No Dining on the CONO

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ctrunfree

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Hi folks

Just a heads up for anyone travelling like we did in coach class from New Orleans to Memphis. Sometime between when we bought our tickets a few months ago and last night the Amtrak decided to no longer offers dining car facilities to travellers who haven't booked a sleeper. So don't get too enthusiastic above the online menu on the Amtrak website, you won't be getting any of that. Nor will anyone else, for that matter, as it appears Amtrak has ditched their chefs and now offer much reduced offerings even to sleeper ticket passengers-some of those we spoke to last night we're very unimpressed by the quality and value of the new dining car offerings. There was a lot of people complaining, so much so that they were going to allow some coach customers into the dining room after 10pm (no good to those getting of at 10pm at Memphis, however).

You can still get synthetic hot dogs, small pizzas etc from the snack bar but you'd have to be desperate to eat those (we we're, as we'd skipped lunch before boarding in New Orleans in anticipation of a slap up dining car experience).

Overall a disappointing experience. Staff were surly, and we were also surprised by how rough the ride was for most of the way, which made navigating the corridor akin to walking across a ship's deck in very rough seas. I'm flying from now on!
 
Yep, the Bean Counters strike again!

The City truely deserves its old time nickname of "The Chicken Bone Express!"

Cue the old Blues song " You'll Ruin a Good Thing"
 
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I have a list of trains I won't take: nothing with a CCC or diner lite or whatever it is that isn't a real dining car; and no long-distance without a dining car (the Silver Star, which was always one of my favorites). And on the shorter trains, I refuse to buy the overpriced garbage in the café car.

I think what goes around comes around, and we may see a return to more private trains that are more expensive and highlight elegance (the Hoosier State is a test case), with Amtrak becoming essentially no-frills commuter rail.

What annoys me the most is that Amtrak is marketing itself as if it were luxurious, and the more it cuts, the more it promotes itself as elegant.
 
Metra Electric Rider said:
Is this permanent or does it have something to do with the flooding that messed up the route a while back?
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This has been going on for a while... was already the case when I rode the City back in November. It's not that coach passengers aren't allowed to eat in the diner, it's that Amtrak has reduced the dining room to one staff member who has to handle all of the tables. If the sleepers are full, they don't have the staff to handle more passengers. As it is.. it's alot to ask for one person to handle all the sleepers.

When I rode, the Server was very very nice, and did a pretty good job of keeping up, but the LSA was helping when he could. (The LSA runs the snack counter in the same car.)

In my opinion... it works. It's not great... but it works. The City of New Orleans doesn't have many meal periods, and few end-to-end riders.

The food quality is a huge step down from the normal amtrak diners (Which in turn aren't anything gourmet!).
 
crescent-zephyr said:
It's not that coach passengers aren't allowed to eat in the diner, it's that Amtrak has reduced the dining room to one staff member who has to handle all of the tables.
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That sounds a bit like a distinction without a difference.

We have the Cardinal, the Silver Star, and the City of New Orleans with limited or nonexistent dining services. The Texas Eagle is kind of in the middle but is probably more likely to end up like the CONO than any other outcome. It seems more and more plausible that these trains may eventually represent a new national standard with a couple "extra service" trains here and there with traditional diners and cooks. Which is probably fine for a day trip but not terribly appealing for an extended overnight trip where the food quality is poor and the options are limited.
 
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DA... The difference is that I have seen coach passengers seated in the Diner when the Sleepers weren't very full. It's not a policy to never serve Coach Passengers. It, like so many things at Amtrak, also varies from crew to crew I'm sure.

I think you are right... the "best" I'm hoping for is the LD trains with several meals (Sunset, Builder, Starlight, Zephyr, Chief) keep the current set up as shorter haul trains get further downgraded.

In all honesty, after riding the City, I would rather have the cost of the sleeper lowered and buy from the Cafe than have what is offered currently. At current, I feel like I should eat dinner on the City when leaving chicago because I "paid for it." I could eat a lovely meal in Chicago before boarding, and then grab some M&M's or something for dessert on the City when leaving just for the novelty.
 
The CONO has had this limited menu for a while now, and The Cardinal has featured it for a number of years now.

The food is "heat and eat", and priority is given to sleeping car passengers.

As mentioned in addition to the limited menu, the crew is also limited in size.

https://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/148/959/City-of-New-Orleans-Dining-Car-Menu-0715.pdf

It is worth mentioning that even on trains with a full diner, there are only a few items cooked on board, versus "heat and eat"

Ken
 
Utterly ridiculous. Amtrak is stepping over hundred-dollar-bills to pick up pennies.

As I've said a billion times, railroads depend on economies of scale. If they're turning away customers from the dining car due to understaffing, they aren't going to get economies of scale in the dining car.

Asinine stupidity, setting fire to money.
 
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I've traveled on LD trains dozens of times, and the worst Amtrak food I've ever experienced was on the Cardinal, the only train I've ridden that didn't have regular dining car service. Significant difference in the quality. In my experience, the food in the full dining cars is reasonably good, considering the facilities available, but not so in the cafe cars.

On long distance trains, full dining car service is a need. Amtrak should stop lowering the quality of the passenger experience imho.
 
The food in the dining car could be considerably excellent. It's certainly not because of a lack of cooking area or chef's talent. All one has to do is ride a private car to find out how good on board meals can be. In other words, the pre-Amtrak dining experience. Even the New Haven's dining car put out great stuff, and that on a 4.5 hour trip.
 
The government apparently doesn't want to be in the Long distance passenger rail business and is doing everything that it can to kill it. I hope that the future holds with it, bringing private railroad trains back to the rails on the LD routes. Congress likes the NEC but that's really about it because the politicians use this route. Notice that the Acela is the only route to advertise First Class service. May I say the word corruption?
 
kobossy said:
The government apparently doesn't want to be in the Long distance passenger rail business and is doing everything that it can to kill it. I hope that the future holds with it, bringing private railroad trains back to the rails on the LD routes. Congress likes the NEC but that's really about it because the politicians use this route. Notice that the Acela is the only route to advertise First Class service. May I say the word corruption?
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The reason the government got into the rail business is because the private railroads did NOT want to be in the passenger rail service.
 
And the reason for that was that passenger trains were money losers, resulting in a loss of--hold your breath--PROFIT! Dining cars were big money losers for them. [sound familiar?]

So the government relieved the railroads of that "problem" in 1971. And now some government officials seem to be in the delusional state of mind that passenger trains should go away for that very reason: they are money losers. Just my two pennies.
 
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