The New Pullman Sleeper prices are now posted

[Anderson]

I have read that, toward the end, New York–Chicago and Chicago–New Orleans were the two big long-distance markets for business travelers. Was this the case?

They were the last two to retain an all-Pullman train (the Broadway Limited and the Panama Limited, respectively; the latter name was swapped for the CONO only after a popular song provided a marketing opportunity...the CONO was the second-tier train on that run IIRC). Whether those were primarily business or leisure travelers on the Panama Limited is a good question.

There was a third that held up fairly well, namely Southern's Crescent...while I think it trailed in third (remember, Atlanta was a lot smaller in the 60s), Southern kept it and a day train on that route (though the Piedmont Limited, the day train, stopped at Atlanta while the Crescent was tri-weekly past Birmingham) even post-Amtrak.

As to what I used to compare the Pullman fares to, I used the 1967 PRR fare table available at streamlinerschedules.com. There are two big things to remember with the old fare system from that era:

1) There really weren't buckets. Though a few roads (either CN or CP were among the first) were able to vary fares a bit based on seasonal demand towards the end, there was no concept of revenue management. Not only weren't there good systems to handle it, but I don't think the ICC was willing to be that flexible.

2) A lot more of the fare was "swallowed up" in the coach charge. Even with this in mind, please consider that in all of these cases I'm going off of the parlor car railroad fare (the base coach fare is usually lower) plus the room charges. Also, a lot of this was structural (the room charges went to a separate entity, Pullman, and the railroad still needed a chunk of the cost to cover running the train). However, if you look at the Penn Central fare tables from '71 on the NEC, note how little variation there is between the Metroliner Metroclub seats and the "regular" trains' coach fares:

One-way Fares, NYP-WAS:

Coach: $13.00

Parlor Car: $23.40 ($20.25 fare plus $3.15 accom. charge; $3.15 more for a drawing room)

Metroliner Coach: $17.00

Metroclub: $27.40

-Worth noting (and someone else picked up on this) is that if you doubled coach fares but kept the sleeper fares alone (and didn't lose business in the process), a lot of the LD trains would be somewhere around break-even. This would also be reasonably close to the older fare structure. In some cases, you could also make a substantial dent in things if you were able to hike the room charges and add rooms.

Finally, with minimum wage, not only is that a result of a political process, but the minimum wage has varied in what it can buy/what it is worth dramatically over time. I list multiple measures because I don't trust one measure to be perfect...for example, the CPI has been massively affected by the housing situation over the last few years.

(A closing note that just came to mind: I realized that, having real perspective on a lot of this, I'm generally less inclined to grumble about expensive fares. Add-on fees, yes, but not fares so much.)

 

[Donctor]

I have read that, toward the end, New York–Chicago and Chicago–New Orleans were the two big long-distance markets for business travelers. Was this the case?

They were the last two to retain an all-Pullman train (the Broadway Limited and the Panama Limited, respectively; the latter name was swapped for the CONO only after a popular song provided a marketing opportunity...the CONO was the second-tier train on that run IIRC). Whether those were primarily business or leisure travelers on the Panama Limited is a good question.

There certainly was a mention of the Panama as serving a business market in one of the many books about Amtrak. (Of course, it was mentioned in the context of "Amtrak tried to run the service as a day train in 1971, seemingly unaware that they were abandoning a substantial market.") I'd be interested in learning more about this.

Note: I am not looking to start a discussion about how Amtrak's service is inferior to that of its predecessors. I don't care.

 

[Anderson]

I have read that, toward the end, New York–Chicago and Chicago–New Orleans were the two big long-distance markets for business travelers. Was this the case?

They were the last two to retain an all-Pullman train (the Broadway Limited and the Panama Limited, respectively; the latter name was swapped for the CONO only after a popular song provided a marketing opportunity...the CONO was the second-tier train on that run IIRC). Whether those were primarily business or leisure travelers on the Panama Limited is a good question.

There certainly was a mention of the Panama as serving a business market in one of the many books about Amtrak. (Of course, it was mentioned in the context of "Amtrak tried to run the service as a day train in 1971, seemingly unaware that they were abandoning a substantial market.") I'd be interested in learning more about this.

Note: I am not looking to start a discussion about how Amtrak's service is inferior to that of its predecessors. I don't care.

I'm going to take a stab: The IC was still, as far as I know, operating two trains (the Panama Limited and the CONO) on this route at A-Day. My guess is that the Panama was an overnight through train while the CONO was largely operating as a day train "counterpart" to it. If Amtrak drops one train from the schedule and keeps the day operation (the CONO) instead of the night one (the Panama Limited), that would cut one of the markets out. This sort of combination/consolidation happened all over the system...sometimes it worked well (the Broadway comes to mind), and sometimes it didn't (the infamous Cincy layover on the James Whitcomb Riley...though as Amtrak's scheduling issues with the Cardinal have shown, that route is just a pain no matter what you try to do).

And if I'm recalling right, that's pretty much how it played out...Amtrak kept the CONO, but relabeled it as the Panama Limited for marketing purposes until the song hit...by which time it had changed the scheduling back to an overnight run (so first the PL ran on the CONO's schedule...and then the CONO ran on the PL's). I'd be up for corrections, but this is about what I think happened.

 

[ehbowen]

I have read that, toward the end, New York–Chicago and Chicago–New Orleans were the two big long-distance markets for business travelers. Was this the case?

They were the last two to retain an all-Pullman train (the Broadway Limited and the Panama Limited, respectively; the latter name was swapped for the CONO only after a popular song provided a marketing opportunity...the CONO was the second-tier train on that run IIRC). Whether those were primarily business or leisure travelers on the Panama Limited is a good question.

There certainly was a mention of the Panama as serving a business market in one of the many books about Amtrak. (Of course, it was mentioned in the context of "Amtrak tried to run the service as a day train in 1971, seemingly unaware that they were abandoning a substantial market.") I'd be interested in learning more about this.

Note: I am not looking to start a discussion about how Amtrak's service is inferior to that of its predecessors. I don't care.

I'm going to take a stab: The IC was still, as far as I know, operating two trains (the Panama Limited and the CONO) on this route at A-Day. My guess is that the Panama was an overnight through train while the CONO was largely operating as a day train "counterpart" to it. If Amtrak drops one train from the schedule and keeps the day operation (the CONO) instead of the night one (the Panama Limited), that would cut one of the markets out. This sort of combination/consolidation happened all over the system...sometimes it worked well (the Broadway comes to mind), and sometimes it didn't (the infamous Cincy layover on the James Whitcomb Riley...though as Amtrak's scheduling issues with the Cardinal have shown, that route is just a pain no matter what you try to do).

And if I'm recalling right, that's pretty much how it played out...Amtrak kept the CONO, but relabeled it as the Panama Limited for marketing purposes until the song hit...by which time it had changed the scheduling back to an overnight run (so first the PL ran on the CONO's schedule...and then the CONO ran on the PL's). I'd be up for corrections, but this is about what I think happened.

Looking at the timetables.org web site, it appears that the switch of both schedule and name was made in November of 1971. The CONO as originally envisioned by Illinois Central was a high-speed day train which could leave from Chicago at 8 in the morning and get you into New Orleans before midnight that same day. From what I understand, it did a booming business at the intermediate points and it carried a lounge and full diner. By 1971 IC's trackage had started to deteriorate and the train could no longer maintain the midnight arrival. Plus with the building of parallel Interstates the intermediate market traffic was drying up. An overnight schedule was better suited for making connections in the terminal cities, so Amtrak killed the CONO and rechristened it the Panama Limited on an overnight schedule in late 1971. It wasn't until sometime in the early '80s that the overnight train was renamed City of New Orleans.

 

[Mackensen]

I have read that, toward the end, New York–Chicago and Chicago–New Orleans were the two big long-distance markets for business travelers. Was this the case?

They were the last two to retain an all-Pullman train (the Broadway Limited and the Panama Limited, respectively; the latter name was swapped for the CONO only after a popular song provided a marketing opportunity...the CONO was the second-tier train on that run IIRC). Whether those were primarily business or leisure travelers on the Panama Limited is a good question.

There certainly was a mention of the Panama as serving a business market in one of the many books about Amtrak. (Of course, it was mentioned in the context of "Amtrak tried to run the service as a day train in 1971, seemingly unaware that they were abandoning a substantial market.") I'd be interested in learning more about this.

Note: I am not looking to start a discussion about how Amtrak's service is inferior to that of its predecessors. I don't care.

I'm going to take a stab: The IC was still, as far as I know, operating two trains (the Panama Limited and the CONO) on this route at A-Day. My guess is that the Panama was an overnight through train while the CONO was largely operating as a day train "counterpart" to it. If Amtrak drops one train from the schedule and keeps the day operation (the CONO) instead of the night one (the Panama Limited), that would cut one of the markets out. This sort of combination/consolidation happened all over the system...sometimes it worked well (the Broadway comes to mind), and sometimes it didn't (the infamous Cincy layover on the James Whitcomb Riley...though as Amtrak's scheduling issues with the Cardinal have shown, that route is just a pain no matter what you try to do).

And if I'm recalling right, that's pretty much how it played out...Amtrak kept the CONO, but relabeled it as the Panama Limited for marketing purposes until the song hit...by which time it had changed the scheduling back to an overnight run (so first the PL ran on the CONO's schedule...and then the CONO ran on the PL's). I'd be up for corrections, but this is about what I think happened.

Sort of. The IC had both trains running, with the CONO on the traditional daytime schedule and the Panama Limited overnight. Amtrak kept the CONO for the first few months, but brought back the overnight schedule and the Panama Limited name on the first official (11/14/1971) timetable. Part of the reason (according to Craig Sanders in Amtrak in the Heartland) was a midnight arrival in Chicago. The CONO doesn't come back until 1981--there's a ten-year stretch with the Panama Limited name and the overnight schedule.

 

[henryj]

The reason for the subsidy is that the cost of providing the service exceeds what the market will pay in fare revenues, yet society still deems it an important service to provide. That's one of the purposes of government.

This is an amazing analogy, that this is one of the purposes of government. Perhaps it's why we are broke. I thought this was the purpose of government:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

 

[jebr]

The reason for the subsidy is that the cost of providing the service exceeds what the market will pay in fare revenues, yet society still deems it an important service to provide. That's one of the purposes of government.

This is an amazing analogy, that this is one of the purposes of government. Perhaps it's why we are broke. I thought this was the purpose of government:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

By your inference, anything above a basic "post road" (to deliver mail) should also be a toll road. And air traffic control should be a private enterprise, since the Constitution doesn't provide for anything remotely close to the road system we have now, nor do they have an air traffic control system. And we definitely shouldn't be helping pay for those airports with tax money.

Frankly, "general Welfare" is so broad that a lot can fall under it. Amtrak, for many people on this board, would be seen as promoting the general welfare of the country. But there's many threads that have already discussed this ad nauseum.

 

[henryj]

The reason for the subsidy is that the cost of providing the service exceeds what the market will pay in fare revenues, yet society still deems it an important service to provide. That's one of the purposes of government.

This is an amazing analogy, that this is one of the purposes of government. Perhaps it's why we are broke. I thought this was the purpose of government:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

By your inference, anything above a basic "post road" (to deliver mail) should also be a toll road. And air traffic control should be a private enterprise, since the Constitution doesn't provide for anything remotely close to the road system we have now, nor do they have an air traffic control system. And we definitely shouldn't be helping pay for those airports with tax money.

Frankly, "general Welfare" is so broad that a lot can fall under it. Amtrak, for many people on this board, would be seen as promoting the general welfare of the country. But there's many threads that have already discussed this ad nauseum.

On the other hand, your interpretation could mean that 'government' pays for everthing we need. In addition to 'free' plane and train rides we could have free autos, cell phones, cable tv, refrigerators, food, or any of the so called necessities. I am an old school accountant, so I just wonder where is all this going to come from? Who is going to pay? Oh yeah, the government can just print all the money they need. The ultimate social welfare state. Didn't the Soviet Union already try this?

 

[Steve4031]

All of this mess is getting away from the discussion of the sleeper service and its details IMHO. Could we please get back on topic. I'm excited about riding this, and I'm more interested in that then this other. If im out of line, I apologize.

 

[Ryan]

No, you're absolutely correct.

 

[jis]

As far as doing a AU gathering on this goes, I suppose a few could get together and do a mini-gathering. But I doubt that a full fledged AU Gathering can be pulled off on this relatively expensive service. For example, even though I could afford it, I would probably prefer to spend that sort of money to visit Iguazu Falls instead, or something like that.

 

[VentureForth]

ya'll must be rich if u are being serious to want to waste money haveing a gathering on pullman train couse only rich folk can afford those prices the hoi polloi and the peons cant afford pullmans

And many here have worked extremely hard for the priviledge to do just that. I can dream to fly in a Gulfstream, and that would only cost around $6000 per hour.

 

[Shortline]

We probably will keep an eye on it and see how it does, maybe give it a shot someday. I think I would rather take the Canadian for about the same price. That's always been on my must do list.

 

[Anderson]

The reason for the subsidy is that the cost of providing the service exceeds what the market will pay in fare revenues, yet society still deems it an important service to provide. That's one of the purposes of government.

This is an amazing analogy, that this is one of the purposes of government. Perhaps it's why we are broke. I thought this was the purpose of government:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

By your inference, anything above a basic "post road" (to deliver mail) should also be a toll road. And air traffic control should be a private enterprise, since the Constitution doesn't provide for anything remotely close to the road system we have now, nor do they have an air traffic control system. And we definitely shouldn't be helping pay for those airports with tax money.

Frankly, "general Welfare" is so broad that a lot can fall under it. Amtrak, for many people on this board, would be seen as promoting the general welfare of the country. But there's many threads that have already discussed this ad nauseum.

On the other hand, your interpretation could mean that 'government' pays for everthing we need. In addition to 'free' plane and train rides we could have free autos, cell phones, cable tv, refrigerators, food, or any of the so called necessities. I am an old school accountant, so I just wonder where is all this going to come from? Who is going to pay? Oh yeah, the government can just print all the money they need. The ultimate social welfare state. Didn't the Soviet Union already try this?

Defining what the Soviet Union was is a very interesting exercise for another day. However, I could point out some of the more idealistic-but-misguided efforts in places like France, Britain, and so forth (such as housing blocks that started crumbing well ahead of schedule, "integrated" neighborhoods that misfired, and the like). Honestly, the question of what degree of welfare state can work depends a lot on the underlying culture.

For an example of the government trying to print their way to prosperity, I would offer Labour Britain in the 70s as a pretty fun example. Another valid one would be a lot of petro-states that tried to keep printing when oil prices fell (Mexico in the late 80s/early 90s comes to mind, and that little gem lost us the Mexican passenger system).

I'll add a point: I'm not opposed to toll roads or gas taxes being applied in various mixtures. There are some places where the government ought to "subsidize" road travel (usually in rural areas where you simply don't have the population density to even get toll roads to work), but I would not be terribly broken up if a lot more interstate highways acquired tolls to cover their maintenance budgets and the need for capital improvements (especially as, in a lot of cases, we're beginning to get to the point where lots of highways are going to need major overhauls in the next decade or two...you've got a lot of bridges that are coming up on 80 years old in the Eastern US, for example).

Moving back to the topic of the thread: I agree that the Canadian is probably a better bang-for-buck deal if you've got the time and the access..but even the advantage there is beginning to slowly shrink as time goes by.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

A lot of petro-states that tried to keep printing when oil prices fell (Mexico in the late 80s/early 90s comes to mind, and that little gem lost us the Mexican passenger system).

Source?

There are some places where the government ought to "subsidize" road travel (usually in rural areas where you simply don't have the population density to even get toll roads to work)

I respectfully disagree. If you want to live far away from everyone else then either go without or pay for everything that needs to be flown, trucked, piped, or wired out there just for you. No more leeching off urban taxpayers to fund modern amenities in the middle of nowhere. This is usually when I hear about the myth of family farms and the like, but these days most of our food comes from conglomerates like ADM and Cargill who can probably afford to build and maintain their own roads and infrastructure. It's not much different with where our meat comes from either. Many "family farms" and ranches today are nothing more than tax abatement schemes masquerading as critical resources. If we call them what they really are and scrap all these outdated subsidies and tax loopholes that are being used for purposes they were never intended then maybe we could start using some of that money to pay off our debt.

 

[Anderson]

A lot of petro-states that tried to keep printing when oil prices fell (Mexico in the late 80s/early 90s comes to mind, and that little gem lost us the Mexican passenger system).

Source?

There are some places where the government ought to "subsidize" road travel (usually in rural areas where you simply don't have the population density to even get toll roads to work)

I respectfully disagree. If you want to live far away from everyone else then either go without or pay for everything that needs to be flown, trucked, piped, or wired out there just for you. No more leeching off urban taxpayers to fund modern amenities in the middle of nowhere. This is usually when I hear about the myth of family farms and the like, but these days most of our food comes from conglomerates like ADM and Cargill who can probably afford to build and maintain their own roads and infrastructure. It's not much different with where our meat comes from either. Many "family farms" and ranches today are nothing more than tax abatement schemes masquerading as critical resources. If we call them what they really are and scrap all these outdated subsidies and tax loopholes that are being used for purposes they were never intended then maybe we could start using some of that money to pay off our debt.

I'll hand in the Wikipedia article on the Mexican peso crisis as my source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_economic_crisis_in_Mexico

Basically, Mexico went to hell financially in the 1980s...they had a lot of loans taken out during the oil boom in the 1970s that they were unable to pay. They more or less staggered along until 1988, when Carlos Salinas basically began to privatize everything in sight in a desperate attempt to re-fire the economy (NAFTA was part of this effort, too). To be fair, the government had mismanaged quite a bit (the Mexican National Railroad was not exactly known as being well-run, to put it mildly), but the situation was such that even if the government wanted to hang onto certain things...the fiscal state of affairs was not such that they could do much. The devaluation was a symptom of the problem, to be fair, but it was a bad one.

As to the point of "modern amenities in the middle of nowhere", I think that there is a marked difference between, on the one hand, ensuring that there is a viable infrastructure in place in areas such as Wyoming and North Dakota, or decent ground transportation links between Omaha and Denver, instead of having to go back and rebuild large chunks of the system every time there's a resource boom or a population shift; and on the other hand, ensuring universal broadband access or funding cell phone towers in some of these places. I'd also take pains to point out that there are probably plenty of rural taxpayers who want to know why they're being asked to pitch in for urban mass transit that there's not even a city in their state that could qualify for grants for.

Mind you, I'm not talking about a 100% subsidy here...but then again, nobody here tends to talk about that (at least on the operating side) for Amtrak. In general, we talk about paying for the capital side of things and then kicking in 20-25% on the operating side overall. Part of the reason for this, mind you, is that there are almost always going to be parts of any broad-access system that lose money and parts that make it and cross-subsidize...and in some cases, those numbers aren't going to come out in the black. Just because something incurs net costs does not make it unnecessary or undesirable.

To offer an example, take the Post Office as an example...even when it was profitable, there were always going to be middle-of-nowhere parts of the system that lost money on low volume while other parts saw enough activity to generate multiple-daily delivery (which New York City maintained in areas up through the 1980s). Should rural delivery have been cut because it lost money?

 

[Shortline]

A lot of petro-states that tried to keep printing when oil prices fell (Mexico in the late 80s/early 90s comes to mind, and that little gem lost us the Mexican passenger system).

Source?

There are some places where the government ought to "subsidize" road travel (usually in rural areas where you simply don't have the population density to even get toll roads to work)

Many "family farms" and ranches today are nothing more than tax abatement schemes masquerading as critical resources. If we call them what they really are and scrap all these outdated subsidies and tax loopholes that are being used for purposes they were never intended then maybe we could start using some of that money to pay off our debt.

Source?

 

[jis]

One wonders what all this has to do with Iowa Pacific's Pullman Sleeper prices. But carry on....

Those who would in the meantime like to get a ride on the PV Caritas, High Iron Travel Rail Excursions offers reasonably priced tickets to travel on it on several of its positioning moves. The schedules and fares can be found at the Caritas Positioning Move Page

 

[dlagrua]

I make a motion that we move the subject of economics and the political system to another thread. Its great that we can discuss these subjects here with civility but whether Amtrak should be around to serve the public interest or not appears to be a matter of personal opinion. I do not believe that all of us will ever agree one way or another.

Getting back to the New Pullman Company; at the very least they should display at National Train Day. If they wish to charge premium prices for their service, then they should show the rail traveler what higher quality service they will get for their money. Looking at the chart, a one way trip for two from NYP to CHI comes out at around $1600 to $2000 plus meals. That's an expensive trip for even an upper middle class rail traveler.

I've toured the Pullman sleepers of yesteryear at the Illinois Railroad Museum and quite frankly the bedrooms in the Amtrak Superliners and Viewliners are very similar. The exception might be that the mattresses were better back then. Showers in the rooms were also virtually non-existent so where is the value? In a luxurious lounge perhaps? The food will probably end up being a step up but we've had some very good meals on Amtrak too. Is it that you will have better privacy? The Amtrak bedroom or Roomette is very private. The question is that if you choose to charge 2 to 4X what an Amtrak bedroom trip costs, will the service and accommodations be two to four times as good? Like many other travelers I will reserve judgement until I see the new Pullman cars, find out about the personalized service, examine the menu and compare the two.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

I'll hand in the Wikipedia article on the Mexican peso crisis as my source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_economic_crisis_in_Mexico

You have yet to explain how privatizing the passenger rail system was necessary or even beneficial to the Mexican population in objective terms. The US has accumulated even more total debt than Mexico has. Our currency is at growing risk of substantial devaluation over time. Why shouldn't Amtrak be privatized to save the day the same way that privatizing Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México "saved" Mexico? Have you ever visited Mexico or is this all coming from Wannapedia?

As to the point of "modern amenities in the middle of nowhere", I think that there is a marked difference between, on the one hand, ensuring that there is a viable infrastructure in place in areas such as Wyoming and North Dakota, or decent ground transportation links between Omaha and Denver, instead of having to go back and rebuild large chunks of the system every time there's a resource boom or a population shift.

Our population has been shifting in the same direction for a half century or more. Why shouldn't our tax expenditures follow the same general path?

I'd also take pains to point out that there are probably plenty of rural taxpayers who want to know why they're being asked to pitch in for urban mass transit that there's not even a city in their state that could qualify for grants for.

What would you say if we changed the rules so that no urban resident had to pay for any exclusively rural subsidies and no rural resident had to pay for any exclusively urban subsidies?

To offer an example, take the Post Office as an example...even when it was profitable, there were always going to be middle-of-nowhere parts of the system that lost money on low volume while other parts saw enough activity to generate multiple-daily delivery (which New York City maintained in areas up through the 1980s). Should rural delivery have been cut because it lost money?

The USPS is a perfect example of urban postage subsidizing rural mail. The "heartland" has made it clear that they are fed up with lopsided subsidies that "share the wealth" among strangers. So maybe we should start respecting their very vocal opposition and stop sharing our postage with their rural mail network. Everybody wins.

Many "family farms" and ranches today are nothing more than tax abatement schemes masquerading as critical resources. If we call them what they really are and scrap all these outdated subsidies and tax loopholes that are being used for purposes they were never intended then maybe we could start using some of that money to pay off our debt.

Source?

I believe it was a report on the 2007 Census of Agriculture that first opened my eyes to the number of "family farms" having less than $10,000 in sales. Does that sound like a fully functioning farm to you or does that sound like someone who is shooting for the absolute minimum amount of productive cropland and/or minimum number of livestock to receive their tax credit?

 

[Ryan]

I believe it was a report on the 2007 Census of Agriculture that first opened my eyes to the number of "family farms" having less than $10,000 in sales. Does that sound like a fully functioning farm to you or does that sound like someone who is shooting for the absolute minimum amount of productive cropland and/or minimum number of livestock to receive their tax credit?

There is an amazing amount of data there.

I think you were talking about this (taken from Table 58):

http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2007/Full_Report/Volume_1,_Chapter_1_US/

This also seems to support your hypothesis:

 

[JayPea]

I live in a county which is rural in nature (90% of the land is farmland). Most of our farmers are 4th and 5th generation farmers. And as they are the ones who seem to drive the fancier cars, have the fancier homes, and more toys (motor homes, etc.), they are among the farms who make good money. Either that, or they are posers. It may come as a surprise that local farmers are very much in favor of seeing farm susidies end. Folks here want to make their own way and don't want to depend on handouts. I should add virtually all farmland here is owned by family farms rather than big corporations. And I should also add we do have many who have moved here from urban areas. THEY are the ones who *****, whine, and moan about not having enough tax - supported infrastructure, not the locals

 

[Anderson]

Texas Sunset:

You asserted that I said that privatizing the Mexican railway system was beneficial to Mexico. I made no such assertion. What I stated was that the Mexican government mismanaging its finances led to the loss of the passenger rail system there; I would have thought it self-evident that I would view this loss as a bad thing. FNM's freight operations being reformed may be another story entirely, but I certainly view the loss of the passenger network in Mexico as a bad thing.

As to the point on subsidies, I don't see how you can completely disentangle one from the other...and in some cases, there would be a (rather large) net cost to the economy of pulling a few links out of the network. There's actually a wonderful example of this: How well does the NEC work if we don't have the Hudson tunnels? Realistically, even if you broke things down to a Zip Code or County level to use for cutting subsidies, you'd end up with a messy hodgpodge of bad connections in the system.

Anyhow...I'll actually agree with dlagura on moving the subject back (if possible) or splitting the discussion into a separate thread (if necessary). As to Pullman's services: Well, I think there is certainly room to debate value here. A fair point on the PV market: Yes, Pullman's numbers are higher than a positioning move (where the operators are pretty much looking to "grab what they can" and where some of the rates can be competitive with Amtrak: KCY-LAX on Caritas for two is about $1400; in a bedroom on Amtrak the same day, the price is about $1700), but if I'm not mistaken it's still well below a "regular" PV space rental (witness some of the prices for space on cars for the AAPRCO convention in Chattanooga this year).

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Texas Sunset: You asserted that I said that privatizing the Mexican railway system was beneficial to Mexico. I made no such assertion. What I stated was that the Mexican government mismanaging its finances led to the loss of the passenger rail system there; I would have thought it self-evident that I would view this loss as a bad thing. FNM's freight operations being reformed may be another story entirely, but I certainly view the loss of the passenger network in Mexico as a bad thing.

All I have to go on is what you write and my best attempt at understanding it. If I'm wrong in my assumptions then I'm happy to be corrected. I very much want to understand what happened to Mexico's passenger rail because I think it would have important lessons for what could happen here as well. Unfortunately there has been very little written about Mexico's loss of passenger trail anywhere I've looked so far. All I've seen is that Mexico was apparently pressured into large scale privatization by those who would be providing third party financial support, including the US government. Issues such as misuse and abuse of oil revenues and crippling peso devaluation have been a fact of Mexican life for a very long time. Privatizing passenger rail had no chance of substantially correcting or impacting any of that. Thus, I did not see a legitimate connection any more than I see how defunding Amtrak could balance America's federal budget.

As to Pullman's services: Well, I think there is certainly room to debate value here. A fair point on the PV market: Yes, Pullman's numbers are higher than a positioning move (where the operators are pretty much looking to "grab what they can" and where some of the rates can be competitive with Amtrak: KCY-LAX on Caritas for two is about $1400; in a bedroom on Amtrak the same day, the price is about $1700), but if I'm not mistaken it's still well below a "regular" PV space rental (witness some of the prices for space on cars for the AAPRCO convention in Chattanooga this year).

It's hard to debate pricing without having seen any of these cars or their service levels. However, I do think it makes it all the more clear that Amtrak prices are quickly approaching and even surpassing private varnish rates. That seems utterly shocking to me. Both in the sense that people are willing to pay that and in the sense that Amtrak still can't make a dime to this very day.

 

[Anderson]

Texas Sunset: You asserted that I said that privatizing the Mexican railway system was beneficial to Mexico. I made no such assertion. What I stated was that the Mexican government mismanaging its finances led to the loss of the passenger rail system there; I would have thought it self-evident that I would view this loss as a bad thing. FNM's freight operations being reformed may be another story entirely, but I certainly view the loss of the passenger network in Mexico as a bad thing.

All I have to go on is what you write and my best attempt at understanding it. If I'm wrong in my assumptions then I'm happy to be corrected. I very much want to understand what happened to Mexico's passenger rail because I think it would have important lessons for what could happen here as well. Unfortunately there has been very little written about Mexico's loss of passenger trail anywhere I've looked so far. All I've seen is that Mexico was apparently pressured into large scale privatization by those who would be providing third party financial support, including the US government. Issues such as misuse and abuse of oil revenues and crippling peso devaluation have been a fact of Mexican life for a very long time. Privatizing passenger rail had no chance of substantially correcting or impacting any of that. Thus, I did not see a legitimate connection any more than I see how defunding Amtrak could balance America's federal budget.

As to Pullman's services: Well, I think there is certainly room to debate value here. A fair point on the PV market: Yes, Pullman's numbers are higher than a positioning move (where the operators are pretty much looking to "grab what they can" and where some of the rates can be competitive with Amtrak: KCY-LAX on Caritas for two is about $1400; in a bedroom on Amtrak the same day, the price is about $1700), but if I'm not mistaken it's still well below a "regular" PV space rental (witness some of the prices for space on cars for the AAPRCO convention in Chattanooga this year).

It's hard to debate pricing without having seen any of these cars or their service levels. However, I do think it makes it all the more clear that Amtrak prices are quickly approaching and even surpassing private varnish rates. That seems utterly shocking to me. Both in the sense that people are willing to pay that and in the sense that Amtrak still can't make a dime to this very day.

Texas,

It's fine; I'll take a mea culpa on bad wording if need be. It's the internet, it happens.

My understanding of what happened is more or less this: The government had a lot of enterprises under its control (NdeM was on the list with some others), but the government went broke...so it threw NdeM to the market and wasn't willing to subsidize/require continued passenger service in any form as part of the sale. It was part of a messy "privatize everything" initiative that a lot of countries underwent between about 1980 and 1995, from Britain and Australia to Mexico and Argentina. I'm not familiar with the transactions involved, but I think the corporations doing the buy-outs may have even insisted on passenger service being discontinued ahead of the transfer to avoid any headaches. It's also quite possible that the Mexican government had mismanaged NdeM for long enough that throwing the whole thing to the private sector and letting someone else straighten it out was seen as being in the public interest. The passenger side might have been a small element of any losses, but it's possible that the government just didn't see any compelling reason to keep up a few passenger lines when it was otherwise getting out of the business.

With that said, I'm not entirely familiar with how passenger service was holding up in the run-up to the sale/shutdown. I know that Jim Hudson on here has said that service quality was still solid in the 1980s, and that the Mexican First Lady took the train during that time (in a full-service Pullman), but it is entirely possible that things also more or less went to hell in a handbasket in the last decade or so.

As to the Amtrak situation vis-a-vis the PV prices, in general on non-positioning moves the prices end up being substantially more. I'm willing to guess that most of the cost of the positioning move is already covered in the price of whatever the car is being moved to/from...like I said, they're trying to simply grab what they can on a move that has to happen. An equivalent for Amtrak would be several of the cars on the Auto Train in the "anti-seasonal" direction (NB in the fall, SB in the spring): The "main" direction makes money, but Amtrak has to get the cars and staff back into position somehow...so you get low buckets all over the place.

Amtrak also runs into three bumps against profitability, even at current prices:

1) Volume is a problem. If Pullman runs a 5-car set (3 sleepers, a diner, and a lounge) on the LSL, then depending on car configuration they may be carrying more sleeper passengers out of NYP than Amtrak is. A lot of Amtrak's trains physically can't carry the traffic they need to make money for want of space on-board.

2) The buckets confuse the picture. A lot of the comparisons we're dealing with here are dealing with the top bucket...but I'd love to know what the "average" bucket of a roomette or bedroom is (out of the five available). Amtrak probably can't sell out all that many trains at top bucket, but they certainly seem to be moving towards using the higher buckets more and the lower ones less.

3) I can't speak to what the PV margins look like, even for the more "commercial" operations. It's possible that at the end of the day, a lot of PV operations are operating on very thin profit margins...or even that many are losing money but kept up as what amounts to a very well-subsidized hobby where you're only paying for 10% of the upkeep cost (the rest being covered by charters and so forth). IP is another story (as was AOE), but both companies were/have been able to tap into at least some economies of scale in their operations. This even shows up in Amtrak's haulage fees...it costs less to hook 5 cars onto one train than to hook one car each onto five separate trains.

And none of this gets into the question of the coach side of things (where fares /really/ came down over the years). From what I've been able to gather, at least at higher buckets on most routes, sleeper passengers are paying pretty much their full cost of travel with whatever extra revenue comes in "spilling over" to "bail out" the coach side of things. With a Pullman-type operation, you would therefore expect fares to be somewhat higher (to account for less scale in the operations plus arguably improved service)...which is what you see. Neither operation takes into account the situation with coach passengers (who have a lot of the same fixed per-passenger or per seat mile costs; there are some added costs on the sleeper side dealing with OBSassenger ratios and car maintenance allocations, but those station maintenance fees, track rent costs, and a lot of the costs associated with running the train should probably distribute pretty equally).