BobKinkaid

And, to add to this, a bit of perspective: When Amtrak was formed (originally called "RailPax", in 1969), the railroads were actively lobbying Congress to let them drop all passenger service, as they were bleeding losses, ever since the USPS dropped the mail contracts in 1967, in favor of trucks and civil aviation, which was being promoted at the time. Dropping the postal contracts was the death knell for the US passenger train, as it was the only financial thread keeping the trains operating. Passenger counts were dropping for many reasons, in large part, due to the ongoing development of the interstate highway system, but also because air travel was becoming less expensive and many schedule frequencies, making it more available to the general public.

The railroads had their own tricks to add to the pile, by actively discouraging passenger patronage, so they could make cases in front of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) that no one was using the service and it was unfair to force them to lose money. The railroads would have gruff conductors mistreat passengers, terminate dining and sleeping car services on long distance trains, establish extremely inconvenient schedules and deliberately schedule trains going to onward destinations to leave shortly before the arrival of the trains feeding them the passengers.

So, the railroads, correctly observing that, in general, government made this mess, through the tar pit called the ICC and shifting postal traffic to trucks and airplanes, said: "Ok, you made this mess, now you fix it". That fix, in 1969, promulgated by the Nixon administration, was called RailPax.

The deal the government made to the railroads to get out of having to operate passenger trains was to capitalize the new RailPax corporation, later renamed National Railroad Passenger Corporation, (operating under the trade name "Amtrak"), by doing the following:

1) Contribute all of their cars, locomotives, maintenance facilities - any capital plant dedicated to passenger service

2) Contribute the equivalent of the last two years of financial losses into the corporation

3) Shift all of the employees they had, who were dedicated to passenger service

Almost all of the railroads went along with this, except the Southern Railroad which operated the "Southern Crescent" from DC to New Orleans, The Rock Island, which didn't have a enough money to make the contribution, so continued to operate their limited service and the Denver, Rio Grande & Western RR, which continued to operate their segment of the famous "California Zephyr" from Denver to Salt Lake City.

As a side note, the Santa Fe almost didn't go along with this, but ultimately did. With Amtrak, went the famous "Super Chief". But, the Santa Fe, observing how pitifully Amtrak operated their famous namesake train, would not let Amtrak use the name "Super Chief" and forced them to change it to the "Southwest Chief" or the "Southwest Limited", I forget which.

Anyway, to arc back to the point, railroads saw this as a great opportunity to get rid of their "dead wood" and a lot of these people went to Amtrak.

That's part of the genesis of the problem, is that this culture has persisted through Amtrak's troubled and sorry history. Until the corporate culture is changed, from within or without, they will always be a marginal transportation choice and never grow to what they could be, if they were operated privately.

Today, it's a cross between a social engineering project and a government agency. The result is a transportation product that's irrelevant to today's market.

BobKinkaid

I would be willing to make that bet with you. I think you're right on target with that. But, there have also been many organizations that operate under the similar, disadvantageous and adverse conditions, whose employees have formed a sort of "esprit de corps" attitude/culture and soldier on, more often to success.

That's not present at Amtrak.

Daze

Without any current specifics, it sounds to me like your complaints regarding running out of food and surly crews are accurate...for about the 1993-1998 period. I'll echo AlanB and suggest you take a trip or two on Amtrak instead of rehashing old complaints. You might be surprised at what you find. Daze

AlanB

No sir, and again with respect, the issue in my post was that anyone who thinks that dining car employees throw stubby pencils at their charges needs to update their experiences before making the type of statements that you've made. Your experiences are years out of date.

Now I'm not suggesting that Amtrak is perfect. It isn't. Far from it in fact. But it is also not as bad as you're making it out to be and again, IMHO that comes back to your dated experiences on the trains.

Amtrak orders its food from an airline caterer, Aramark. And again, as I noted, the airlines have it much easier. They don't have to guess how many passengers might eat the meal; it's a pretty safe bet that most will. And the airlines know how many they'll have on the flight generally in time to order enough food with a few extra's thrown in for last minute bookings and to provide for too many people choosing one type of meal over the other, assuming that they are even offering a choice.

Don't think that I've ever seen and airplane land just to put on extra meals.

As for Amtrak, it costs money to have Aramark setup service points along a train's run. Aramark isn't going to do that for free. And there is also the issue of spoilage. A meal not eaten on a flight is only hours old and can often be put on another flight. A meal loaded in Chicago and not eaten is now 2 days old, and nearly 3, when it gets to LA. And it will be 3 days old before it can get on another train out of LA.

I won't even get into the issues with inventory control that also make things vastly different for an airline from Amtrak.

Again, a dated observation. They don't consistently run out of food and I know that from first hand experience as I covered more than 12,000 miles on Amtrak last year, including trips to the west coast from NYC and to St. Louis.

And they do use today's technology on NEC trains for example, where cafe attendants on all trains will phone in for supplies on trains running through NY or DC. Acela First Class attendants do the same for trains that run through NY.

But when you're under a Congressional mandate to cut your food service losses, you don't start opening commissaries or even having Aramark deliver things directly to a train in Denver or Albuquerque or Savannah.

MrChu

So just like any other day I wait for the Regional on the NEC and here comes the Acela scheduled few minutes before it. As usual there are several Amtrak employees waiting to travel. After customers with Acela tickets get in, a few Regional customers try to get into the Acela assuming that any ticket works. The conductor yells at them and gives them a piece of mind about the train being reserved and valid ticket is required to board it. All well and good but just before he closes the Cafe car door he lets in about 5-6 Amtrak employees on the Acela. From what I have heard Amtrak employees are prohibited from traveling on the Acela using their badges except for certain situations. But of course there folks happily get on the Acela without any tickets. They sure do have a sense of entitlement!

Pup

I was wondering about that, since I accidentally made the error of filling out what I wanted on the menu, in addition to signing my name (bedroom car), and the waitress politely corrected me.

In fact, over the last three or four years, it seems there's been an improvement in both on-time service and politeness of employees. I can only speak about long-distance trains in the midwest and south, but I've noticed a difference that started with the bedroom attendants and, to my surprise, since I hadn't taken coach for a while, spread to the coach employees on the last trip a couple weeks ago. Curious if anyone else has noticed a difference between, say, 3-4 years ago and the last year, or maybe my luck has just improved.

GoAmtrak

Employee flash pass travel on Acela is allowed, though it may be a bit more restrictive than usual. Acela F is space-available to employees for a surcharge.

MrChu

Thanks for the information. They were probably legit but because I have usually seen these folks on my Regional and the fact that they waited and boarded right before door closing made it look a little dodgy!

trainman74

On the Coast Starlight on Thursday, I stopped one of my table companions from filling out the check herself -- she said it was her first time on a long-distance train, so I assume she wasn't remembering the procedure from years back.