Alan, I much appreciate your offer of a little "detective" work and look forward to any info that you may be able to sleuth out.
My sense, form talking with the AMT CS person (who could not have been nicer) and my general experiences with ACELA F tell me that most likely I got a bad attendant. ACELA F has some truly excellent First Class attendants (and I have told AMT about them) and some truly awful ones as well and that makes the service a little inconstant.
I should also point out that generally I ride ACELA form WAS-NYP or WAS-WIL and rarely ever north of NYP and thus would probably never encounter a rule if did exist.
Being based in Florida and Texas my encounters with AMT are mostly on the Northeast Corridor and the Silver Star from WPB-TPA.
Dan
Last edited by dan1431; Jul 1, 2011 at 7:41 am