Doesn't Amtrak California have a few of those? They did for a while in the past IIRC.
I rode a Capitol Corridor from Sacramento to the Bay area that had a Superliner in the consist that was a regular coach upstairs and a snack bar downstairs. It was kind of nice, because it had the full long-distance seat pitch and recline, whereas the other California cars in the consist were much more cramped. It was like business class for the price of coach.
Pere Marquette runs sometimes with two Superliners, neither is a Sightseer Lounge, and as far as I know there was still cafe service. I was presuming one of the two coaches was a snack coach.
Also dinner, which is even worse. I heard the Cafe attendant announce on P.A. that she was going on meal break around 5:30 p.m. and would reopen in 30 minutes. She actually reopened around 6:30 p.m.
I quite agree. However, if there was such a requirement, without actual onboard supervision, it will be probably be widely ignored by free range OBS staff, like many other policies set forth in the Service Standards manual.
Or, the Santa Fe way, attract coach passengers to eat selected meals in the dining car. Both of the attached promotions were in effect in the mid-1960's.
Reducing the floor count does not resolve the issue. The fact remains, that when a commercial operation has multiple levels (perhaps just two levels) and is open to the public, these institutions continue to provide elevators and/or escalators for customer (and non- customer) convenience. There are no direct charges to the public for their use. It may be included in the price of their wares, but non-buying visitors do not pay for their use. Further, ADA laws would not support such lack of access.
Since there are not enough Dining Cars available even if all VL II Diners are deployed, traditional dining is pretty much out. Enhanced Cafe would be the way to go, which could include some Flex Dining items.
The Palmetto would be a great candidate for the original Cross Country Cafe idea or the original Bistro service on the Cascades. Basically.. there is a "chef / food specialist" on board and a kitchen that allows for a few items like oatmeal, soup, etc.
At present there are only 17 or 18 on active roster. The rest are stored in mothballs with no plans to bring them out for several years. Maybe that will change and I think it should change so that at least the Crescent and if I had my druthers also the Cardinal could get the. Putting a Diner on all of them require 17 to be used and if one uses Amtrak's standard PM etc. and contingency you are left with only 1 after the existing overnight LD trains are equipped, mind you this is after they come out of Mothballs which currently has no due date. So yeah with a stretch maybe it can be managed but not very reliably given how the current maintenance cycles go.
I was talking of the hard product, a Viewliner Diner Car
Their claim is they need 25 cars to put a Diner on all the single level Sleeper train after periodic maintenance incidental breakdowns and contingencies are taken care of. It has always seemed a bit hokey to me, but I don't run the railroad, they do.
Correct - Amtrak has stated as mentioned by jis above that they don’t plan to exit any diners from storage absent a business line decision to change food service formats on a route - they aren’t going to just overhaul all the non revenue equipment no matter what as they are for revenue cars - cars will be overhauled if a business line decision is made to send them somewhere. So if they decide to, say add traditional dining back to the Crescent in FY24, then only then would they schedule the needed diners for overhaul so the time to implement this from decision to service on the train would take some time. I honestly don’t see any decisions like that until they are essentially caught up and in a good place on revenue cars and all Superliner/Viewliner refreshes are done.
