that they run out, and that they could stock more than they usually. You don't have evidence that they are actually capable of stocking enough food to get all the way from New York to Toronto to New York, because this seems to never, ever happen even when extra food is ordered.

I'm not saying that's enough to cover the lack of a diner, that remains to be seen, but the fact that the cafe currently runs out of food on a Silver train is a function of what is loaded onto the train and NOT a lack of capacity to keep things cold.

So gross mismanagement is a core problem. There may also be an equipment / storage space problem, but it's hard to tell when management won't even use the available space.

Anyway, Fred Frailey just weighed in, and basically said what I'm thinking. This could be done as a sensible experiment, but it looks like Amtrak has instead designed it to fail.

http://cs.trains.com/trn/b/fred-frailey/archive/2015/04/13/food-service-on-amtrak-ouch.aspx

The Silver Star has a lot of short-haul ridership. It may make logical sense to not have a dining car, and to instead serve everything out of the cafe. But by the same token, with all that short-haul ridership, the cafe service needs to be beefed up. And it looks like Amtrak just won't do it.

 

[cuppb001]

Every Amfleet II Café I have seen has a tall standing Traulsen fridge next to the menu. Never once have I seen an attendant access this unit. It remains padlocked.

My feelings on the removal of the diner. Again just my feelings. I have traveled on the Star frequently where by the time I boarded the train to the time I exited the diner was closed. The train travelled though the night so it would not have made sense to pay $250+ for a sleeper and I knew that I would not benefit from any meals. eg. Star: JAX-CYN. With a reduced sleeper fare in that trip I would likely opt for a bed and shower instead of coaching it. I do realize though for passengers travelling end point to end point that this could be a deal breaker but hasn't Amtrak published in the past that very few of its riders take a train endpoint to endpoint?

When storms hit fairly hard up north Amtrak ran the Star truncated in JAX-MIA only. This train operated with only a café car and coaches. For a Florida only train ridership was strong and I only traveled between JAX and TPA and back on that trip. Both trips I had a seat mate and walking through the train to the Café revealed I was not the only one in that situation. I know all this proves is that intrastate Florida travel is popular and needed but that's another discussion all together.