No cafe cars, please...

Shop deals on ebay
shop deals on amazon
Advertise with us
Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum

Help Support Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
When Amtrak replaces the Amfleets I think half cafe/half coach cars would be a good option for the Norteast Regional and some of the state corridors (eg Empire Service or Downeaster). Others like the Carolinian or Adirondack should get full cafes. And of course long distance trains need decent buffet cars if not real dining cars.
 
Many year ago I took the morning Hiawatha from Chicago. It had a rolling cart serving hot coffee and snacks. In Europe many trains have that on regional runs and I found that quite good, especially when they offered free Proseco. On a short trip you don't need a cafe car. The rolling cart is fine, especially on a crowded 8 car NEC train.

On a longer trip like the Vermonter, Palmetto, and Carolinian a little lounge space is nice and a stroll to the cafe gives you an excuse to stretch your legs and get some hot food. Since space would be required to prep even a rolling cart, what we are really talking about is replacing the table area with revenue seats. All trains should have some snack food and drinks, even the Keystone and Empire Service.
 
Last edited:
One long point(s) I would like to make is people keeping focus on the “how” of increasing Amtrak ridership and less on The who, what, when, where and why of how to increase ridership. The Ws are just as important as the H in that type of analysis. This won’t be an exhaustive list, but it’s more insightful than just discussing how to debase the current levels of service in a vain attempt to increase ridership. I will also be limiting this to regional services or what could be regional services and not the overnight trains.

Who & What: who rides daytime trains? There are going to be people who are fine with Amtrak or a train in general so long as it’s not whatever their chosen alternative would have been. Whether that means not Greyhound or not sitting in traffic that will depend on the individual. Some people will expect more and that could be any number of extras such as baggage service, WiFi, food service, business class with drinks, snacks, possibly a full meal. I would surmise that length of trip would also determine how much people will expect. I personally am fine with Amtrak not being a car for up to 2 hours. Some people might only put up with that for 20 minutes and others up to 5 hours. Some people will be traveling for business, some to see family, some for tourism. The question there is what are the expectations of a train? It seems to me from talking to people who aren’t steeped in this, people want coach seats with decent pitch, a good carryon policy, baggage service, WiFi and a lounge. Which seems to me at least, Amtrak’s current formula is mostly working. There are some wrinkles to iron out, but people don’t seem to want trains to get worse.

When & Where: This one can be a bit trickier to deduce, but I’ll give it a go. When is cyclical and will sometimes depend on the where. A route with tourist potential is going to be busier during the high season than the low season and a route connecting two or more sizable cities will be busier more consistently. Which would mean the more urban corridor would need more frequent service than would a route going to a tourist destination. For one example, service along the Capitol Corridor could sustain hourly service between San Jose and Sacramento (16-18 trips daily) whereas service to Reno or Salinas would be less frequent. Both are tourist destinations and would likely only need service of 4-5 trips per day. Which can be spaced out enough to enable day trips which is more useful as a mode of transportation than a train making 2 trips per day.

Why: Why would people pick Amtrak over an alternative or want Amtrak service over the existing alternatives? From what I can gather, people want train service for at least 3 main reasons; 1) traffic sucks which makes driving undesirable and buses slow, 2) Airports and Airlines suck and Amtrak is a refreshing alternative on shorter trips where air service is either competitive with the train or nonexistent or 3) they want something better than Greyhound or Megabus.

Which brings me to the Hows Amtrak should be focusing on. Their current level of service is attracting riders. What Amtrak needs is more trains, not worse service on successful routes. Which would mean retaining the current cafe cars and making a service worth riding instead of just being a bus without traffic.

On the snack cart front, would having 1 galley per car use significantly less revenue space than having a cafe car that is either a snack bar and half seating or upper level seating with lower level cafe space? If you lose say 4 seats per galley and need 1 person per car at all times, a cafe car with seats would work out better mathematically. Even 1 person per 2 cars might not even be favorable to 1 cafe/lounge car.
 
Here's the trolley lady navigating the gap in Crianlarich, Scotland. This is where I learned to drink warm beer (the carts are not refrigerated). One person served a four-car train.

IMG_8210.jpeg
 
MARC Rider said:
You're focusing too much on long-distance service. Corridor service has trains through the day, so a station vendor will do fine. And why are "multiple options" needed? It's not like the existing cafe cars have such a wide variety of food on offer. People ride Amtrak trains to travel somewhere, not to have some sort of culinary experience. There are private tourist railroads that can provide that sort of experience without having to rely on taxpayer money (at least not directly) to do so. Actually, even on the long distance trains, they could just have an outside vendor load up box lunches for pick-up b y the passengers, and if the the train is running late, the caterer can just drive the delivery trucks to the nearest grade crossing for a meetup with the late train at the appropriate time. We do have things like cellphones and 2-way radios nowadays, so the caterer can always be in touch with the train.
Click to expand...
But even then, it's very nice to know that if you feel a bit hungry, you can always get something.

I'm sure enough people use it, or Amtrak would have ditched it a long time ago.
 
sttom said:
On the snack cart front, would having 1 galley per car use significantly less revenue space than having a cafe car that is either a snack bar and half seating or upper level seating with lower level cafe space? If you lose say 4 seats per galley and need 1 person per car at all times, a cafe car with seats would work out better mathematically. Even 1 person per 2 cars might not even be favorable to 1 cafe/lounge car.
[/QUOTE/]

And on the Surfliner, the cafe only takes up the bottom floor of ONE car. The top floor is all normal seating.

So that loses about 12 seats? Is that really that much of an issue?
Click to expand...
 
sttom said:
I’ve been on trains in Europe that lacked food service and it always struck me as odd just like their crappy seats. Just because we do something different in the US doesn’t make it wrong. And that is the way that some people think.
Click to expand...
But at least on European trains, they generally run so often that one can book a train at 8AM to get as far as possible by noon with another booking set for 1PM until 5PM then 7PM until final station and have two nice relaxing meals. Here that doesn't work outside of the NEC. :)
 
me_little_me said:
But at least on European trains, they generally run so often that one can book a train at 8AM to get as far as possible by noon with another booking set for 1PM until 5PM then 7PM until final station and have two nice relaxing meals. Here that doesn't work outside of the NEC. :)
Click to expand...
Also, all this works much nicer if you don't require a reservation and can just hop onto the next train headed the right way that shows up at the station. That is how I explore most of Europe anyway. Fortunately only the HSRs and some Eurocity equivalent service requires reservation almost no regional service requires reservation.
 
me_little_me said:
But at least on European trains, they generally run so often that one can book a train at 8AM to get as far as possible by noon with another booking set for 1PM until 5PM then 7PM until final station and have two nice relaxing meals. Here that doesn't work outside of the NEC. :)
Click to expand...
I’m not even talking about a just full meal. At least 2 of the trains I rode in Poland ended up having a delay and I ran out of water with nowhere to buy another bottle. On one of those trips I was going to a national park. It was a 4 hour trip and there were 4 direct trains per day. A lot of countries have similar set ups where there a few good corridors with lots of service and other routes with progressively less service.

I talked with people in Poland about this situation and they were surprised that all but 2 or so Amtrak trains have a car serving snacks on them during normal runs. It was something they would have wanted too. Which gets me back to the point of just because Amtrak does something differently than railways in Europe or Japan doesn’t make Amtrak wrong for being different. Having a cafe car is something they would want and other Europeans have commented that Amtrak focuses more on passenger comfort more in some aspects. Having better padded seats and somewhere to get water may seem small, but they are selling points.

Which brings me times when I’ve chosen other forms of transportation over Amtrak. When Megabus ran between the Bay Area and Reno, I would take Megabus to Sacramento since it saved me about $15 even with a cross town transfer. If the Capitol Corridor had run a train all the way to Reno, that $15 would have been worth the difference for the train. I would have had a better seat, somewhere to get food if I needed it and better on time performance. If the train had only been $8 more but all I got was the better OTP, I wouldn’t take the train. If anything the main reason why I don’t ride Amtrak more and frankly a lot of people don’t is down to either the train not going where I want to go or the train not running on a convenient schedule. Increasing the seat density in coach and getting rid of the cafe car isn’t going to net us a more useful system. So there is frankly no reason to ponder making the formula worse than it already is when it’s working and the people in the C Suites are already trying to make Amtrak worse than it is in a half baked attempt to save money.
 
jis said:
Also, all this works much nicer if you don't require a reservation and can just hop onto the next train headed the right way that shows up at the station. That is how I explore most of Europe anyway. Fortunately only the HSRs and some Eurocity equivalent service requires reservation almost no regional service requires reservation.
Click to expand...
That’s the way the NEC used to be...
It used to be a “hot button” subject of debate here;)
 
Seaboard92 said:
The Russians do that on the Sapsan. With the tickets being priced between Business Class and Economy Plus Class. I don't think it is a good thing to sell personally. But that is me.
Click to expand...

Many corridor trains offer table seating as revenue seats including the Acela, Piedmont trains, and New Mexico Rail Runner.
 
When this thread started, I told myself I was not going to get involved – other than to say this is just a stupid idea. Because it is. But here goes anyway.

There’s a reason the state of Michigan and other state supported services have café cars. Yes, I know New York & Pennsylvania don’t – but those folks are a little different breed. :)

The reason is demand. They have polled their customers and potential customers and received overwhelming feedback that they want a café car. And based on my experience in Michigan at least, it is very well patronized.

For me personally, take away the café car and I am very much less likely to take that particular train. As a matter of fact, the two times I rode in Acela First Class – I very much missed having access to a café car. I thought it was just stupid that you can’t navigate from the First Class car to the café car. How dumb.

And cart service is lame. I’ve had it in Europe. Sitting around waiting for someone to navigate an entire train to offer you something is not the same level of service as getting it yourself anytime you want. Sure, there are some folks with mobility issues - but isn’t that one of the tasks that attendants are for?

We’re always trying to make ourselves more like Europe when it comes to trains in every way but one - having lots of trains. How about this strategy - let’s copy Europe and have a whole bunch of trains going to a whole bunch of different places.

And then AFTER THAT let’s look at cutting some amenities on some trains like they do there. Even if it’s stupid.
 
While I don't always patronize a cafe on a short trip on a corridor train, I think that not having one, although comfort and speed are better, it would make it seem more like a commuter train, and not worth the difference in fares as much...

When Amtrak used to run their Heritage "Clocker's" between New York and Philly, I would avoid riding those. They were run mostly for the benefit of NJT commuters, and even honored their monthly tickets, under contract. NJT eventually replaced those with its own Trenton express trains....
 
crescent-zephyr said:
Many corridor trains offer table seating as revenue seats including the Acela, Piedmont trains, and New Mexico Rail Runner.
Click to expand...
New Mexico Rail Runner? They don't even sell food. They are more a commuter line than an intercity service. They don't guarantee seating to anyone as they say in their web site so one may have to stand. So the seats where there are tables are just that - seats that happen to have tables.
 
IndyLions said:
We’re always trying to make ourselves more like Europe when it comes to trains in every way but one - having lots of trains. How about this strategy - let’s copy Europe and have a whole bunch of trains going to a whole bunch of different places.

And then AFTER THAT let’s look at cutting some amenities on some trains like they do there. Even if it’s stupid.
Click to expand...
Sounds good to me!
 
me_little_me said:
New Mexico Rail Runner? They don't even sell food. They are more a commuter line than an intercity service. They don't guarantee seating to anyone as they say in their web site so one may have to stand. So the seats where there are tables are just that - seats that happen to have tables.
Click to expand...
Yep. The only commuter that I know of that sells food is ACE (Almont Corridor Express).

The others are just ones with table seating for groups. Which is a real stretch to compare it to the Amtrak Cafes...
 
I know (at least when I rode it back in 2011) the West Coast Express in Vancouver, BC had a cappuccino car. Metro-North had bar cars with drinks and snacks on the New Haven line until all the M2s were retired with the last running in May 2014. The reason they were discontinued was replacing rolling stock with M8s and the complications of New York State and Connecticut not wanting to fund cars with fewer seats. LIRR offers bar service on the Cannonball that offers Hamptons reserved seating on summer Fridays returning on Sundays.

My personal experience is that the lounge car on the Lake Shore has been my only option for dinner multiple times (pre-Covid) when I've been taking it home the 90 minutes to South Bend from Chicago (between 9:30pm to Midnight) after arriving on a flight and rushing to the Loo and I didn't have a chance to pick something up (generally McDonald's the only thing open at 9:00pm) in Union Station.

On those trips I could have taken the food less South Shore at 9:15 the 2.5 hours home and would have been in much worse shape.
 
MARC Rider said:
The indomitable Alon Levy posts an article suggesting that rail operators (at least for corridor services) focus more on having decent food available at the stations rather than giving up revenue space on the train by having cafe cars (or maybe even diners).

No Cafe Cars, Please | Pedestrian Observations

Please take time to also read the comments, some of which point out that longer trips might need better food service. On the other hand, it's possible that decent food could be provided by outsourced train-side delivery, eliminating the need for on-board service staff, at least for the food. Of course, if this were to be applied to Amtrak long distance routes, they would need to do what it takes to ensure the trains operate consistently on time, or else there are going to be a lot of food delivery trucks driving all over the countryside trying to rendezvous with delayed trains.
Click to expand...

Not arguing with you as it's an interesting article.

But I'd have to add one more thing to my to-do list for the day (buying food at the station) and then have the food be jostled around and sit there for perhaps hours until I eat it? And if I get thirsty or hungry only while on board, I'd be out of luck?

No thanks.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top