OK Cardinal trip

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Joined
Jan 29, 2004
Messages
1,291
Location
Charlottesville VA
Earlier this week I enjoyed me first overnight sleeper trip on Amtrak in about 3 years. I took the Tuesday evening departure of the Cardinal #50 from CHI to CVS. Departure was 20-25 minutes late but when I woke up in the morning we were sitting in Huntington waiting for departure time from there. We remained on schedule until I got off. I had roomette #3. The sleeper car was in fine shape, not worn looking at all, and with very few rattles until we hit the BBRR. The attendant was Joyce who should be superannuated soon as she could barely move and accomplish the barest minimum of her duties.
The car immediately in front of the sleeper was the business class car with the conductors' lounge and a few spaces for sleeper passengers in the front half. BC was heavily patronized departing CHI and the following day it seemed to always be at least half filled. The car in front of that was the snack bar on one side with one attendant (never busy) and the sleeper diner on the near side with another attendant. His name was Hector and he was very good. He offered table service to everyone every meal. You could sit where you wanted (some folks voluntarily shared), he came and took your order, prepared your order and brought it to your table. He also cleared your table. He was not particularly busy. The food itself seemed to me to be on a par with Amchow I've experienced before with notable absences of course. It's the presentation that's different. There is an enormous amount of plastic generated by this presentation which I find more troubling than anything else. Mother Earth begs Amtrak to seek a better solution. It's probably just that plastic is cheapest but that's only because significant costs are externalized, i.e., no one has to pay them FOR NOW. Oh, by the way the wifi on the Cardinal was remarkably good almost all the way I was awake.

The fare was $256 which I took for 8424 AGR pts after the 5% rebate and at the highest redemption ratio of $.0289/point. Considering that my American Airlines ticket the day before from CHO-ORD was $118 and a room plus 3 meals would be in the $150 range I thought it was not a bad deal!

My next trip will be this Saturday from BOS to CVS. Because it is Sat. the Roanoke NER doesn't originate in BOS so I don't get a one seat ride. I have to take a NER from BOS to NYP, have a 2 hour layover and then take the Crescent #19 the rest of the way to CVS. It will be a long day - 12 hours but, hey, I'm not complaining. I guess I'll get to experience a new diner finally on the Crescent.
 
In several Cardinal trips I have always found the dinette attendants to be friendly and good at their jobs. Of course they've had a lot more practice serving, and apologizing for, below-par food on that train.

I wish when I rode the Cardinal east from Chicago to Culpeper, VA in May 2019, that Amtrak properly back then mentioned on their website that at the time it only had a cafe car. As of that time, they were incorrectly mentioning on their website that dining car service was available, when it actually was not! (ugh) Thank goodness I got a personal sized pizza to go at Revival Food Hall in Chicago, along with bringing a few granola bars and some crackers on my own on that train, as I was really caught by surprised the next morning and afternoon going through West Virginia how many items in the cafe car ran out. :( Even of all food items, they surprisingly ran out of hummus!

The funny thing, is that as of right now I am considering doing some sort of brief Cardinal trip, mostly to admire the beauty of the fall leaves in West Virginia. Almost think I may ride east to somewhere in WV(maybe to Hinton?), check out that town, then either stop somewhere for 2 nights(Charleston, WV?) or go back to Chicago. Not sure what I'll ultimately decide, yet.

As for the dinette back when the Cardinal had that, was it not as full of food menu options as the dining cars on western long distance trains are like?
 
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