Well, the Southwest Chief offers connections to the CL and LSL, so I think you're completely on topic.
Yes, and that's why there will always be long distance trains in the mix, even without "fine dining" on board. It would be kind of hard to get the politicians to fund Amtrak if it only has utility for the NEC, Illinois, Michigan, California, Washington and Oregon.
I flew E plus from Dulles to Beijing last November. I flew Economy home. I don't think UA Eplus gives you better food, just more legroom. The lunch/dinner out of Dulles (Asian style chicken with rice) was much more tasty than the pork with rice cooked up I n Beijing. The breakfasts (some kind of omelet with sausage of unknown meat source) was similar on both flights. The version cooked up in Beijing was inedible.
In the first few years of Amtrak, kitchens were bad ordered so much that pax were served more than their annual quota of Col. Sanders, hard boiled eggs, and mass produced sandwiches supplied by restaurants along the route that were ordered as needed. I bet Amtrak had a full time staff just to coordinate such things.
Thanks for the report JRR.Talked to the LSA at lunch today. Clearly the diner employees are seriously worried about losing their jobs.
I questioned her about the number of non sleeper passengers who eat in the diner. The LSA said that there are very few and said that she works the coaches at every meal encouraging the passengers to eat in the diner but with little results. She expressed the opinion that most coach passengers find the prices too high.
We were the last passengers to eat at lunch and she said that the total of coach passengers for breakfast and lunch today was 3.
It seems to me that profitability for food & beverage where almost all the revenue comes from sleeper passengers is an accounting issue. You can allocate the portion of the sleeper passenger revenue to cover the costs of the food service.
Below is our lunch - burger for me and mussels (with added wine) for my wife.
Very good on both counts.
IMG_5602.jpg
Stop! You're making me jealous!Below is our lunch - burger for me and mussels (with added wine) for my wife.
Very good on both counts.
IMG_5602.jpg
It was reported in the past -- in the Performance Improvement Plans -- that nearly 40% of dining car passengers on the Lake Shore Limited were, in fact, from coach.
Anderson is a brain-damaged idiot. The financial performance will go down the tubes. They're doing this to save $3.4 million per year? They'll lose more than that in revenue. First they lose all the coach revenue in the dining car, of course. Then they lose coach tickets from the people who were eating in the dining car; hard to estimate that. A typical sleeper ticket on the LSL can run $540. If Amtrak loses four sleeper passengers per train over this -- which they likely will -- I would guess the entire "cost savings" gets wiped out.
It is when you are reducing revenues faster than costs.
The problem is: they aren't. Particularly the breakfasts, which contain *literally nothing I can eat*. At all.
No, my point is that he DOESN'T care about the bottom line. His actions will HURT the bottom line. They're flat out stupid. They will reduce revenues faster than they reduce costs.
Both combined. Cut total costs by $3.4 million. I'm pretty darn sure they'll cut revenues by more than that over LSL & CL together.
Iirc the auto train at least included cereal. The set up on lsl and cl does not include cereal according to information provided.
A significant difference is that the Auto Train's scheduled arrival at its end point is around 9AM. The Capitol Ltd arrives in DC around 1PM--if it's on time.
And often arrives even before 9AM, FWIW.....
