LOL!! My firm works with wineries and breweries (we are a marketing agency) and I just happened to mention to one of them a few weeks ago about how Amtrak had discontinued the W&C events on some of their LD trains, since I am a fairly frequent traveller on Amtrak's LD trains. The firm I made that comment to said that if Amtrak really wanted to do something "special" that they could have multiple wineries and breweries vying for, on a rotating basis, the opportunity to showcase their products on these trains-without any cost to Amtrak. This is not an uncommon way to promote products at all. I think though, for the Empire Builder, for example, the challenge would be the mess with the current schedule, since in most cases the plan would be to have the "presenters" come aboard at one station, do the event, then depart at a station down the line, much like the NPS volunteers do on that train. I could think of many ways Amtrak could really kick things up several notches, for not only the Sleeper pax, but the Coach folks as well, by working with national firms to promote their products/services-without costing Amtrak any precious operating dollars. We are not talking about rocket science here. These types of things are done all the time. Look at how Disney promotes the heck out of their services in a myriad of venues throughout the world.
