Recent content by jruff001

97/98 are now showing up on the Dixieland Software Amtrak status pages. They are showing as "cancelled" today of course along with 91/92 south of JAX due to Ian, but at least the Meteor appears to be back on the schedule. http://dixielandsoftware.net/cgi-bin/getmap.pl?mapname=East

We got a package of Cheez-Its and a bottle of water (in the sleeping car!) on a 6+ hour Silver Star delay last week. Can't get much more haute cuisine than that, amirite?

I would assume no Meteor until it actually starts running again or there is some sort of official announcement from Amtrak. I did hear a very loud LSA on the Star the other day complaining to my SCA about some seniority issue with her transferring to a Chef position which made me think at least...

Yep. I was on 92(16) which was 6+ hours late into DC on Friday and down the hall from me were a couple of Amtrak first-timers who left as part of the "never again" crowd.

Speed restrictions for heat are definitely a thing. The rails can expand and buckle. Yes it can be engineered around, to a point and for a price, so that is usually limited to places that routinely get extremely hot. Elsewhere, the trains have to slow down in extreme heat. Here is some more...

Yeah seems dumb. Book Tampa to Kissimmee instead. I just did a dummy booking and got a quote of $11 each way. Ask to get off at Lakeland outbound and make sure the engineer sees you at Lakeland so s/he knows to stop inbound. I don't see why they would care; when I take the Star to DC I ticket...

I find none of those hard to believe (well, except for # 2). I am mostly having a hard time deciphering what you meant by "they did agree to finish tasks that cannot be completed in-transit without negatively impacting customers" (and it might be just me; the sort-of double negative "cannot" /...

What? Claytor traveled in an executive car and had an executive chef too.

We certainly have different styles of traveling!

I am not sure what you mean by this. Do you have a cite to the CBA language you seem to be referring to?

Taking Amtrak from Atlanta to San Antonio is what I would call an extremely long and expensive trip, since it would involve an overnight in New Orleans. Plus a long bus ride before that from Florida to Atlanta? The train leaves Atlanta in the morning so we are talking either an overnight bus...

Agreed. Anyone who thinks the reliability of Amtrak is anywhere near that of the airlines is not living in reality.

This is ridiculous. The trip was from Texas to Louisiana, not from Texas to South Africa or Australia or China. On a comparable airline itinerary, there would most likely have been a one-hour(ish) segment from San Antonio to either Dallas or Houston (or maybe two-ish hours to Atlanta), and then...

I love traveling on Amtrak and often try to encourage people to try it, but sadly ALWAYS with the caveats that they should plan on being many hours late (so plan on arriving a day before anything they can't miss like a cruise ship departure, wedding, etc.) and expect rude crew and crazy...

I don't disagree. But this is not what I was responding to.