Re: Cardinal food service/dining car
Like I've heard from others, it hasn't had a proper dining car for years. The Heritage dining cars have largely been retired at this point, and Amtrak supposedly has ordered new replacement dining cars. Whenever those enter service, I suspect the issue of a limited dining menu on the Cardinal (vs. Capitol Limited, Silver Meteor, etc having a full menu) will be resolved. Like the poster above me said, sadly certain anti-Amtrak Congressmen forced Amtrak to do some cuts to dining and food service on some trains.
Even the Amtrak corridor trains weren't totally immune to this issue, since Gov. Scott Walker forced the Hiawatha trains to no longer have a cafe car on it. Luckily those trains are only a short 11/2 hours(approx.) from Chicago to Milwaukee, so it wasn't as bad of an adjustment as I feared. It was a surprise to me the first time I noticed no cafe car on that train, though. But I've adjusted fine to this since, though.