WASHINGTON — For sleeping car passengers on two Amtrak routes between Chicago and the East Coast, it appears dining innovation is a dish best served cold.
In a press release issued Thursday, Amtrak announced “contemporary and fresh dining choices” for sleeping-car passengers on the Chicago-Washington Capitol Limited and Chicago-New York/Boston Lake Shore Limited — cold meals delivered to their roomettes or bedrooms, or eaten in a private café or lounge car. The new service, replacing traditional dining-car service, begins June 1.
The release cites lunch and dinner choices such as “chilled beef tenderloin, vegan wrap, chicken Caesar salad, or turkey club sandwich,” and breakfast options including “assorted breakfast breads with butter, cream cheese and strawberry jam; Greek yogurt and sliced seasonal fresh fruit.”
According to the release, the meals “are delivered to the trains just prior to origination, eliminating on-board preparation. Customers will also be offered unlimited soft beverages, a complimentary serving of beer, wine or a mixed drink, an amenity kit. A Kosher meal continues to be available with advanced notice.”
Bob Dorsch, Amtrak’s vice president of the Long Distance Service Line, is quoted in the release as saying, “Our continued success depends on increasing customer satisfaction while becoming more efficient,” and that Amtrak looks forward to hearing from its customers about the change.
The Rail Passengers Association noted that this move reflects outside directives to the passenger carrier.
“It’s important to remember that this is simply an outcropping of the congressional mandate to eliminate losses on food and beverage service,” said James A. Zumwalt, director of policy research at the association, “which contradicts other successful models such as in the cruise industry, and proves unpopular with passengers. The mandate prevents best practice and should be removed.”
An Amtrak spokeswoman confirmed that the new choices are chilled meals but did not respond to a question asking if hot-meal choices would still be available.
— Updates with Rail Passengers Association reaction. Malcolm Kenton contributed to this report.
Those cruddy cold continental breakfasts on the CONO are just what we need for Amtrak everywhere all the time. THAT should cure ’em from ever riding Amtrak again!
Just got this email – I dont know how to think, Frankly I ride the Cap from Pittsburgh to Chicago. I’m not getting anything to eat at midnight, and I’m not going to eat breakfast on the train when I’m headed to one of the greatest dining cities in America. Same coming home – by 6:40, I’ve already had dinner, and I’m getting off at 5:30 am. So not really a big loss for me.
If I was coming and going from DC, maybe. But I hear the dining on the Cap want that good to begin with? I dont know. First time in a sleeper for me on this trip. I’m getting too old to sleep in coach and I had the points built up.
So we get free pop, a free drink and they’re bringing back “amenities” , whatever that will prove to be. We’ll see. Now if they pull this on the western LD trains, I’ll be annoyed.
Hi
Beginning June 1, Amtrak will offer contemporary meal choices for sleeping car customers, in place of traditional dining car service, onboard the Capitol Limited and Lake Shore Limited trains. Sleeping car customers will choose from a variety of quality, fresh and ready-to-serve meals. Unlimited soft drinks, a complimentary serving of beer, wine or a mixed-drink and an amenity kit will also be offered to sleeping car customers.
Sleeping car customers will have the option to dine at available seating in the sleeping car lounge or can continue to be served in their bedrooms or roomettes.
Reservations for in room dining will be available in frequent intervals consistent with today’s standards and meals continue to be included in the sleeping car fare. A Kosher meal continues to be available with advance notice.
More information is available here
Thank you for choosing Amtrak.
Very unfortunate experience and we must congratulate Amtrak management and the people they answer to: the Federal government for driving away yet another customer form the train and over to the airlines. Als unfortunate is the fact that Amtrak is denying our younger generation a chance to experience train travel the way it should be and how it was in the Golden Era of train travel. Is it any wonder why our young people have no like or use for passenger train travel today or even care about trains in general ? Plenty of more bad experiences like Ms Smith had with her family and soon the folks in Washington will have the excuse they need to elimnate and kill off Amtrak. They started already and who knows what else they are plotting and cooking up to drive even more people away from train travel. If you can’t come out and openly and shut down or do away with Amtrak or passenger train travel, you work underhand and undercover by using methods and p[olicies to drive people away and get any new potential business of riders so disgusted that tehy will never ride a passenger train or even the very mention of train travel and amtrak is a dirty word. This is only the start of things to come
A little bit of history for all Back in pre Civil War days when railroads were in their infancy or just starting out, there was no such thing as dining cars or sleeping cars. A train would stop at the station (or a building acting as a
gathering place for passengers and they could take a meal break at a local restaurnat or diner or beanery as they called eating establishments in those days and they would have either lunch, breakfast or supper depending upon the time of the day. However only 20-30 min were allowed for such a break before the train pulled out. Most passengers were either forced to leave their food behind or risk missing the train. It seems like we might be drifting back to those days. An example of that now ias when you travel on an intercity bus. You can only eat whenever the bus stops at a rest stop[ or nearby eatery to get something to eat and you have to make it quick also. Its either that or you have to carry your own food on board. Maybe we should do like railroads do in most
Third world countries where vendors and the local population sells food and wares to the passengers when the train stops at the station or even along the route. Maybe that is what we will be heading towards. I can only imagine George Pullman, and Fred Harvey and others rolling in their graves now to see what they created and built going to pieces and being destroyed by today’s money focused and keep your eyes on the bottom line mentality. As one oldtime railroad executive once said ” The public be dammed” how true is that today
I am irate. I planned a vacation in June, specifically to take a teenage family member on a train trip so that he could experience train travel with sleeper cars and dining cars. We are actually flying to another city to take the train from there to destination city, just for this experience. I paid for this based on the claim that we’d be receiving free HOT (albeit microwaved) meals IN A DINING CAR – not eating cold boxed meals in our roomette. No personal (as in mass email) notification of this change whatsoever, despite that tickets have been booked and paid for for months, and the trip is in six weeks.
I’ll be on the phone with Amtrak when I get home. I understand budget cuts but this is NOT what I paid for. Not acceptable.
Frank Sprenger I’m going to put a great big LOL after your question. Joseph Markfelder just don’t flush the pay toilet while the train is in the station. Mr. Delta had the holding tanks removed to save money.
We must keep in mind that Amtrak’s biggest customer is the Federal government, and as long as it receives large sums from them, the passengers will be secondary.
We need to complain.
This wrong-headed CEO seems to be doing everything he can to eliminate anything that makes train travel special.
Remove one amenity, then remove others.
The dining cars are removed from these trains, next, all other trains will lose their dining service.
What’s next?
Removal of the sleepers? Removing the baggage car?
Firing station agents?
Removing coaches?
Has this CEO ever ridden an Amtrak train (outside of their NEC toy train?).
He acts like he understands little about transportation, and nothing about rail travel.
What kind of CEO does these irrational things?
Since meals have been preepaid by the passenger. Do the sleeper supplements get cheaper as a result?
The simple solution for everybody to this latest debacle . Give yourself a few hours before your departure and eat a hearty meal or two in a restaurant and fill yourself up with some really good nourishing food and you won’t get hungry on the train and when you get to your destination, stop off and have another hearty meal in a restaurant and take along for the trip a banana or two and some small snacks and some water. Since these trips usually dont last more than one night on the train, you can manage. Let’s face it We can complain and point fingers at Amtrak management all the way from the CEO down to the smallest supervisor but Amtrak is at the mercy of a federal governemt who is doing everything to kill the passenger train in america and doing it by getting
the riding public and any potential new business so disgusted that they will never ever ride a train and justify why
passenger trains and Amtrak must be discontinued. Oh and by the way will they install pay toilets on the trains next? sounds like a great idea to increase revenue and fleece the riding public.
So this is all about “increasing customer satisfaction.” Good one.
What will they think of next? Oh, yes, how about this? Stop printing timetables!
Deja vu all over again. Welcome back to the 1970s.
I am writing this from aboard # 19, the Crescent. Food in the dining car has been very, very good. I think trying to get people to ride for 24+ hours eating cold food and Hebrew National hotdogs will move people off LD trains – which is probably the plan ??
George Pins,
I agree with you entirely.
Mr. Anderaon
KFC? Junk food.
Its been a few years since my last long distance train ride. However removing full service dinning cars and not being able to get a hot dinner is no way appealing to me. I have always used first class sleeper car service on overnight trains but if I don’t get a first class meal at todays high fares I will either go coach or not ride at all.
I even was disappointed with my last Amtrak ride on the Pennsylvanian to Pittsburgh when I could not get a nice dinner in the café/lounge. With food companies able to make nice prepared frozen microwaveable meals for my home; I don’t see why Amtrak can’t at least be able to provide something like that at reasonable cost to the passenger in the café/ lounge car. I agree we need to complain to both Amtrak and our congressional representatives that we want long distance trains and decent meal service on them. And talk about waste why did Amtrak buy all those single level dinners if they plan not to use them?
Coach passengers on the eastern LD trains rarely use the diner. I’m thinking this is a tempest in a teapot. Don’t get me wrong – I love eating in the diner, but it’s not worth falling on your sword over…
You really have to wonder if Amtrak officials are mandated to dissuade people from riding Amtrak. George Pins observations below are spot on. Drip Drip Drip…. Goodbye customers.
But Mr. Aldinger, remember who picked him. Everybody’s favorite Class 1 railroad exec., Wick Mooreman.
I’m aware of the congressional mandate but I’m sure if it weren’t for this airline executive who’s unqualified to be Amtrak’s president, this draconianism would still not be taking place
How can Amtrak break up the LD trains and get around the <750 mile requires state funding rule? If they did break up the LD trains, you could kiss any passenger rail service in the states solely served by a LD train goodbye.
Robert – I think the issue with Amtrak “aggressively” pursueing anything is that it can’t. Building new corridors requires the consent of many stakeholders, massive amounts of funding, and, of course, someone to fight for the idea.
But that said, I’m reading the rumors that LD services will be broken up and replaced by multiple DMU services as a step in that direction. It’s presumably a lot easier for Amtrak to slowly upgrade smaller services than, say, designate some CSX and NS lines a “corridor” from DC to Jacksonville and try to build an hourly express service in one go.
Alas all we have to go by is rumors. But, again, the breaking up of LD routes into smaller trains seems to be one of the things questioned here and in the forums attached to the blogs, and it seems like a very good idea to me. I’ll miss going to NY by Train, but if it means an explosion in useful mid-distance train services, and Amtrak becomes sustainable without having to fight Congress every year over steak dinners, it’ll be worth it.
While I can agree with some of Mr. Harrison’s observations, I can tell you that Perlman recognized the institutional disadvantages the railroads, passenger trains, were up against with unfettered public investment that competed with the railroads. That has not changed in 60 years. Amtrak was structured early to fail and never was federally/privately capitalized with any meaningful intent of elongating the operation of passenger trains. Perlman’s vision was to establish operating corridors within the NYC system while eliminating trains such as the Century. I think that model could work with proper investment and planning in many areas of the country. I wonder why Amtrak has not and did aggressively pursue such changes? What bothers me about current events with Anderson and company, is thus far there has not been a clear vision where he is taking rail passenger service and has been seemingly arbitrary and capricious in his decision making. If any long haul trains go, the entire segment will be lost for any future passenger trains forever. Too, when Gunn cut express, freight and mail revenues, he reduced the value of the service too. Trains stripped to the bone are not the answer and particularly if it is impossible for 3rd parties, such as private car owners, to offer a commercial alternative as long as they pay a fair cost to support such. As a taxpayer and “federal stockholder”, Amtrak should be looking for new lower cost alternatives while trying to fill more accommodations. Hopefully, we will all see the numbers as Anderson diminishes/alters services as we have known them.
I have no serious objections to Anderson so far. He’s upsetting a lot of the railroad establishment, but frankly the railroad establishment is the biggest barrier to useful passenger rail in this country. The complaints about Amtrak deprecating private car haulage in particular are completely ludicrous – who seriously gives a flying frog – and the rumors about reforms to the LD services are a long time coming.
Unlike Moorman and 90% of the people who get proposed here as potential savours to Amtrak, he’s actually got passenger transportation bona-fides. He’s actually qualified, which freight railroaders generally aren’t. The most successful Amtrak CEOs either came from outside the railroad industry, or cut their teeth on mixed service railroads before the 1970 collapse. Moving people and moving freight require completely opposite mentalities. If you want a good Amtrak CEO who’s American, you pretty much only have the airlines, or at a stretch, bus companies to recruit from. (As an Ex-Brit, I actually would like to see us pull in expertise from countries with functional passenger systems, but that’s another story.)
Outside of the NEC, Amtrak is still running services as run down versions of the early 20th Century counterparts. Most of the LD trains should no exist. They stop too frequently, 1/3 of their stops are made between 11pm and 7am the next day, if Al Perlman were alive today he’d be completely astonished. Don’t believe me? Try “After you’ve done a thing the same way for two years, look it over carefully. After five years, look at it with suspicion. And after ten years, throw it away and start all over.” and tell me why we’re still serving routes designed before airlines took over the long distance world, and cars commuter routes.
Amtrak is irrelevant to 99% of the population. It shouldn’t be. The alternatives to train travel require massive subsidies to prop up, and the #1 alternative is phenomenally dangerous, raises the cost of living astronomically for those who have to depend upon it, and shouldn’t be mandatory. Passenger rail reform is the only way out of this mess. We’re not going to see that from an industry that thinks not only passenger rail is obsolete and a threat to its viability, but secretly believes the rest of itself is to.
If that means a few cold sandwiches here and there, and that a Koch brother can’t travel to Florida in his refurbished 19th Century Pullman, it’s more than worth it.