Originally Posted by ssullivan

The biggest complaint I heard over and over again was the lack of the lounge car. People missed having a place to socialize beside their seats, having movies, and having a larger snack bar/lounge area. There was a small snack bar in the lower level of one of the coaches, but it was very inadequate.

Originally Posted by ssullivan

As for being late... We left New Orleans Wednesday morning right on schedule. We had a few short delays between New Orleans and Lafayette, but never more than 10-15 minutes. We were only about half an hour late pulling into Houston, and only about 15 minutes late departing Houston. Overnight there were a few delays that had us late getting into San Antonio, but we pulled out right on time. Things moved along great until mid-morning when a few stops for passing freight traffic started to put us behind schedule. By that evening, we were about 90 minutes late getting to El Paso. But this was nothing compared to what was to come today. I slept through all this, but during the night, we had major delays between Demming, NM and Tuscon. When I woke up about 6:00 AM, we were just outside Maricopa, AZ, and running about five hours late. Several times we stopped between Yuma and Palm Springs for freight traffic, adding to the delays. After we finally cleared Palm Springs, it got very slow again and by the time we arrived at Ontario, we were running about six hours late. We made good time from Ontario to Los Angeles, but there were still a lot of upset passengers. At Palm Springs those who had bus connections from LA to Bakersfield were taken off and put on a bus directly to Bakersfield. Other passengers who had train connections at LA were being told to call Amtrak Reservations to be accommodated.

Additionally, Amtrak could do a better job of managing passenger expectations with regards to the schedule. For a route like the Sunset Limited, which is almost always several hours late, it would make sense to me that Amtrak studies where the delays are occurring, and adjusts the schedule to allow for more time between station stops where delays are common. This would at least provide a schedule that's more realistic, and keep passengers from scheduling connections that look good on the schedule but in reality are almost never possible to make. This part of the equation is under Amtrak's control.