WeekendTraveler

I received a survey from Amtrak, indicating that Amtrak is considering a new range of sleeping car services, including lie-flat seats, solo rooms and luxury rooms, and gyms, bar cars and cars with coworking spaces. The listed prices were pretty high, indicating that Amtrak intends to go upscale.

If a cruise operator or airline wanted to offer those, that would be great.

But Amtrak? Any transportation operator that does not supervise its onboard employees, and does not focus on ensuring that employees provide good service, can’t succeed with this.

For Amtrak to consider offering luxury trains with bar cars, gyms and premium sleeping cars is ridiculous, given the variable quality of its onboard staff and lack of management focus on having employees provide first-rate customer service.

That’s like Alain Ducasse or Jean-Georges Vongerichten spending millions to open Michelin-starred restaurants, but staffing them with McDonalds workers.

timbeaux

I agree. Let Amtrak do what it is trying to currently do very well instead of catering to the luxury train cruise market.

Bear96

Sounds like an April Fools joke. Can you post a link or a pic of the survey?

WeekendTraveler

It wasn’t a joke. I got it from Amtrak last week by email.

trmbn65

I just received an email today and was wondering if it was legit.

diesteldorf

When I first read this thread, it reminded me of the American Orient Express....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Orient_Express

https://www.american-rails.com/orient.html

I never had the pleasure, or the money to ride it, but I remember prices were very expensive and people that booked expected 5 Star service for what they paid. It would be challenging for Amtrak to offer a luxury service, while still dealing with the host railroads, and having to tell customers that many things related to on-time performance are beyond their control.

However, I've heard that VIA Rail's Canadian is run largely for tourists and does quite well, so maybe Amtrak has hope.

worldwidedreamer

As someone who has travelled Emeryville-Seattle twice and Chicago-NoLa once in sleeper cars…and occasionally makes the bad life choice to take the California Zephyr between Reno
and SF…always thought about Amtrak as a “land cruise” but never as a luxury experience.

jamiel

I got it as well. There were a lot of questions with alternatives (would you prefer this combination of features and benefits, or that combination). They were comparing luxury buses, luxury trains and flights in my survey. I had to giggle when they were using a 55% on time metric for the train comparisons. The pricing for the train options was high to ludicrous.

fastflyer

Among my Amtrak sleeping car memories:

A beautiful scene out the windows in eastern Montana and a reasonably pleasant lunch served in the dining car came to a sudden end, when... At the opposite end, a hysterical, overweight Amtrak attendant started screaming at a group of presumably coach pax who had tried to pay by check. Amtrak had just gone "cashless" as I recall. Even after the woman proffered alternate payment, this Amtrak crew-member persisted. She screamed for at least ten more minutes, and her girth stopped anyone from entering or leaving the diner. She had just "had it" with clueless passengers and their demands (in this case to pay with a newly unacceptable method). This led into a rant about tips and employee benefits, etc., etc.

The sleeping car attendant who encouraged a prepay of his gratuity as we departed Chicago for L.A., and then disappeared until Albuquerque. I had to get help to make up the beds the first day, and fortunately the next car attendant had plenty of ice. I am generally independent when in a stateroom -- I bring my own music, my own liquor, my own wine for the diner, etc, But even then, a few things are still needed (towels for the shower, bedding, ice).

Amtrak would be well served by replacing its long-distance crew with robots, and I think this could be feasibly done with current technology (Food/ water/ ice delivery; bedding and towel changes, general cleaning). Just keep the two dudes downstairs on the grill, one at the bar/ cafe, and maybe a conductor or two to manage entry/ exit.

WeekendTraveler

Exactly! Does Amtrak not know or care how much business it loses because of the variable quality in sleeping car crews? I don’t need bell- particularly from some of the monsters I’ve dealt with on Amtrak.

I fly multiple flights per week and Delta has really nice crews; American also has plenty of great employees. Why does Amtrak seem to have a disproportionately high number of nasty crew members, and why would anyone who hates customers work in a customer service job?

ND76

Why doesn't a person in Amtrak management simply go to Europe and spend a month or two riding all the different train services there and then getting Talgo, Alstom or Hitachi to build them the rolling stock that the different European rail operators use for these services. For example, they could start in Switzerland and take the overnight sleeper train Zurich-Geneva-Barcelona. This train has both single and double room sleepers. They could get on a French overnight train and check out the couchette cars, where there are four and six person lie flat places per compartment. Other sleeper trains have "angle-flat" chair seats. One very experienced operator of overnight trains is the Austrian federal railway (OEBB).

On this subject, I don't understand why Amtrak needs elaborate locomotives for short passenger trains when self-propelled diesel cars are available; they operate on a number of British lines as well as in Scandinavia. The Amtrak Cascades train service shows that someone either at Amtrak or in the Washington or Oregon state transportation departments has traveled in Europe and seen the superior train cars there.

WeekendTraveler

US standards for crash protection differ from European standards; US passenger railcars generally have to be much stronger and more resistant to damage in a crash than European ones do. So unfortunately off-the-shelf European equipment won't work in the US.

I agree about the use of locomotives on short passenger trains. Amtrak tends to overdo it; 2 locomotives provide way more horsepower for an 8-car Crescent than is needed, too, and I understand that Amtrak uses two because of the risk that one could break down, as ridiculous as that sounds (so Amtrak spends millions to run extra locomotives for that reason?). But perhaps the costs of building custom equipment for short trains was not reasonable. And Amtrak has new equipment coming soon that should reduce the need for separate locomotives.

GrayAnderson

I think, realistically, the plan wouldn't be to do "land cruises" but to do something like what VIA does with the Prestige cars on the Canadian (2-3 cars on the back of a train, with an enhanced experience in those cars).