First, the chef was not discontinued, he still runs the kitchen on every trip. Amtrak did drop the assistant chef recently, as well as one waiter, along with glassware.
Next, there are still a few things that are actually cooked on board, like the omlette for breakfast, but most things are not. However even as recently as last year, most meals were not cooked on board. All chicken dishes, fish dishes, and many other things were prepared off the train and simply heated in convection ovens.
Prior to this change, the only things cooked onboard were eggs to order, French Toast, pancakes, and steaks. Almost everything else was simply heated up.
As for the lounge cars, Amtrak never had the money to build nicer cars for the east coast. And the cars used out west won't fit through the tunnels here in the east. Not to mention that Amtrak doesn't have enough of the western lounges to spare for use on the east coast.
Finally with regard to the time keeping, adding time simply doesn't help. The Silver Meteor has added one hour of running time since 2000, and it is still late thanks to CSX not giving Amtrak priority over freight trains like they are supposed to. When Amtrak increases the time, the freight companies simply take advantage of that and delay Amtrak still further.
One of the worst examples is the Sunset Limited, which runs across the bottom of the country from LA to Orlando, although right now it's stopping in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina. Back in 1999 / 2000 this train was typically late by 5 to 6 hours. Since that time Amtrak has increased the scheduled running time by 12 and 1/2 hours. Yet this train is still running an average of 5 to 6 hours late thanks to Union Pacific's dispatching.
UP simply took advantage of all that padding and yet they still continue to interfere with the running of this train.
What Amtrak needs is concerned citizens to write their Congressmen and complain to them to get this problem fixed. Congress needs to fix the problem of freight interference, since Amtrak has no power to do so.