# Silver Star Update



## Anderson (Jul 21, 2015)

I'm running brute force checks on the Silver Service for availability right now. The short version is that the Star is regularly sold out RGH-DLD right now (and is selling out a _lot_ more than the Meteor WAS-DLD). Now, it seems that there's a wacky game afoot with the buckets for the Star are _massively_ lower than those on the Meteor.

ORL-WAS I find the following roomette buckets for each train (coach prices unchanged):

Bucket Star Meteor
(1) $159 $277
(2) $188 $371
(3) $221 $470
(4) $553With the coach fare ($123) added, this gives:

```
Bucket  Star  Meteor
(1)     $282  $400
(2)     $311  $494
(3)     $344  $593
(4)           $676
```
What this tells me is that there may be a concerted effort on the part of management to grossly underprice the Star, but I'm not sure what the game is. The differential is massive (the Star is always the cheaper of the two by at least $56, and on some days you're looking at over $330 more for the Meteor). The way I see it, management is doing one of three things:
(1) They're sandbagging the Star's sleeper revenue. This would sabotage the diner-free experiment because frankly, the train could run slam full and still bring in less revenue (e.g. "We lost more in reduced revenue than we saved by cutting the diner!").
(2) They're spiking the Star's ridership numbers. This is the opposite of #1, since showing a massive swell in ridership amid the experiment would seem to validate it (e.g. "A cheaper sleeper product can sell a huge amount of space! Give us more sleepers!").
(3) They panicked at the mass of cancellations and overcompensated with lower fares. I heard rumblings of "thousands" of cancellations in response to the diner cut, so it is quite possible that someone slammed the "PANIC" button and dropped fares even further to prevent a massive loss of ridership.
I really can't decide between the three explanations (I frankly lean towards #1). As it stands, if what's showing on Amsnag pans out it seems like the Star could add quite a few riders but lose enough in revenue that the diner removal still shows as a "failure".


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## Bob Dylan (Jul 21, 2015)

Nice analysis Cliff! Maybe all 3 are true??!!!

Another factor is the OBS bidding off the Star, one of the Best SCAs in Amtrak now only works the Meteor and I'm sure others with the Seniority have done the same! ( as I've said, who would want to work or ride the Star from MIA-NYP without a Diner, especially passengers that use AGR Points???!!!!)

In a way this expierement is a return to Slumber Coach days , albiet @ Higher Prices, without a Diner!!

I know one of our members is going to use the Star WAS-Florida during the Gathering, I,'m looking forward to other members reports that try it out!


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## Mystic River Dragon (Jul 21, 2015)

Jim--

An anecdote to add to your observations above. I ran into one of the terrific SCAs (I will not name him for his own protection) when it stopped in TRE during my commuting change, way before the experiment started. He told me the OBS were not happy about losing the dining car, and to write a letter to bring back it back (unfortunately the train had to get going, so no time to ask him who to write to), and he also said he was going to try to switch to the Meteor.


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## PRR 60 (Jul 21, 2015)

All evidence from the air travel world is that price rules the decision process. People will whine and complain about lack of service, but then will knowingly buy the lowest price option regardless of the service offered. How many times on this board have we seen calls for the return of the Slumbercoach? Isn't this Silver Star sleeper experiment really like a Slumbercoach - just a room with minimal frills?

Except for a few markets, anyone traveling between the northeast and Florida has a choice between a full-service option and a lower-cost, no-frills option. Evidence seems to suggest the no-frills option is winning.


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## Karl1459 (Jul 21, 2015)

What is the sleeper subsidy for a diner? Could the price difference simply be that subsidy?


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## Bob Dylan (Jul 21, 2015)

Bill: you are correct but Plane trips only last a few Hours ( International Flights still feed you). 30+ Hours without a Diner on a Sold Our Train and only a Cafe, with one OBS to service it, seems like a poor idea!

As I said, I'm a big advocate for Slumber Coaches and affordable options, but having a Diner available for those that want to pay for sit down meals seems a better way to roll.


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## Cho Cho Charlie (Jul 21, 2015)

jimhudson said:


> As I said, I'm a big advocate for Slumber Coaches and affordable options, but having a Diner available for those that want to pay for sit down meals seems a better way to roll.


I have to agree. It would be nice for there to have been still be a diner, where I could make a reservation, have a nice sit-down meal, and spend (some? most?) of the sleeper fare savings.


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## City of Miami (Jul 21, 2015)

Bearing in mind that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one, I incline toward PRR60 and Karl's thoughts.

Why attribute dark manipulative activity to the ne'er-do-well Amtrak management? Because it's fun!!  This is what we do here when there is little or no fact to go on. Imagine what we could do second guessing BP Petroleum! :giggle:


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## jis (Jul 21, 2015)

Oddly enough in most matters Amtrak management is presented here as at least borderline if not totally incompetent, and yet when it comes to manipulation as theorized here they seem to become doyens of efficiency! Is that a realistic and believable position? I think not.

BTW Jim, even on 15 hour intercontinental flights people almost always tend to choose the lowest fare even if it involves 10 abreast on 777 with 30" pitch! So I believe in general lower fare will always win out as PRR said, no matter how long the trip.

People will bring their mini fridges and micro microwaves  along if necessary, but almost no one will pass up on a bargain!


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## VentureForth (Jul 21, 2015)

Well, remember they took out a sleeper, too. So now, instead of running with two Viewliners, they're only running with one. So, the sellouts are MUCH more abundant.

From where I am on the East Coast, I would probably LOVE to ride a bargain Star for access to a shower. BUT, I would also be willing to pay FULL price for dinner in the Diner. Since I usually travel alone, it'd still save off the 2-pax food surcharge included in the typical sleeper fare.

But alas, the 1 AM NB and 4 AM SB calling times of the Star in Savannah really suck, so I'll be much more inclined to enjoy the Meteor. With AGR points, of course!


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## Anderson (Jul 21, 2015)

VentureForth said:


> Well, remember they took out a sleeper, too. So now, instead of running with two Viewliners, they're only running with one. So, the sellouts are MUCH more abundant.
> 
> From where I am on the East Coast, I would probably LOVE to ride a bargain Star for access to a shower. BUT, I would also be willing to pay FULL price for dinner in the Diner. Since I usually travel alone, it'd still save off the 2-pax food surcharge included in the typical sleeper fare.
> 
> But alas, the 1 AM NB and 4 AM SB calling times of the Star in Savannah really suck, so I'll be much more inclined to enjoy the Meteor. With AGR points, of course!


Did they? I was still counting two sleepers when I rode it over the 4th. I'd have something for you on the Star today, but the train is running stupidly late and I think I'm going to be on the Carolinian instead (sigh).

FWIW, I'm basing my thoughts here on three points:

(1) IIRC fare cut was initially supposed to be a lot smaller (I'm thinking less than $100 off a one-way fare; I think I heard they were shooting for about $65 off of Florida to the NEC, which would roughly correspond to 3-4 meals for a single passenger). The slashing has been based on that to begin with, but it seems to have wound up a heck of a lot larger.

(2) There are only four buckets in use on the Meteor and three on the Star. The price difference between buckets on the Star is _way_ below normal (about 20-25% versus the usual variations of around 100%) and there are usually five buckets per train on the sleeper side (four in coach, with the "fifth" being the "discount" bucket which doesn't tend to count against the fare differential limits). The Meteor "should" have a cheaper bucket at the bottom ($400 for the cheapest room on the Meteor is rather high) and the Star "should" have a higher top bucket (or two), suggesting that someone is purposefully not programming those into the system.

(3) At least one of Amtrak's people seemed to be giving off a dog whistle to NARP of "please take this train and then call in to complain".


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## jis (Jul 21, 2015)

No. They did not take out a Sleeper from the Star.


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## Anderson (Jul 21, 2015)

jis,

Thanks. I was pretty sure that hadn't panned out but I wanted to be sure.

One other thought: Just because I think management is trying to be slick doesn't mean I think they're being smart about it...


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## Devil's Advocate (Jul 21, 2015)

PRR 60 said:


> All evidence from the air travel world is that price rules the decision process. People will whine and complain about lack of service, but then will knowingly buy the lowest price option regardless of the service offered.


The airlines may claim that nobody is willing to pay more but in many cases they either ignore or gloss over pitch during the booking process and the only options they provide are cheap cramped seats, double cost coach seats with slightly improved legroom, or triple cost seats up front. Double cost may not sound like much but on the flights where it truly matters that option can add another thousand dollars or more. Does that sound like a simple buy-up choice to you?

Programs such as MRTC that ran counter to this assumption were poorly advertised and were quickly reversed before a new purchasing trend could develop. Pre-approved business class has been dropped from many corporate policies without being replaced with a formal Y+ policy. Meanwhile those of us who are likely to pay up for Y+ out of pocket are often stuck with expensive middle seats due to everything else having already been reserved by hoards of first and second tier repeats.



jis said:


> BTW Jim, even on 15 hour intercontinental flights people almost always tend to choose the lowest fare even if it involves 10 abreast on 777 with 30" pitch! So I believe in general lower fare will always win out as PRR said, no matter how long the trip. People will bring their mini fridges and micro microwaves  along if necessary, but almost no one will pass up on a bargain!


In my experience most travelers have no clue what the pitch is before they board. The first time I ever noticed a booking page drawing any sort of attention to legroom in coach was on Google Flights a couple months ago, and even then they're only referring to the nonstandard self-reported seat pitch that leaves most of the story to the imagination. By the time you find out if it's enough room for your body type it's too late.

So maybe you put a bit more effort into your next flight and pick another carrier only to get stuck with the same room even though the pitch is reported as larger. So maybe you spend hours reading up on seat designs and aircraft routes and you pick yet another carrier with an actual improvement in seat room. Unfortunately between the time you ticketed and flew the route your the airline unilaterally modified their pitch and/or seats and/or aircraft on that route without any requirement to notify you ahead of time.

Casual customers are generally blind to the decisions that put them in a lousy seat. Nearly every major airport I've visited had some sort of luggage size checker but not even a single airport I've visited has ever had a coach seat checker to make sure your own body will fit comfortably with today's perpetually decreasing width and pitch before boarding. So how are people supposed to make informed decisions on what is right for them?

Even if casual consumers were aware of the options they'd often be faced with paying double the cost for a generic coach seat with slightly better room or triple the cost up front. Here we are blaming the customer for not choosing better seats even though we don't provide any easy tools or useful information for doing so. Kind of like blaming the customer for being suckered into a bait and switch.


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## VentureForth (Jul 21, 2015)

OK - I guess I was wrong. Based that on a photo I thought I saw of a recent Star. Glad to know that a sleeper hasn't been cut.

Here's some of the number crunching I did back in April:

http://discuss.amtraktrains.com/index.php?/topic/63823-silver-star-sleeper-update/page-11&do=findComment&comment=595100

Note that the fare delta back then was also about $120 between diner/no diner.


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## jis (Jul 21, 2015)

I cannot understand how Amtrak management would be able to figure out what the price point without food is where there is no loss in ridership without varying the price points over this period. Figuring that out is important to be able to show that the net loss in revenue is more than the losses in Diner service or not.

So while we can ***** and moan all we like based on our inflated idea of our skills in price demand elasticity management, to me what they are doing sounds very rational, I don't see much evidence of ulterior motives.


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## Bob Dylan (Jul 21, 2015)

I don't disagree with Bill and jis, people like bargains including me!

But my point is why would you work or ride the Star for 30 Hours when there is No Diner,( especially using AGR Points!!!) just a Cafe for a full train that will probably run out of stuff in the middle of the trip?

As I said, I love the idea ofSlumber Coaches and would ride the Star on a bargain Sleeper Fare IF there was the option to have a Paid meal or two in the Diner!

Why not give the customers a Choice by having the Diner for those that want to pay full fare including meals and those that want the discounted Sleeper Price that would pay for their food and beverages or turn the Star into the new Chicken Bone Express?

Wouldn't that be a better comparison with the Meteor, you would have compatable and better data for your study and not be comparing apples to oranges, even if most people will usually take the best deal they can get on transportation fares!

Win/Win! No matter what Amtrak Managements intention is for this scheme! YMMV.


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## OlympianHiawatha (Jul 21, 2015)

jimhudson said:


> Why not give the customers a Choice by having the Diner for those that want to pay full fare including meals and those that want the discounted Sleeper Price that would pay for their food and beverages or turn the Star into the new Chicken Bone Express?


That is too easy and logical of a choice that could be made without years of multiple studies, experiments and committees. Hence it will probably never happen. :unsure: :huh:


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## jis (Jul 21, 2015)

Add to this the fact that two or three of the Heritage Diners are past a major overhaul point that would cost a lot to keep running another few months and you start seeing the logic for removing the need for four Diners from the available pool.

Now if the new Diners don't start showing up by January they will be in a bit of a soup.


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## VentureForth (Jul 21, 2015)

I wonder if they are constantly sold out, they added ANOTHER sleeper on, AND they added the diner back as cash only what the results would be.


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## niemi24s (Jul 21, 2015)

Inspired by Anderson's analysis, I did a similar one. My Amsnag searches covered the 22 Jul 2015 through 31 Jan 2016 period for the Silver Star & Meteor but, unlike Anderson's, the end points were NYP and MIA. The different Coach and Roomette fares for each train during this period are shown below. The lowest and highest total fares during that period are also shown as well as the price difference between the roomette buckets. Note that it is _possible_ to pay $9 more for a roomette on the Silver Star but probably on a different date of travel.

STAR METEOR ROOMETTE

COACH ROOMETTE COACH ROOMETTE DIFFERENCE

144 168 144 292 124

189 199 189 391 192

246 234 246 496 262

320 301 320 584 283

312 & 554 <LOW & HIGH _TOTAL_ FARES> 436 & 830

Please don't be tricked into thinking the high coach and high roomette buckets occur on the same date(s) as some of the low ones can. I've saved all sixteen Amsnag searches done this morning. If anybody wants to go blind noodling with the numbers, If so, PM me know and I'll send them your way. There were seven dates during this period for which Amsnag (for some unknown reason) did not respond with any fares and I have no idea if inclusion of that missing data would change anything.

Cheers


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## Cho Cho Charlie (Jul 21, 2015)

Thanks niemi24s.

I am intrigued that coach between the Star and the Meteor are the same (equivalent). Kind of, at least to my way of thinking, makes the roomette fare differences all attributable to Diner Food (or the lack thereof).


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## OlympianHiawatha (Jul 21, 2015)

If I was traveling in Coach and the train had no proper Diner, I sure would not want to pay the same fare as for a train that does carry full food service.


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## dlagrua (Jul 21, 2015)

I have no idea what the ultimate goal is on the dining service. I don't care how low the fares go, we will not travel on an overnight train without dining car service. The only exception has been our occasional trip on the Cardinal. While the train has an abbreviated menu at least you can be served and sit down at a table albeit one with a paper table cover.

We always opt for the highest level of bedroom service when we travel long distance. Amtrak will soon discover that for the prices travelers pay they cannot run their operation like New Jersey transit and expect the road to profitability. BTW, NJ Transit with its barebones commuter service, still loses money. I believe that NJ Transit is funded to the tune of $300 million per year. IIRC that's 25% of the entire federal funding budget of the nationwide Amtrak system.


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## Paulus (Jul 22, 2015)

jimhudson said:


> Bill: you are correct but Plane trips only last a few Hours ( International Flights still feed you). 30+ Hours without a Diner on a Sold Our Train and only a Cafe, with one OBS to service it, seems like a poor idea!


~52% of Silver Star sleeper passengers, and ~86% of all Silver Star passengers, travel less than 1,000 miles (~20 hours). Only 6% of sleeper passengers, and 2% of all passengers, ride it for the full 30+ hour duration. That's plenty bearable, especially if you're asleep for much of it.


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## neroden (Jul 22, 2015)

VentureForth said:


> I wonder if they are constantly sold out, they added ANOTHER sleeper on, AND they added the diner back as cash only what the results would be.


Yeah...

So, I just ran a very rough calculation. Assume that by losing the diner, Amtrak is losing $120 per roomette and $240 per bedroom per night (roomette number from other people's measurements, bedroom number a WAG based on the roomette number). But assume that Amtrak is gaining an average of $200 per roomette per night by selling the rooms formerly used by the crew and freeing up 5 rooms (WAG number based on intermediate bucket). This would be something like $1.7 million a year lost in revenue, net. (Multiply daily amounts by 365 x 2 for north and south departures. This isn't including any lost coach revenue, but so far there isn't much evidence of significant lost coach revenue on the Star.)

But my latest attempt to compute dining car expenses comes out to about $2.2 million / year (before accounting for lost revenue from occupied roomettes, since I counted that above); $100K per staff member x 5 staff/train x 4 trainsets, $50K maintenance per car x 4 trainsets. (I'm ignoring both the food -- as negligible -- and the coach payments for the food.)

(PS -- thanks Paulus for giving me some sort of order of magnitude number to use for car maintenance on more modern cars. Heritage car maintenance may be significantly higher than that, but probably not more than double, which would come to 2.4 million.)

Now redo the calculations with *three* sleepers. The lost revenue from losing the dining car (net) becomes $3.3 million. The dining car expenses remain $2.2 million. Suddenly the dining car is financially beneficial.

Economies of scale!

Perhaps two sleepers and one diner is worse financially for Amtrak than two sleepers and no diner.

But three sleepers and one diner is better financially for Amtrak than three sleepers and no diner.

And I think we're in consensus that on routes where the demand is there, three sleepers is better financially than two sleepers...

Looks to me like the Star should be beefed up to three sleepers along with the restoration of its dining car. If the Cardinal ever goes daily, as it should, it is likely to develop enough demand to be beefed up to three sleepers + a dining car too. (The Crescent may benefit from this as well perhaps, though it has the problem of weak demand south of Atlanta.)

Conclusion: All single-level trains with dining cars should have three sleepers minimum. *Amtrak can't get the Viewliner IIs soon enough!*

----

And frankly Amtrak needs even more sleepers. ASAP. Adding a 4th sleeper to the Meteor, one sleeper (no diner) to #66/67, one through sleeper on the Pennsy to the Capitol Limited, 3 sleepers to Atlanta and 1 to New Orleans on the Crescent, 3 sleepers daily on the Cardinal, 3 sleepers on the Star, 4th on the LSL or 2nd on the Pennsy, add 20% shop time and even with the Viewliner IIs, there are no cars left for protect cars.

A reasonable proposal of 3 daily sleepers on every existing eastern train with sleepers, 4 on the Meteor, 1 on #66/67, 3 on the Pennsy/Cap, 6 protect cars, and 20% shop time, gives 90 sleepers desired as opposed to 75 (existing and ordered).

To convert the Cap to single-levels (desirable for consistency with the Pennsy and consistency on the Ohio/Indiana platforms) would call for another 12 sleepers or so; this would also take some pressure off the Superliner sleeper, diner, and lounge fleets. I think there are enough coaches to handle a single-level Cap for now, particularly as the Horizons come free and can be refurbished.

So Amtrak has 50 sleepers and is ordering 25 more; Amtrak needs another 27 on top of that. The original proposed order of 100 back when the Viewliner Is were ordered was about right.

(I also come up with immediately useful applications for 5 more dining cars, based on the above.)

20% shop time may be too much, or maybe protect cars don't need shop time, which would cut these numbers some. Use of bag-dorms might cut the number of sleepers needed a little as well. But it still doesn't change the result that more sleepers are needed.


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## OBS (Jul 22, 2015)

Just some anecdotal information to add to what Nathanael just posted, Years ago, when the Cardinal was running Superliner out of Was., It had NO problem filling 2 Superliner sleepers all summer and most of rest of the year with limited exception of midweek off season travel...


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## jis (Jul 22, 2015)

Nathaniel, the Cap would require only 9 Sleepers to equip each consist with three Sleepers. The Cap needs only three consists.

Basically, the LSL, a single level Cap and a daily Card all with three Sleepers would altogether require 27 Sleepers. The three southern LDs each with 3 Sleepers require 36. Counting 12 for maintenance and protect adds up to 75.

Here is a case where a more reliable schedule that is shorter by a couple of hours could reduce the consist requirement for the Cap to only 2, something which could be within the realm of achievability. Also some rescheduling, added schedule reliability and slight reduction in running time could reduce the consist requirement for the Meteor to 3 from 4. This would enable upping the Sleeper count on two trains selected carefully to 4 from 3.

Shows the incredible importance of schedule reliability and reducing running times as much as possible even within the current constraints.


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## xyzzy (Jul 22, 2015)

Rode 91 yesterday in coach. About half the people brought food of some kind on board. The other half seemed happy with the lounge car. Didn't hear a single complaint about no diner - either the fact that there was no diner, or the fact that coach prices were the same as they were before.

Don't know what the sleeper patronage was, but at the reduced prices I assume it was high. I think the diner is toast if you'll pardon the pun. This is the Southwest Airlines model and it works. Railfans, suck it up.


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## jis (Jul 22, 2015)

OlympianHiawatha said:


> If I was traveling in Coach and the train had no proper Diner, I sure would not want to pay the same fare as for a train that does carry full food service.


AFAICT the Palmetto which has never had a Diner and the Silvers which have had Diners have seemingly had the same Coach buckets for say NYP to SAV. So I don;t think your expectations were ever met on the Atlantic Coast Service.

Looking at Amsnag randomly it looks like the Star Coach is running slightly more in higher bucket than Meteor Coach at least upto Georgia, suggesting that the Coach on it which has the same buckets as on the Meteor is a bit more popular than Meteor. This is partly explained by the fact that the Star touches on more populous places in North Carolina with more frequent train service I suppose.


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## neroden (Jul 22, 2015)

jis said:


> Nathaniel, the Cap would require only 9 Sleepers to equip each consist with three Sleepers. The Cap needs only three consists.traints.


jis: add a protect car in DC (not needed for any other service), and a 20% shop count.
I'm really unsure about those shop count percentages. I wish I could get a better handle on what is a desirable/appropriate shop count. But the last I heard was 20%, although it does seem high.



jis said:


> Shows the incredible importance of schedule reliability and reducing running times as much as possible even within the current constraints.


Certainly. Faster trips mean (a) higher revenue (b) lower operating costs and eventually © less rolling stock needed. South of the Lake I tell you!



> Rode 91 yesterday in coach. About half the people brought food of some kind on board.


Amtrak is going to have to hire additional coach cleaners. And probably reupholster the cars more often. And they're going to find a crunch on carry-on luggage capacity.
There are always tradeoffs, and I'm pretty sure they haven't calculated them.


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## jis (Jul 22, 2015)

neroden said:


> jis said:
> 
> 
> > Nathaniel, the Cap would require only 9 Sleepers to equip each consist with three Sleepers. The Cap needs only three consists.traints.
> ...


I just totaled up the consist counts and then took 20% as shop + protect, which is the way it is done now anyway. Push comes to shove protect cars are easy to move up and down the corridor, using perhaps Sunnyside as the central repository for them. Already if Boston needs a protect it gets it from Sunnyside. No protect Sleeper is kept in Boston.

All that Ivy City has to do is decide as soon as they get the incoming consist on whether all the Sleepers are in ship shape to go back rather than wait until 5 minutes before the consist needs to be released for service.


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## Devil's Advocate (Jul 22, 2015)

xyzzy said:


> Rode 91 yesterday in coach. About half the people brought food of some kind on board. The other half seemed happy with the lounge car. Didn't hear a single complaint about no diner - either the fact that there was no diner, or the fact that coach prices were the same as they were before.


It's also possible that the folks who cared either moved to the Meteor or found other options besides Amtrak. The true impact might take more than a single data point to establish. Ten years of system wide ridership increases implies that there is some additional positive pressure that may overwhelm any short term changes.



xyzzy said:


> Don't know what the sleeper patronage was, but at the reduced prices I assume it was high. I think the diner is toast if you'll pardon the pun. This is the Southwest Airlines model and it works. Railfans, suck it up.


It's also the Southern Pacific model that nearly killed the Sunset Limited.


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## neroden (Jul 22, 2015)

jis said:


> I just totaled up the consist counts and then took 20% as shop + protect, which is the way it is done now anyway.


9 * 1.2 = 10.8, which means roughly 11 cars needed for the Cap to have 3 each for 3 consists.
OK, I'll recalculate. This is conservative:

4 * 4 Meteor

4 * 3 Star

4 * 3 Crescent

3 * 3 Cardinal

3 * 3 Cap (or 3 * 2, shift to Pennsy)

3 * 1 Pennsy/Cap (or 3 * 2, shift from Cap)

3 * 3 LSL

2 * 1 #66/67

-----

72 in use

* 1.2 = 86.4

50 + 25 = 75 < 86.4. By 11.4, or roughly what it would take to equip the Capitol.

Making the Capitol single-level is probably the best way to deal with the shrinking Superliner sleeper / diner / lounge supply in the near future, but to do so more Viewliners are needed.

The real problem is, I can see a commercial case for expanding most of these trains to carry even *more* sleeping cars.

Anyway, mixing up protect cars and shop count isn't actually a good way of counting from a business point of view. It probably works OK for really large numbers, but it fails badly for small classes of cars, like the 26 dining cars. With 21 cars in use at any time, a 20% shop count would call for 4 additional cars; but at least 4 protect cars are required, which leaves no room for anything to actually go in the shop.


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## jis (Jul 22, 2015)

neroden said:


> jis said:
> 
> 
> > I just totaled up the consist counts and then took 20% as shop + protect, which is the way it is done now anyway.
> ...


I don't think protects are computed on a per train basis. They are counted based on the grossed up totals, and distributed as necessary. That is why I did not count anything just for the Cap. I just totaled things up for all single level trains and added 20%. No one will ever keep two Sleepers for protect in Washington DC. Just won;t happen. And Chicago will just keep a pool of probably two cars at most (if that) for the three trains.
Yup I do generally agree with your revised calculations. I was not counting anything for 66/67 or for Pennsy/Cap through cars.

I do observe however if we can reduce the consist need for the Cap to two and for the Meteor to three, and limiting Meteor to 3 Sleepers, we could almost squeeze in the Pennsy and 66/67 within the 75 cars.


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## afigg (Jul 22, 2015)

neroden said:


> Certainly. Faster trips mean (a) higher revenue (b) lower operating costs and eventually © less rolling stock needed. South of the Lake I tell you!


The Silvers and the Palmetto are been doing poorly in the past month for OTP. Lots of 1,2,3 hour late arrivals at the major endpoint stations. Using the Status Maps Archive database tools, the Silvers have been encountering delays between ALX to RVR to PTB, and then the usual delays between PTB and Fayetteville. The good news is that over the next 5-6 years and presumably within the 10-12 year timeframe, Virginia is going to fund significant improvements from ALX to the turnoff to NFK south of PTB. Then Amtrak just needs for CSX to decide that they should fully doubletrack the A-line from south of PTB to south of Selma NC. Easier said than done though.


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## Cho Cho Charlie (Jul 22, 2015)

Paulus said:


> Only 6% of sleeper passengers, and 2% of all passengers, ride it for the full 30+ hour duration.


While I am sure that such is factually correct, I would be more of the mind to think of overnight passengers rather than strictly NYP to MIA/MIA to NYP. The percentage of sleeper and the percentage of all passengers who get on, somewhere, let's say by 6pm (pre dinner), and get off, let's say, after 8am (post breakfast).


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## City of Miami (Jul 22, 2015)

American passenger rail seems to be showing signs of trying to drag itself out of the first half of the 20th century into the first half of the 21st century. And it's about time too! And it's a struggle every inch of the way. Not just Amtrak - all passenger rail transportation, included CAHSR, the TX project, FEC/AAF meet obstacles and resistance from every imagined and unimagined source. Funding woes, ancient infrasturcture woes, old and inappropriate ROWs, resistance from freight RRs, resistance from NIMBYs and on and on.
If Amtrak is to remake itself into a transportation company as the US Congress seems to desire it has to focus on getting folks from A to B in ways that are appealing to folks wanting to get to B from A - not on steaks, not on rotating menus, not on white cloth tablecovers, not on sitdown table service in an incredibly difficult & expensive faux restaurant setting. We know how hard and unrealistic it is because we constantly complain about it!! It no longer works and Amtrak looks like they realize that and are trying to figure out what the 21st century picture looks like. For those who continue to like a nostalgic taste of early 20th century rail travel there are quite a few options available - private non-subsidized companies where you will get what you pay for.
What Amtrak is going to do with 25 new diners I don't know - perhaps modify them to something more useful.


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## JoeBas (Jul 22, 2015)

City of Miami said:


> What Amtrak is going to do with 25 new diners I don't know - perhaps modify them to something more useful.


This is why we can't have nice things.


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## jis (Jul 22, 2015)

There will always be food service with food available for purchase. Whether that is done in an environment with wait staff or with a buffet self bussed arrangement is one thing to be settled. The other is the variety of items to be made available on the menu. I don't think anything is off the table. But I do doubt very much that we are headed towards SP style automats.


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## niemi24s (Jul 22, 2015)

Cho Cho Charlie said:


> The percentage of sleeper and the percentage of all passengers who get on, somewhere, let's say by 6pm (pre dinner), and get off, let's say, after 8am (post breakfast).


Maybe that could be figured using the data here: http://www.narprail.org/our-issues/ridership-statistics/ And maybe that's why Anderson chose WAS & ORL as the end points.

Q for Anderson: Is that why you picked WAS & ORL?


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## xyzzy (Jul 22, 2015)

Devil's Advocate said:


> xyzzy said:
> 
> 
> > Rode 91 yesterday in coach. About half the people brought food of some kind on board. The other half seemed happy with the lounge car. Didn't hear a single complaint about no diner - either the fact that there was no diner, or the fact that coach prices were the same as they were before.
> ...


I rode in the shorts car where (by definition) everyone on board leaving DC southbound will detrain north of Savannah. Most were headed to Raleigh or Columbia... no Meteor or Palmetto for them. Amtrak knows that people who ride end-to-end are already on the Meteor. That's why your second point is apples and oranges. The Star has mostly a short-distance clientele, intra-Florida on the one hand and NEC-Carolinas on the other. Either type of patron can do without the diner.


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## Cho Cho Charlie (Jul 22, 2015)

niemi24s said:


> Cho Cho Charlie said:
> 
> 
> > The percentage of sleeper and the percentage of all passengers who get on, somewhere, let's say by 6pm (pre dinner), and get off, let's say, after 8am (post breakfast).
> ...


Paulus had that only 6% of sleeper passengers go between NYP and MIA. I was afraid that such might imply that the other 94% of sleeper passengers only travel for a short couple of stops (and have no need for any meals), and was hoping to get some clarification on that point.


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## afigg (Jul 22, 2015)

Cho Cho Charlie said:


> Paulus had that only 6% of sleeper passengers go between NYP and MIA. I was afraid that such might imply that the other 94% of sleeper passengers only travel for a short couple of stops (and have no need for any meals), and was hoping to get some clarification on that point.


Selecting NYP and MIA is a selective subset of the ridership stats for the Silvers. Orlando is a busier station for both the Meteor and Star than Miami. The top two city pairs by revenue for the Star are NYP-ORL and NYP to Tampa. The top two city pairs by both revenue and ridership for the Meteor are NYP-ORL and WAS-ORL. The Star gets a fair amount of intrastate FL business with TPA-MIA and TPA-WPB as the top two city pairs by ridership.
According to the 2013 NARP stats sheets, the average trip distance for the Star in coach was 471 miles and 844 miles for sleeper class. So the average trip in coach for the Star is still a longer distance then the NEC from WAS to BOS (457 miles). For the Meteor, the average trip in coach was 567 miles and 925 miles for sleeper class. Longer average distances than the Star, but not by a huge amount.


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## niemi24s (Jul 22, 2015)

One thing that _might _need to be considered when eventually comparing any cost savings due to elimination of the Star Diner - by comparison with the Meteor - is the number of meals available in their Diners on a round trip prior to the test period (hope I have these figured correctly):

• For NYP <> MIA, 10 meals are available on the Star but only 7 on the Meteor

• For WAS <> ORL, 4 meals are available on the Star but only 3 on the Meteor

Please note that the fourth word is _might_, as I have no idea how the comparison will be made. Maybe the number of meals available makes no difference - I just don't know.


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## neroden (Jul 24, 2015)

niemi24s said:


> One thing that _might _need to be considered when eventually comparing any cost savings due to elimination of the Star Diner - by comparison with the Meteor - is the number of meals available in their Diners on a round trip prior to the test period (hope I have these figured correctly):
> 
> • For NYP <> MIA, 10 meals are available on the Star but only 7 on the Meteor
> 
> ...


OK. My estimates, which may be wrong (but probably aren't), are that the actual cost of food is insignificant to the costs of dining car operation. The *duration of the train's journey*, which determines the hours of wages paid to the OBS staff, is significant, but the actual number of meals is insigificant.

More meals served means more revenue, however. So more meals is actually better financially for the dining car, if you keep the number of hours on the train constant. (And why doesn't the eastbound LSL offer dinner, again?)


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## neroden (Jul 24, 2015)

jis said:


> neroden said:
> 
> 
> > jis said:
> ...


When I was counting protect cars individually, I was specifically assigning one each to Miami, New Orleans, and Chicago, and two to New York (or one to New York and one to Boston). For the Cap to be single-level, I figured one really ought to add one at DC. This number doesn't scale according to the number of cars in use; it's just a baseline.


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## jis (Jul 24, 2015)

I have always been of the opinion that the eastbound LSL should do a one hour to one and a half hour dinner starting immediately after departure from Albany if running on time. But multiple feedback to Amtrak to that effect has had no effect. I think they went into their circular file.


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## neroden (Jul 24, 2015)

xyzzy said:


> The Star has mostly a short-distance clientele, intra-Florida on the one hand and NEC-Carolinas on the other. Either type of patron can do without the diner.


Absolute nonsense: you've apparently forgotten Tampa. Tampa-(North Carolina, Virginia, NEC) is a major market for the Star.


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## xyzzy (Jul 24, 2015)

Ride the southbound Star. Count heads in coach departing Alexandria, count again departing Columbia (although some of these will have boarded at Raleigh), and count a third time departing Tampa. You'll see the difference.


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## Ryan (Jul 24, 2015)

For those of us that don't have the luxury of a two day train ride, perhaps you can elaborate on what you're trying to say.


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## Seaboard92 (Jul 24, 2015)

Being from Columbia I can vouch for the intermediate traffic better then most. I normally board in Camden because the Columbia station tends to be very crowded almost like organized chaos. Every time I have gone to CLB to watch the train pull in or to ride I have noticed a fairly substantial crowd board (30-40+) in the coaches. One needs to remember the market for the Columbia station isn't just the Columbia metro. It is Spartanburg, Greenville, Anderson, Rock Hill, Asheville, and Charlotte for passengers headed to Florida. Headed north its a more localized market but it still has about the same ridership going north. Columbia also picks up some of the low country market and midlands markets as well, but those passengers have the choice of the Silver Meteor, Silver Star, and Palmetto. And its not uncommon for a few rooms to be vacated or board at Columbia as well.

Note: This is my train from one of my stations so I do have a obvious bias towards it.


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## WoodyinNYC (Jul 24, 2015)

neroden said:


> jis said:
> 
> 
> > neroden said:
> ...


On protect cars in general, not necessarily in this instance but maybe so, I feel like there's an "insurance factor".

That is, if Amtrak has one train running to New Orleans, two to Miami, and two different trains to Chicago, it could need at least one protect car in Miami, New Orleans, Chicago, plus 5 or 6 in NYC. (I'm ignoring Savannah here because no diner unless the Palmetto gets extended to Florida.) Because the "insurance risk" is that one car could go out of service on any one of these trains.

But if more trains are added out of NYC so there's four trains to Chicago (a second _Lake Shore_ and a _Broadway Ltd._) and three to Miami (the _Palmetto_ restored to _Silver Palm_ status), the risk that *two* of all these NYC trains will have a car go out of service on the same day is much lower than the chance that any *one *will. So adding three trains out of NYC should not require three more protect cars, Two more should cover the risk nicely, maybe only one more protect car operating at a slightly higher risk tolerance.

So growing Amtrak service substantially should not require quite as many protect cars. If we're talking the Viewliner order, that would save about $2.3 million per car, not nothing.

With the risk spread over a larger number of cars and trains, the "insurance cost per car/per train" could be cut. Merely one more car or one more train won't help expand the insured base enuff to spread the risk, but six or eight or 10 more cars or more trains probably would not require a 20% allowance of protect cars.

The cure for what ails Amtrak is more Amtrak.


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## Anderson (Jul 24, 2015)

afigg said:


> Cho Cho Charlie said:
> 
> 
> > Paulus had that only 6% of sleeper passengers go between NYP and MIA. I was afraid that such might imply that the other 94% of sleeper passengers only travel for a short couple of stops (and have no need for any meals), and was hoping to get some clarification on that point.
> ...


The other issue is that in the case of both trains, looking only at NYP excludes the significant number of boardings at PHL and WAS (as well as lesser numbers at BAL, WIL, TRE, and EWR). What I've long wanted is some sort of consolidation of the WAS-north trips on the Silvers (basically, treat everyone who uses the train from "Washington or somewhere north" as a single station for purposes of the stats. You also might want to consolidate everything down in SFRTA territory into a single "stop" for this as well: MIA boards something like 90k/yr but your total is closer to 250k for all the South Florida stops. Granted, a decent number of those are going to Tampa or Orlando...but plenty of them are continuing onwards.

Edit: Something to recall, also, is that with the Star you can basically get an "extra" day on your vacation vis-a-vis the Meteor in Orlando (e.g. departure around 1200-1300 vs. departure around 1900), so I can definitely see folks heading back to New York (who'd get back in around noon much of the time regardless) opting for the Star instead.


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## jis (Jul 24, 2015)

It is quite safe to say that no one directly boards any of the Silver Service trains (or Palmetto or Carollinian for that matter) at EWR, since they do not stop there.

OTOH, there is some amount of transfer traffic that most likely happens ex SEC, EWR, MET, NBK and PJC, but those would be counted anyway at Newark or Trenton.


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## Anderson (Jul 24, 2015)

...right, I flipped EWR and NWK. Anyhow, my point is that the numbers for "Northeast to Florida" are suppressed when you look at single city pairs and that the aggregate of the seven (or so) NEC stops on the Silvers is going to be a _lot_ higher than just NYP-ORL or NYP-MIA.

Based on NARP's stats for the Meteor, NEC-to-Florida is somewhere between 25% and 35% of the Meteor's overall traffic. That's a guess on the basis of traffic traveling over 1000 miles on the Meteor (WAS-MIA is 1164; you've got a few non-NEC pairs that _could_ qualify between there and 1000 but it isn't a huge number). 23% of traffic is over 1000 miles, but you've got a lot of pairs in the 800-999 mile range that might or might not be non-NEC (offering another 10.7%) and WAS-JAX is under 800 miles (700-799 miles has another 6.9%). So 23% of traffic is almost assuredly NEC-Florida and some share of the next 17.6% is as well. That's really an over/under of 23% and 40.6%; my best guess is that it's slightly towards the higher end (32.5-35%).

The Star is a bit more of a mess; my best guess is somewhere between 12.5% and 15% of traffic is NEC-Florida, but it is worth noting that the Star is flooded with short-hop traffic (the top 7 city pairs are under 350 miles, though 8 and 9 are NYP-ORL and NYP-TPA) and has more passengers overall (if for no other reason than a lot of seats get sold on both ends).


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## jis (Jul 24, 2015)

When talking of NEC - Florida traffic, one might also wish to club together all the Florida destinations' traffic from NEC together to get a rounded up number for NEC - Florida, rather than considering just Miami or just Orlando or Tampa.

I read somehwere that when you do such clumping of airline traffic between NEC and Florida, it comes out to be the largest airline market in all of United States.


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## Anderson (Jul 24, 2015)

jis said:


> When talking of NEC - Florida traffic, one might also wish to club together all the Florida destinations' traffic from NEC together to get a rounded up number for NEC - Florida, rather than considering just Miami or just Orlando or Tampa.
> 
> I read somehwere that when you do such clumping of airline traffic between NEC and Florida, it comes out to be the largest airline market in all of United States.


That's about right. IIRC, LAX-SFO and LAX-LAS are the two biggest air markets...but you have a slew of airports on each end which produce something like 40 main pairs (e.g. LGA-MIA, JFK-MIA)...and something like 20 of those pairs are quite large. A few are smaller (e.g. JFK, LGA, and EWR might not _all _dump much traffic on WPB) but I seem to recall coming up with this when I was tallying ridership once before. From what I recall as well, if Amtrak grabbed 5% of the air-rail market you'd need something like 8-10 long daily trains to deal with the load.


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## Thirdrail7 (Jul 25, 2015)

I'm just thinking aloud but what do you number crunchers think about the concept of yield management in situations like this? In other words, do you think Amtrak is "pushing" local travel to the Star by utilizing revenue tools?

The reason I ask is I believe (and I'm open to correction) the reason the Meteor has more capacity and accommodates longer distances is it connects to most of the system. The Star doesn't connect to many services without a significant wait, the Crescent being a notable exception.

I'm wondering if they "save" seats for longer trips on the meteor in the same way they used to "save" on some of the regional train by pricing the nearby trains at competitive rates.


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## neroden (Jul 26, 2015)

WoodyinNYC said:


> On protect cars in general, not necessarily in this instance but maybe so, I feel like there's an "insurance factor".


Yes, protect cars are insurance. That's why you need the same number whether you run one train between the two endpoints or 10 trains between the two endpoints.

On the other hand, shop count is really a percentage of the cars, because each car is in the shop a certain percentage of the time.

This is why I'd really like a separate broken-out accounting for protect cars, on the one hand, and shop count, on the other hand. I don't have a good handle on how often Amtrak cars *ought* to be in the shop (required federal inspections, routine maintenance, etc.)


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## Anderson (Jul 26, 2015)

neroden said:


> WoodyinNYC said:
> 
> 
> > On protect cars in general, not necessarily in this instance but maybe so, I feel like there's an "insurance factor".
> ...


They're insurance, but the number needed does slide up (slowly) as the number of cars in service rises (with enough cars in service you can imagine multiple bad orders in a day); you also get to a point where you can tinker with your schedules and have a spare set ready to cover "meltdown delays" and/or to enable you to tighten equipment turns if you have enough trains in rotation. To offer an example, if you had a dozen overnight trains based out of NYP with roughly the same consists you can increase the number of same-day turns (and/or reduce the time needed for them) if you've got a spare consist that can be put out there when an inbound train is exceedingly late (e.g. the "spare Builder" situation in CHI).


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## jis (Jul 26, 2015)

As long as Chicago 14th St and Sunnyside are unable to turn a consist in about 3 hours when push comes to shove, the only if will be to keep a lot of additional rolling stock stabled as protection.

As an example on Indian Railways for the Kolkata - New Delhi overnight trains (Rajdhani and Duronto) which covers the 900+ miles in 16-17 hours, basically starting late afternoon arriving late morning the method used is as follows:

All consists are owned by the Kolkata end and the Kolkata end maintains enough protect to cobble together one additional consist in general and upto two in winter. So roughly speaking 3 trains are run using 9+1 consists normally, 9+2 in the winter. Incidentally that already is a huge amount of protect, way more than Amtrak can afford I suppose, considering that each consist is 18 cars to sometimes as many as 20 cars. But I am told that protect equipment when necessary can be cobbled together from shop equipment by delaying shop service or expediting completion of shop work. So protect and shop numbers are somewhat mixed up, and there never is actually the entire protect pool sitting around doing nothing.

The trains are run as if they are running on a 32 hour mission with a long stop half way through their mission. They are prepared and maintained as such. Which means they receive basic cleanup, safety inspection and prep in New Delhi, and any major work is done only at the Kolkata end. Only on rare occasions is any equipment change made at the New Delhi end. The turn time normally in New Delhi is something like 7 hours. In extreme cases they are able to turn the consist in as little as two hours, which means upto 5 hour delayed incoming can be handled with little impact on the departure.

Do cancellations due to lack of equipment happen? Yes they do, specially in winters when fog delays exceed 5 to 9 hours for multiple days in a row. But there is no allocation other than non-maintainable levels of protect that could sustain service through such disruptions. So no one bothers to even try.

Basically the New York - Chicago trains could be managed using such a pattern, which would reduce the need for a lot of single level protect equipment in Chicago. Afterall we don't park Superliner protect equipment in Denver and Albuquerque. The consists are maintained with a requirement that they must run all the way to the end without requiring consist changes.

Such a methodology would also eliminate the ping-ponging of defective equipment between Chicago and New york with no one taking the responsibility to fix it. Responsibility would lie at exactly one place to fix it.


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## Thirdrail7 (Jul 26, 2015)

neroden said:


> WoodyinNYC said:
> 
> 
> > On protect cars in general, not necessarily in this instance but maybe so, I feel like there's an "insurance factor".
> ...


To save yourself time, unless there is a waiver for continuous maintenance, figure something has to come out of line every 92 days for inspections. Additionally, there are major inspections every 2 years requiring various components to be completely disassembled and serviced/replaced.

This was one of the things Amtrak attempted to do last winter. They wanted to get ahead of these inspections during (what they perceived as) the slow season. It looked good on paper.



jis said:


> As long as Chicago 14th St and Sunnyside are unable to turn a consist in about 3 hours when push comes to shove, the only if will be to keep a lot of additional rolling stock stabled as protection.
> 
> As an example on Indian Railways for the Kolkata - New Delhi overnight trains (Rajdhani and Duronto) which covers the 900+ miles in 16-17 hours, basically starting late afternoon arriving late morning the method used is as follows:
> 
> ...


Such a methodology would also require a great deal of labor. If you had enough manpower and a fully staffed back shop, you could turn a train with defect in probably an hour.

However, those types of level are long gone. I was talking to an old Superintendent and he remarked he used to be able to turn a train including cleaning, cutting an engine on one end while adding an engine on the other end, turning the seats vacuums, interior windows being wiped in 15 minutes. If he had to dump the toilets and service the bathrooms, it took him 30 minutes as long as the train was spotted properly. He also told me that he used to have 6 electricians servicing the Southern Crescent alone!

Now, he's lucky if he has six electricians in two locations (yard and station) on his busiest tour.


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## jis (Jul 26, 2015)

That indeed is a severe problem, so would probably make all this unworkable in the environment we have, unfortunately.

It also brings up a point that has been made here before which is, the way to fix Amtrak is to have more Amtrak. When you are sharing a pool of resources like maintenance persons over many more trains it becomes easier to justify them sicne you can spread the cost around. So if there were more LD trains it would be easier to adequately staff turn around activities - counter-intuitive somewhat, but seems to be the case.


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## neroden (Jul 26, 2015)

Thirdrail7 said:


> To save yourself time, unless there is a waiver for continuous maintenance, figure something has to come out of line every 92 days for inspections.


Thanks! But *how long* is it out for inspections? If the inspections take one day, that's 1/92 shop time. If they take 10 days, that's 10/92 shop time.



> Additionally, there are major inspections every 2 years requiring various components to be completely disassembled and serviced/replaced.


Again, thanks! But the key question is *how long* do these take? If the entire car can be disassembled, serviced, and reassembled in a day, that's 1/730 shop time. If it takes 30 days, that's 30/730 shop time...




> Such a methodology would also require a great deal of labor. If you had enough manpower and a fully staffed back shop, you could turn a train with defect in probably an hour.
> 
> However, those types of level are long gone. I was talking to an old Superintendent and he remarked he used to be able to turn a train including cleaning, cutting an engine on one end while adding an engine on the other end, turning the seats vacuums, interior windows being wiped in 15 minutes. If he had to dump the toilets and service the bathrooms, it took him 30 minutes as long as the train was spotted properly. He also told me that he used to have 6 electricians servicing the Southern Crescent alone!


Of course, you can still support that number of maintenance workers if you're running a train every 15 minutes (or more). If not, you can't.... Economies of scale strike again.



> Now, he's lucky if he has six electricians in two locations (yard and station) on his busiest tour.


At some point, cutting staff means buying more cars, which may be a bad tradeoff financially. Has Amtrak passed that point?
Thinking about it, it seems like it would be ideal for fast service to pack the maintenance workers into a very few locations, with almost all trains going to those locations, and with the yard basically co-located with the station. You could almost do this at Chicago, if that place wasn't so dysfunctional, and eliminate servicing at the other end for all the trains which go there. I doubt there's even room to do it at NY & Sunnyside, though, which is the other logical location.

Amtrak has some long-term poor locations, though. Beech Grove is just in a no-good location at this point, and it's not going to get better -- I don't see any scenario under which Indianapolis becomes a center of many-trains-per-day. Hialeah is a pretty awful location too, given how few trains Amtrak sends to Florida and the poor prospects for Florida in general (it's all gonna be underwater). If Beech Grove facilities were in Chicago and Hialeah facilities were in New York, the situation would be better.

LA is a nice consolidated location, but it just isn't serving enough trains to get those economies of scale (despite the Surfliners).


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## Anderson (Jul 26, 2015)

On inspections: The 92-day inspection takes, IIRC, one day (plus any time to get it to/from the inspection). There's also an annual inspection that takes several days (and that I think has to happen in Beech Grover), but you could probably pile a bunch of those up between 9/15-11/15 and 1/10-3/10 (roughly the slow points in Amtrak's calendar...note that if the shops can handle it, the reduced consists in the winter are a good way to enable this).


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## neroden (Jul 26, 2015)

OK, if we call the annual inspection 7 days and the 92-day inspection 3 days due to moving cars to the right place (this seems pessimistic), that's.... 19 days a year, or about 5% spent out of service.

Now, I assume that there is other routine maintenance based on when things *actually* break.

To get to a 20% shop count, you'd have to have something break taking each car out of service for an average of one day a week. OK, I suppose that's probably plausible... still seems high.


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## Anderson (Jul 26, 2015)

neroden said:


> OK, if we call the annual inspection 7 days and the 92-day inspection 3 days due to moving cars to the right place (this seems pessimistic), that's.... 19 days a year, or about 5% spent out of service.
> 
> Now, I assume that there is other routine maintenance based on when things *actually* break.
> 
> To get to a 20% shop count, you'd have to have something break taking each car out of service for an average of one day a week. OK, I suppose that's probably plausible... still seems high.


Actually, I think it's 16 days instead of 19 (the annual inspection does, I believe, cover one of the quarterly ones).

I think the 20% shop/protect count (remember, protect equipment is also part of that) also has to do with the small size of some of the parts of the fleet (e.g. 25 single-level diners, 50 single-level sleepers, 20 Acela sets) and needing to keep equipment in multiple places (NYP, CHI, MIA, and I think NOL for the singe-level stuff; WAS, NYP, and BOS for the Acelas). From what I can recall, you can slowly move that back to about 15% with a scaled-up fleet. Remember, with the dining cars, if you have to keep three as protect (NYP, MIA, CHI) that's about 12% of the diner fleet as protect equipment right there.


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## Anderson (Jul 26, 2015)

Going with 16 days/year for stuff being out of service for inspections, with the diners do remember that with 25 diners you have 400 out-of-service days per year...which means that you need to account for two diners being out at once.

So, let's say that we need some sort of protect equipment four places (potentially): NYP, CHI, NOL, and MIA. WAS can arguably be sourced out of CHI if you wanted to convert the Cap, but other than that those four stations pretty much cover everything. So, let's scale equipment in a few tiers:
(1) 50 sleepers, 25 diners
(2) 75 sleepers, 26 diners
(3) 100 sleepers, 26 diners
(4) 200 sleepers, 51 diners

Tier 1 (present situation):
Sleepers (50): For maintenance you have 800 out-of-service days (assume three cars out at any given time). Protect here is 2 NYP, 1 CHI, 1 MIA, and 1 NOL allowing 41 cars in service reliably at any given moment. Distribution is:
-Meteor: 12 (4 sets, 3 each)
-Star: 8 (4 sets, 2 each)
-Crescent: 8 (4 sets, 2 each)
-LSL-NYP: 6 (3 sets, 2 each)
-LSL-BOS: 3 (3 sets, 1 each)
-Cardinal: 4 (2 sets, 2 each)
That totals to 41, which is right at your cap.
Diners (25): For maintenance you have 400 out-of-service days (assume two cars out at any given time). Protect equipment is 1 NYP, 1 CHI, 1 MIA. This gives you 20 cars reliably in service at any one time. Distribution is:
-Meteor: 4
-Star: 4
-Crescent: 4
-LSL-NYP: 3
-Cardinal: 2
That gives 17 and basically no room to add another diner; with the Heritage diners, you're actually coming up slightly short in some respects (hence the Star experiment) since there are only about 20 of those in use (though none are used on the Cardinal).

Tier 2 (post-Viewliner II order):
Sleepers (75): For maintenance you have 1200 out-of-service days (assume four cars at any given time). Protect here would be 3 NYP, 2 CHI, 2 MIA, 1 NOL, offering 63 cars reliably in service at one time. Distribution is:
-Meteor: 16 (4 sets, 4 each)
-Star: 12 (4 sets, 3 each)
-Crescent: 12 (4 sets, 3 each)
-LSL-NYP: 9 (3 sets, 3 each)
-LSL-BOS: 3 (3 sets, 1 each)
-Cardinal: 6 (3 sets, 2 each; assumes daily operation)
-Pennsylvanian: 3 (3 sets, 1 each)
-Shoreliner: 2 (2 sets, 1 each)
Diners (26): Basically the same as the above; you net one spare diner in the process (so 21 instead of 20)...but that gives you room to potentially add a diner somewhere. Distribution is:
-Meteor: 4
-Star: 4
-Crescent: 4
-LSL-NYP: 3
-Cardinal: 3
-Pennsylvanian: 3 (operated in lieu of a cafe car and with a different staffing situation)
That's 21, with 5 cars out as protect/shop.

Tier 3 (hypothetical additional sleeper order):
Sleepers (100): For maintenance you have 1600 out-of-service days (five cars). Protect here gets interesting, but I'm assuming 4 NYP, 3 CHI, 3 MIA, 1 NOL for 16 cars total. That allows 84 cars in service at once. Distribution is:
-Meteor: 20 (4 sets, 5 each)
-Star: 12 (4 sets, 3 each)
-Crescent: 16 (4 sets, 4 each)
-LSL-NYP: 12 (3 sets, 4 each)
-LSL-BOS: 3 (3 sets, 1 each)
-Cardinal: 9 (3 sets, 3 each)
-Pennsylvanian: 6 (3 sets, 2 each)
-Shoreliner: 2 (2 sets, 1 each)
That gives you 80 cars; there's room to add another one to the train of one's choosing and/or buffer protect allowances; you could, at this point, have "full cover" for a set of any train in New York and Chicago if you wanted to.
Diners (26): Same as above.


Tier 4 (and another hypothetical order):
200 sleepers/51 diners
Sleepers (200): For maintenance you have 3200 out-of-service days (I'm just going with 10 cars). Protect...I'd say 7 NYP, 6 CHI, 5 MIA, 2 NOL, 1 WAS. 31 cars out of service, 169 in service. Distribution would be as follows:
-Meteor: 32 (4 sets, 8 each)
-Star: 20 (4 sets, 5 each)
-Palm: 12 (4 sets, 3 each)
-Crescent: 20 (4 sets, 5 each)
-LSL-NYP: 15 (3 sets, 5 each)
-LSL-BOS: 3 (3 sets, 1 each)
-Cardinal: 12 (3 sets, 4 each)
-Broadway: 12 (3 sets, 4 each)
-Shoreliner: 4 (2 sets, 2 each)
-CONO: 15 (3 sets, 5 each)
-Cap: 21 (3 sets, 7 each)
That's 166 sleepers. Bear in mind tht in NYP and CHI, protect equipment can cover almost any one train running late (distributing those extra spares I haven't allocated would cover that, or you can put those on the Cap and take note of the fact that there are five trains coming into CHI and six into NYP, so you can use spares to shuffle sets in a pinch); in MIA it can allow any one train to be swapped for another train.
Diners (51): For maintenance you have 816 out-of-service days (3 cars). Protect...2 NYP, 2 MIA, 2 CHI. This gives you 42 diners, distribution as follows:
-Meteor: 8
-Star: 4
-Palm: 4
-Crescent: 4
-LSL-NYP: 3
-Cardinal: 3
-Broadway: 3
-CONO: 3
-Cap: 6
You've got four spares; I'd be inclined to park one in WAS, one in NOL, and the other two in NYP.

Excusing the wild-and-crazy allocations of equipment and operational issues in the last example, you basically have enough equipment that in order to get closer to 20% out-of-service equipment you're allocating masses of cars (basically entire extra trainsets) to each of your major hubs (NYP, CHI, MIA) and a modest amount elsewhere. The natural path (if you don't need to do this) is probably a few less spares (but maybe one or two more shop allocations).


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## neroden (Jul 27, 2015)

Anderson said:


> I think the 20% shop/protect count (remember, protect equipment is also part of that) also has to do with the small size of some of the parts of the fleet


See, I'm absolutely sure of this. Larger fleets should require smaller shop & protect percentages, but it's hard to figure out how *much* smaller unless you break it down in detail. Economies of scale...

Anderson, thanks for trying to run some scenarios. It looks like the shop/protect percentage for a large class of cars should be considered to be 15% or less. 20% is suitable only for small classes of cars.


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## Anderson (Jul 27, 2015)

Well, Amtrak has two other problems. One is the age of its fleet, which is probably adding a bit to shop counts on the Superliners (and do remember that there are five Superliner equipment types...six if you count the CCC as distinct from the others). The other is the need for a bunch of distributed spares (CHI, WAS/LOR, SFA, NOL, SAS, LAX, EMY, and SEA are all possible locations).


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## jis (Jul 27, 2015)

They keep protect cars in SAS?


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## Bob Dylan (Jul 27, 2015)

jis said:


> They keep protect cars in SAS?


Most of the time there's a Coach and a Sleeper in SAS as protect cars for the Sunset and Eagle jis! FTW sometimes has a P-42 and a Coach car sitting in the yard!

I personally think a spare P-42 is a better idea what with the breakdowns on the Single Engine Eagles being so common!!


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## CHamilton (Jul 27, 2015)

NARP Chairman: Firsthand Report on Silver Star Sans Diner


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## yarrow (Jul 27, 2015)

CHamilton said:


> NARP Chairman: Firsthand Report on Silver Star Sans Diner


not surprising


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## Devil's Advocate (Jul 27, 2015)

jimhudson said:


> jis said:
> 
> 
> > They keep protect cars in SAS?
> ...


Two Superliner protect cars have been stationed at SAS for years now. They have their own renovated storage track and service platform with hotel power hookup. This avoids impacting the Texas Eagle nighttime resting track or the daytime private varnish track. So long as only one route is being impacted at a time two cars is usually enough to get job done. I'd put the total availability at around 85%.


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## NE933 (Jul 27, 2015)

This has to stop, fast, or else the negative reports will mushroom and Amtrak will not be able to sell itself for a long time.


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## Bob Dylan (Jul 27, 2015)

CHamilton said:


> NARP Chairman: Firsthand Report on Silver Star Sans Diner


Unbelievable that paying customers weren't advised in advance of this service reduction and of course the fact that AGR charges the same amount of points on an Award trip for the Star as for the Meteor is "Alice in Wonderland" material!


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## George K (Jul 27, 2015)

Yes. This is outrageous.

When the ticket was purchased, part of the "agreement" was that meal service would be provided, and the menus were posted online. Without notification, the menus were changed.

As of today, it's still the full service menu, including steak, chicken, etc. All the AmFood we've come to love.

http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/265/949/Silver-Star-Dining-Car-Menu-0515.pdf


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## pennyk (Jul 27, 2015)

From what I understand, Amtrak attempted to contact everyone who purchased a ticket prior to the time the decision was made to remove the diner from the Silver Star. I was one of those customers. Last year, I purchased a ticket on the Silver Star at a mid to high bucket for travel this October. I purchased the ticket prior to the time Amtrak stopped selling tickets. When the experiment was announced in April, I received an email from Amtrak providing a couple of options. I could keep my reservation on the Star and receive a refund between the difference in the then current lower fare and the fare that I had paid or switch to the Meteor. I chose to keep my Star reservation (and the refund).

It is possible that those passengers who claim they were not notified either ignored their email, changed their email address, did not understand the email, etc.


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## Anderson (Jul 27, 2015)

My understanding is that Amtrak made a good-faith effort to accommodate everyone who was on the Star with a notification and the options above. That being said, I also understand that some people may have managed not to be contacted (didn't see the email, didn't recognize the phone number, etc.).


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## George K (Jul 27, 2015)

Thanks for your input, Penny. However, it's now been since April that Amtrak announced this "experiment". You'd think that in the ensuing 4 months, they would have had time to update their online menus. People will book with the expectation that those menu options are available.


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## pennyk (Jul 27, 2015)

George K said:


> Thanks for your input, Penny. However, it's now been since April that Amtrak announced this "experiment". You'd think that in the ensuing 4 months, they would have had time to update their online menus. People will book with the expectation that those menu options are available.


If a passenger books on-line, there is an alert for both Silver trains with an explanation that the Silver Star will not have a dining car. If a passenger books with an agent, the agents are supposed to be informing the passenger of lack of diner.


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## Ryan (Jul 27, 2015)

Anyone booking online is presented with the following:



> Silver Star Trains 91 & 92 Sleeping Car Fare and Food Service Test
> 
> Effective July 1, 2015 - January 31, 2016
> 
> ...


If they have an expectation of a dining car, that's on them.


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## Bob Dylan (Jul 27, 2015)

Thanks Penny, Cliff, Ryan etc. but I still question why an AGR Award on the Star is the same amount of Points as the Meteor? ( of course we know this, but your average Rider doesn't keep track of inside baseball or read canned E-mail or answer Robo- Calls!)

As I've said, I sure wouldn't want to ride the Star from MIA- NYP, and evidently lots of the Senior OBS don't either as they've bid on the Meteor.

Does the Crew get a per diem for not having meals available on the Star?

Why not at least keep the Diner and make the Meals pay as you go as in the old days with the lower fares? Then you would be comparing apples with apples, not apples to avocados!


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## Ryan (Jul 27, 2015)

1) Because it doesn't make sense to make up a special redemption for a 6 month trial.

2) No idea.

3) That doesn't let you park the diners most in need of shop time. I doubt that it's a coincidence that this is timed to end in the timeframe when we'll be hopefully seeing Viewliner Diners coming online.


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## jebr (Jul 27, 2015)

jimhudson said:


> Why not at least keep the Diner and make the Meals pay as you go as in the old days with the lower fares? Then you would be comparing apples with apples, not apples to avocados!


Because, almost by definition, the diner will lose more money on such a proposition. At this point Amtrak doesn't seem to be too concerned about whether the sleepers are making or losing money; it's focusing on whether food and beverage service can break even. The F&B account gets money from the sleeper account whenever someone purchases a meal while riding sleeper, to the amount of whatever they bought. Changing that to a cash proposition will lose the F&B line money, as people probably wouldn't buy as much (if at all) from the diner, and it probably wouldn't be enough to make up the money by reducing staffing or the like.

Amtrak is probably trying to see how strong the backlash is from removing the diner, and if it'd be practical to do so (and allow the cafe to make money.) I'm almost certain it will fail, but Amtrak is looking at this in a very "how can we get the F&B books to break even" fashion instead of a "what could offer a better experience for the customer" fashion.


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## Bob Dylan (Jul 27, 2015)

Valid points guys, you're preaching to the choir but I still say that it's not a valid expierement! What if they took All of the Heritage Diners off the trains for 6 months cause they're worn out?

And does anyone have any info about the OBS working the Star as to their compensation for having no meals available? What's the Unions position on this??

Is the Star running with all Extra board and Newbie OBS between MIA and NYP now???


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## Ryan (Jul 27, 2015)

Perhaps there is no desire for a valid experiment.  h34r:


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## Bob Dylan (Jul 27, 2015)

Ryan said:


> Perhaps there is no desire for a valid experiment.  h34r:


Yeah!


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## Anderson (Jul 27, 2015)

jimhudson said:


> Valid points guys, you're preaching to the choir but I still say that it's not a valid expierement! What if they took All of the Heritage Diners off the trains for 6 months cause they're worn out?
> 
> And does anyone have any info about the OBS working the Star as to their compensation for having no meals available? What's the Unions position on this??
> 
> Is the Star running with all Extra board and Newbie OBS between MIA and NYP now???


I think "temporarily" pulling all of the single-level diners would generate enough blowback from the union to cause problems for Boardman (you'd be talking something like 30 diner crews at that point; functionally sacking perhaps over 100 employees in one go, even if only for a short period (or, oddly, _because_ it's only for a short period and most of them will be back later) is the sort of thing that gives you a strike down the line.

I'm not sure if there's a union position on the food situation _per se_; however, it might well have gone over as a "not the end of the world" thing since the non-diner crews, IIRC, swap between trains and _very_ few crews eat in the diner all the time.


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## Paulus (Jul 28, 2015)

NE933 said:


> This has to stop, fast, or else the negative reports will mushroom and Amtrak will not be able to sell itself for a long time.


Amtrak has absolutely no need to sell itself by way of the long distance trains nor will the vast majority of passengers, currently riding on trains with no diner service, be disaffected by this.


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## Anderson (Jul 28, 2015)

Paulus said:


> NE933 said:
> 
> 
> > This has to stop, fast, or else the negative reports will mushroom and Amtrak will not be able to sell itself for a long time.
> ...


Yes, Amtrak does need to sell itself. Granted that a majority of the support comes from the core areas (Extended NEC, Chicago Hub, and West Coast), but without service and support from outside those areas (e.g. places like Colorado and Florida, where no small pile of Congressional votes come from) the odds of Amtrak being able to get the funding it needs for the NEC drop substantially.


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## Heading North (Jul 28, 2015)

I don't know if this is a sign of substitution to the Meteor, sign of high demand, or just a coincidence, but my experience last Sunday might be telling.

I rode 97 TRE-ALX in coach (typically end up on 19 or 97 about once a month) and the train left NYP late (boarded in TRE around 5 PM). There were no announcements for the diner, so just after departing WIL I wandered over to the dining car, which looked busy, and asked if there might be a seat for one. I was asked if I had a reservation (I said no--boarded in TRE and must have missed the call) and was told the car was booked solid for the evening, so I ended up having a depressing pizza and M&Ms in the lounge (which was virtually empty).

Usually dinner pre-WAS on 19 or 97 is no problem; sometimes the diner has been pretty empty and there are repeat announcements inviting passengers in. This time surprised me. I'm wondering how many coach passengers ended up getting dinner (I was in the 4th of 5 coaches, so the Florida passengers in the front cars wouldn't have passed me in my seat) but certainly hope there was a fair amount of revenue that night from the dining car from passengers other than me.


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## Triley (Jul 28, 2015)

jimhudson said:


> Does the Crew get a per diem for not having meals available on the Star?


They should get the same per diem that any other OBS employee working a train without a diner would get.


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## Anderson (Jul 28, 2015)

Heading North said:


> I don't know if this is a sign of substitution to the Meteor, sign of high demand, or just a coincidence, but my experience last Sunday might be telling.
> 
> I rode 97 TRE-ALX in coach (typically end up on 19 or 97 about once a month) and the train left NYP late (boarded in TRE around 5 PM). There were no announcements for the diner, so just after departing WIL I wandered over to the dining car, which looked busy, and asked if there might be a seat for one. I was asked if I had a reservation (I said no--boarded in TRE and must have missed the call) and was told the car was booked solid for the evening, so I ended up having a depressing pizza and M&Ms in the lounge (which was virtually empty).
> 
> Usually dinner pre-WAS on 19 or 97 is no problem; sometimes the diner has been pretty empty and there are repeat announcements inviting passengers in. This time surprised me. I'm wondering how many coach passengers ended up getting dinner (I was in the 4th of 5 coaches, so the Florida passengers in the front cars wouldn't have passed me in my seat) but certainly hope there was a fair amount of revenue that night from the dining car from passengers other than me.


My experience is that the OBS will try to jam everyone boarding from PHL north into eating before WAS so as to allow for space for BAL/WAS pax to eat (WAS can easily fill half a sleeper or more on its own)...

...of course, crap like this is why I just started biting the bullet an buying a roomette. Half of the time the room is cheaper than coach plus dinner would run me, and it avoids having to beg my way into the diner. I'm in your shoes WAS-RVR (on 97 about once a month). [1] One piece of sincere advice: Pick a train of the two (I'd say 97, but that's me), double down on using it even if you've got to pay a bit more for it, and tip well (not excessively well, necessarily, but shoot for 20% or so). The OBS _will_ get used to seeing you around and you might be able to beg your way in at a peak time regardless (or arrange for "carry-out" to the cafe...I at least got this as a concession on a few occasions).

[1] And fuming over 92's lost diner; I'm not going to lie...cutting that diner is probably going to cost Amtrak close to a thousand bucks due to me flipping business to the relevant state trains (e.g. where added ridership doesn't do much for Amtrak) as well as slashed fares on the Star (roomettes there are now competitive with Regional BC).


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## SteveSFL (Jul 28, 2015)

Looking at the revenue guesses that some of you have posted makes me believe that as much as we may want this experiment to fail, Amtrak upper management will probably see it as a success. If they can fill the sleepers at the lower prices and save the costs of running the diners, they will probably let that outweigh the complaints of a few passengers.

I think that history has shown they are more interested in cutting costs through any means than making customers happy.

The one positive is that this type of complete diner removal is probably unlikely to spread to any of the other long distance routes since no other route really has an alternative train with a diner like the Star/Meteor pair.

Of course that doesn't stop them from reducing the full service diners to Chunky Soup for dinner and Corn Flakes for breakfast like on the CONO.


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## neroden (Jul 29, 2015)

jebr said:


> At this point Amtrak doesn't seem to be too concerned about whether the sleepers are making or losing money;


It's pretty much impossible for the sleepers to lose money at the prices they charge; I just rechecked my estimates, and revenue would have to drop by at *least* 50%, probably 60% or more, for the sleepers to start to lose money. They could earn a lot less money than they did before, hurting the bottom line substantially, before they started losing money.



> I'm almost certain it will fail, but Amtrak is looking at this in a very "how can we get the F&B books to break even" fashion instead of a "what could offer a better experience for the customer" fashion.


Depressingly stupid.



SteveSTX said:


> Of course that doesn't stop them from reducing the full service diners to Chunky Soup for dinner and Corn Flakes for breakfast like on the CONO.


If anything, this is even more damaging and stupid, as it retains most of the costs while throwing away most of the revenues.


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## xyzzy (Jul 29, 2015)

I rode 91 out of DC again yesterday. One coach was Raleigh and Southern Pines only. One coach was Florida points other than Jacksonville and Tampa. One coach was points between Hamlet and Jacksonville inclusive (mainly South Carolina stops). One coach was two-thirds Tampa and one-thirds shorts (Richmond, Petersburg, Rocky Mount).

Went to the cafe car about 6 and the line wasn't any longer than it usually was.


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## neroden (Jul 29, 2015)

xyzzy said:


> I rode 91 out of DC again yesterday. One coach was Raleigh and Southern Pines only. One coach was Florida points other than Jacksonville and Tampa. One coach was points between Hamlet and Jacksonville inclusive (mainly South Carolina stops). One coach was two-thirds Tampa and one-thirds shorts (Richmond, Petersburg, Rocky Mount).
> 
> Went to the cafe car about 6 and the line wasn't any longer than it usually was.


I have no idea if that's a typical Tampa ridership.

I suspect that the people displaced from the diner will be carrying their own food rather than buying from the cafe; and the crunch on the cafe would be seen more in the morning in Florida.


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## jis (Jul 29, 2015)

Anderson said:


> My understanding is that Amtrak made a good-faith effort to accommodate everyone who was on the Star with a notification and the options above. That being said, I also understand that some people may have managed not to be contacted (didn't see the email, didn't recognize the phone number, etc.).


I was gratuitously notified even though I bought the ticket on the Star well after the announcement. They even offered to give me a lower fare, but of course they did not mean it since I had already bought the lower fare.


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## Anderson (Jul 30, 2015)

I've been wrestling with the question of how to manage the F&B situation on long(er)-distance trains. The best that I can come up with is some sort of "A-train"/"B-train" division:
A-Train: Operates with a full dining car and a separate cafe car, CCC, or SSL.
B-Train: Operates with an "enhanced cafe"/"diner-club" car. I'm thinking that this should generally be either (1) a single-level diner, but with only two OBS (a cook and an LSA) serving a menu including some full entrees (sorry, but a caesar salad or a panini doesn't count here).

Ideally, you'd have an A-train on most (if not all) LD routings alongside a B-train, with a difference in sleeper fares (and possibly a smaller one in coach fares over longer distances). We don't live in an ideal world, but this is what I'd shoot for. I'd also shoot for a LOT more sleeper space across the board (ideally most single-level LD trains would have no less than four sleepers outside of slow seasons), albeit at slightly lower fares than we're used to. I'd also shoot to make the _really_ long-haul day trains (Adirondack, Palmetto, etc.) into B-Trains as an upgrade of their cafe-only status. The Adirondack in particular is really galling in this respect given the amount of end-to-end traffic on that train.

Realistically, something like this could only be done in the East: The demand appears to be there for a second LSL, and there's plenty of precedent for three daily trains NYP-MIA (if not the equipment right now). The Cap-Pennsylvanian operation would be a hybrid, and a re-extended Pennsylvanian could easily operate as a B-train CHI-PGH (alongside the Cap as an A-train). Worth noting is the fact that if you're willing to exchange equipment between trains (and sacrifice a bit of utilization optimization) you could have the "base sets" switch between the A-train and B-train while the "premium" equipment stays with the A-train. The best comparison at present would be the extra sleeper on the Meteor (the third sleeper and its attendant stay with the Meteor both ways while the rest of the crew alternates). West of Chicago, the only plausible routes for something like this are really fragments of the Zephyr, Builder, and possibly the Starlight as a whole.

There's one other option, which would be to disentangle the "included meals" line on most trains. Doing so would probably allow you to get another good chunk of capacity on the train before overwhelming the diner (e.g. 5-6 sleepers on one diner instead of a practical limit around 4 right now). I've mulled over ways to manage this, but a fair point to be had is that if you have more sleeper passengers per train there's a corresponding decrease in the number of times that diner service demands will behave oddly on a given run.


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## neroden (Jul 30, 2015)

Another underlying issue is that the cafe car food on the 'national trains' kind of stinks. There is actually a better selection of higher-quality prepackaged food on the "corridor" trains. I'm sure this has something to do with commissaries and whatnot, but it seems like a no-brainer to fix it and have the cafe cars on the LSL and Star be as good at the cafe car on the Regional and Empire Service.


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## Anderson (Jul 30, 2015)

neroden said:


> Another underlying issue is that the cafe car food on the 'national trains' kind of stinks. There is actually a better selection of higher-quality prepackaged food on the "corridor" trains. I'm sure this has something to do with commissaries and whatnot, but it seems like a no-brainer to fix it and have the cafe cars on the LSL and Star be as good at the cafe car on the Regional and Empire Service.


This would work as a stopgap measure (the salads aren't bad and neither are those sandwiches), but I do think you could do brisk business off of "upsold" meals even from there. Based on the amount of coach traffic in the diners there is evidently the demand, and if it is just a matter of OBS costs then I see no reason you couldn't work around part of that and still have a respectable hot meal of some sort available.


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## Just-Thinking-51 (Aug 2, 2015)

So another dinning car bites the dust.

The Silver Meteor that left NYC on 1 Aug 2015. The dinning car was bad order in Washington DC and was replaced with a cafe car. The swapping of cars was about 3.5 hrs.

I had a 1830 seating. It was quite rough riding. The staff was have trouble stay on there feet. This was north of DC so the track speed should of been 125 mph. After we arrived I was still eating and watch a blue hat walking on the track side duck under and inspect the equipment. After a bit a few more blue hats show up, follow by a whole bunch of white hats. Power was restored to the train in good order at 1915. We they sat thur our depart time and a hour after or at 2035 hrs we lost HEP again, with the SCA tell people were getting the dinner swap out. Over the next two hours HEP would come on and off for those in the sleepers. The coach passenger were report to be without HEP most of this time. We left 3.5 hours late. With one pax taking off the train by EMS.

So can not wait into the new dinners are on-line. It's too bad Amtral had to call the shortage of dinning cars a food service experiment, not just a end of life issue.


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## xyzzy (Aug 2, 2015)

Speed limit on Heritage dining cars is 110 mph (or possibly less). With the dining car still in the consist north of DC, there's no way you were going 125.


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## Just-Thinking-51 (Aug 2, 2015)

Too blame the bounce, rattling and flying crew on track is SOP when on fright tracks. My point was you can not blame the track while on the NEC when the track is design for 125 mph running.

Smooth train, smooth track.


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## neroden (Aug 2, 2015)

Sounds like the Heritage diners are dropping dead. Ouch. Here's hoping the revised pilot car for the dining cars makes it out of CAF soon, because Amtrak needs those dining cars ASAP.


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## xyzzy (Aug 2, 2015)

Imagine how that diner would have ridden over the 60 mph ex-SAL between Cary, NC and Fairfax, SC.


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## jis (Aug 2, 2015)

Just-Thinking-51 said:


> Too blame the bounce, rattling and flying crew on track is SOP when on fright tracks. My point was you can not blame the track while on the NEC when the track is design for 125 mph running.
> 
> Smooth train, smooth track.


Actually the NEC track between BAL and WAS is in relatively sad shape and desperately needs to be undercut and rebuilt. They have done some of this work between BAL and WIL and the track is now markedly better there. May be BAL to WAS will get the treatment later this season or early next season.


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## ScottRu (Aug 2, 2015)

Just-Thinking-51 said:


> So another dinning car bites the dust.
> 
> The Silver Meteor that left NYC on 1 Aug 2015. The dinning car was bad order in Washington DC and was replaced with a cafe car. The swapping of cars was about 3.5 hrs.
> 
> ...


I've been tracking the poor on-time performance of the Meteor recently (since we take it to and from Florida each winter). I wondered what happened yesterday, which was much worse. That's for the information. But I'm sorry you had such an uncomfortable trip.


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## jacorbett70 (Aug 2, 2015)

Just-Thinking-51 said:


> So another dinning car bites the dust.
> 
> The Silver Meteor that left NYC on 1 Aug 2015. The dinning car was bad order in Washington DC and was replaced with a cafe car. The swapping of cars was about 3.5 hrs.
> 
> ...


I saw your train pass through Chester PA. It was going more slowly than normal but I figured it was track work in the region.

https://flic.kr/p/wy8DaW

https://flic.kr/p/wNqGaG

https://flic.kr/p/vTSDJT


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## afigg (Aug 2, 2015)

jis said:


> Just-Thinking-51 said:
> 
> 
> > Too blame the bounce, rattling and flying crew on track is SOP when on fright tracks. My point was you can not blame the track while on the NEC when the track is design for 125 mph running.
> ...


Yes, people should not assume that because their train is on the NEC, that the trackbed and tracks are anywhere near to tip-top condition with smooth rides. Far from it. On some segments on the southern NEC and for that matter, on the New Haven line, have had rough rides for years. With tight maintenance budgets, all too easy to get behind on undercutting the trackbeds and track maintenance.


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## Just-Thinking-51 (Aug 3, 2015)

The dinning car was bad order and removed at Washington DC. That is a fact, why I don't know, but it was the trucks that everyone was looking at.

So yes I assumed the reason why the staff was flying around was a issue with the car, and not the track.


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## jis (Aug 3, 2015)

Oh I am sure the car had problems. However, I was just pointing out that the state of the NEC tracks are not that great specially in its very southern end, and that is acknowledged by Amtrak, and serious reconstruction is scheduled over the next several years. The state of the tracks in NJ, PA and DE are much better than those further south. The state between Ragan (Wilmington) and Perry (Perryville has improved significantly recently.


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## DooBdoo (Aug 8, 2015)

Checking pricing for Star-Meteor for Oct-Nov NYP to MIA.

BEDROOM

Star $1130

Meteor $1580

Either they are working very hard to "fix" the success of the

diner less Star

Or

Someone was paying $450 per person for

Breakfast

Two lunches

Dinner

This is pure BS even figuring in the cost of labor.

Vending machines are next for cold food - no rider microwaves - too much

Liability.

Train travel used to be fun.


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## Paulus (Aug 8, 2015)

DooBdoo said:


> Checking pricing for Star-Meteor for Oct-Nov NYP to MIA.
> 
> BEDROOM
> 
> ...


29% discount is in line with what was stated when the experiment was announced. With a capacity of three people, that's $37.50 per meal. Probably a slight discount, but not overly large given maintenance, fuel, and labor expenses related to the diner. Keep in mind that several revenue spaces are also opened up by the lack of diner crew, so you have to figure in the opportunity costs as well.

Also, if people could stop predicting doom and gloom for food and beverage over this, that'd be great.


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## Devil's Advocate (Aug 9, 2015)

Paulus said:


> Also, if people could stop predicting doom and gloom for food and beverage over this, that'd be great.


Should we be predicting better food and more of it? What signs are pointing in that direction?


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## Paulus (Aug 9, 2015)

Devil's Advocate said:


> Paulus said:
> 
> 
> > Also, if people could stop predicting doom and gloom for food and beverage over this, that'd be great.
> ...


How about we settle for stopping the stupid chicken little "THE SKY IS FALLING" song and dance?


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## Heading North (Aug 9, 2015)

The flipside is that someone paying over $1100 for a two-day trip is also having to shell out for a limited menu of convenience store food items, many of which will run out at some point during the trip. That's to say nothing of passengers' medical needs that may require regular meals, etc. (And non-railfans might also pay $450 to get to MIA a few hours faster.)

If the cafe car had sufficient inventory and some healthy-ish choices (the NEC cafes are better but still not ideal), it might be workable. If the run were reliably less than 18 hours or so, it might be workable--I remember riding the Three Rivers when it ran, and it arrived early enough in Chicago that I could have breakfast at the station instead. If stations all had great food choices nearby, that might work too. But this experiment lacks all three.


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## City of Miami (Aug 9, 2015)

Apparently the current f/b service is workable for somebody or they wouldn't buy the ticket. With the dynamic pricing of today I doubt if Amtrak is hanging out $1100 tickets to dry. My motives and needs are not your motives and needs and yours are not anyone else's.


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## NE933 (Aug 9, 2015)

Saying that it works 'cause someone's buying the tickets is not the way to operate passenger rail. There are human elements to consider, such as dietary needs that café car offerings do not accommodate. The amount of disgust that this so called test has caused is well within reason to discontinue it and call it a failure. Passengers are using the Star mainly because the Meteor does not have enough available coaches and sleepers to pick up Star's carrying loads, and it serves towns that Meteor doesn't. Times are also different.


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## Anderson (Aug 9, 2015)

NE933 said:


> Saying that it works 'cause someone's buying the tickets is not the way to operate passenger rail. There are human elements to consider, such as dietary needs that café car offerings do not accommodate. The amount of disgust that this so called test has caused is well within reason to discontinue it and call it a failure. Passengers are using the Star mainly because the Meteor does not have enough available coaches and sleepers to pick up Star's carrying loads, and it serves towns that Meteor doesn't. Times are also different.


Times are actually a big issue on my end (NB, the Meteor arrives in Richmond at an obscene hour and I lose half a day in FL as a result; SB, the Star leaves Richmond at dinner time...ergo, I'm basically locked to Meteor South/Star North at this point).


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## jis (Aug 12, 2015)

According to some sources, because of shorter consist, the Silver Star is now being assigned a single P42 instead of two, starting today (8/12/15)


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## rrdude (Aug 12, 2015)

jis said:


> According to some sources, because of shorter consist, the Silver Star is now being assigned a single P42 instead of two, starting today (8/12/15)


Well, that's just peachy. Add the SS to the list of trains (a la Heartland Flyer) that will now NOT have the redundacy of a second loco.

And they only took off the Diner, right? One less car warrants removal of a loco?

That seems loco.


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## Bob Dylan (Aug 12, 2015)

rrdude said:


> jis said:
> 
> 
> > According to some sources, because of shorter consist, the Silver Star is now being assigned a single P42 instead of two, starting today (8/12/15)
> ...


The Texas Eagle should be included on this list, it leads the System in P-42 breakdowns!


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## spidersfan351 (Aug 12, 2015)

The cardinal runs with one engine most times nowadays, with the same consist as the Star. Doesn't make it okay, as they've had issues with that, but I imagine that is where they get the standard idea.


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## xyzzy (Aug 12, 2015)

Many years ago the Silver Star would run with one P42 even with a longer consist. The train is limited to 60 mph anyway on almost all of the ex-SAL.


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## keelhauled (Aug 12, 2015)

rrdude said:


> And they only took off the Diner, right? One less car warrants removal of a loco?
> 
> That seems loco.


Probably because the HEP requirements of the diner are way higher than any other type of car. Drop that and a single locomotive can provide both on board power and tractive power for the whole train.


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## jis (Aug 12, 2015)

In case you did not notice the post on the other thread, today both 91 and 97 are running with single P42, so dining car electric load is probably not an issue.


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## keelhauled (Aug 12, 2015)

No I did not notice. That's interesting.


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## Bob Dylan (Aug 12, 2015)

There is a post on trainorders ( sorry, no link)that says Amtrak Management has gone back to 2 Engines on the Star effective today while LD Operations and Mechanical "study" what to do with LD Train engines!


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## Chaz (Aug 12, 2015)

Here's the link to the TO post re 2 engines (Jim's reference)

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?4,3816644

(Only realized how to copy/paste a URL on IPad today). The thread title was not helpful.


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## VentureForth (Aug 13, 2015)

Change and change back in a single day? Weird. I've always thought that a single P42 could handle the load, but I thought I read (here) that two locos were required by CSX.


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## jis (Aug 13, 2015)

VentureForth said:


> Change and change back in a single day? Weird. I've always thought that a single P42 could handle the load, but I thought I read (here) that two locos were required by CSX.


That is my understanding too..

That is why typically upon loco failure on the Silvers, they carry on with a single unit rather than getting slowed down by the addition of a freight unit.


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## abcnews (Aug 13, 2015)

The Star is much lighter now - gone is the heavy Heritage era baggage car, which has been replaced with a lightweight Viewliner Baggage. And there is no heavy Heritage Diner, it's been taken off the train. And lately just one Viewliner sleeper verses two, or even three, in the past. Just seven passenger cars and no older Heritage cars to weigh down the consist.

So one engine should be fine, especially when you consider that the long running level route to Florida has very minimal changes in elevation. And I would be willing to bet there may be some savings to Amtrak by having one engine verses two.


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## AmtrakLKL (Aug 13, 2015)

VentureForth said:


> Change and change back in a single day? Weird. I've always thought that a single P42 could handle the load, but I thought I read (here) that two locos were required by CSX.


There is a CSX special instruction requiring two engines for passenger trains over 12 cars on the Columbia and Hamlet subdivisions. Affects the Star between Savannah and Hamlet.


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## abcnews (Aug 13, 2015)

The Meteor has ten cars, and the current Star has seven. In the past, the Star would run with either nine or ten cars, and eleven around the Christmas holiday. Five coaches, three sleepers, plus baggage, lounge and diner.


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## jis (Aug 13, 2015)

Star still has two Viewliner Sleepers. When did they reduce that to one? Amtrak has not notified me that my reservation in the second sleeper is getting changed.


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## AmtrakLKL (Aug 13, 2015)

spidersfan351 said:


> The cardinal runs with one engine most times nowadays, with the same consist as the Star. Doesn't make it okay, as they've had issues with that, but I imagine that is where they get the standard idea.


Cardinal only has three coaches vs. the Star with four and the Meteor with five.



abcnews said:


> The Star is much lighter now - gone is the heavy Heritage era baggage car, which has been replaced with a lightweight Viewliner Baggage. And there is no heavy Heritage Diner, it's been taken off the train. And lately just one Viewliner sleeper verses two, or even three, in the past. Just seven passenger cars and no older Heritage cars to weigh down the consist.
> 
> So one engine should be fine, especially when you consider that the long running level route to Florida has very minimal changes in elevation. And I would be willing to bet there may be some savings to Amtrak by having one engine verses two.


The Star has kept two sleepers and business appears to be very brisk at the lowered fares. Rooms are turning multiple times per trip, often emptying and filling up at the same station.



abcnews said:


> The Meteor has ten cars, and the current Star has seven. In the past, the Star would run with either nine or ten cars, and eleven around the Christmas holiday. Five coaches, three sleepers, plus baggage, lounge and diner.


Current consists:

11 car Meteor: Baggage, 3 Sleepers, Diner, Lounge, 5 Coaches (scheduled to drop back to 4 coaches in September, IIRC)

8 car Star: Baggage, 2 Sleepers, Lounge, 4 Coaches

Last year's Thanksgiving and Christmas peaks had both trains at 3 sleepers and 5 coaches.


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## jis (Aug 13, 2015)

And as it is reported on TO, the Star #92 on 12th ran with 32 axles, apparently one Coach short and with one engine.


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## Bob Dylan (Aug 13, 2015)

As the late and great Vince Lombardi used to shout: " What the hell is going on out there??!!!!

Is this anyway to run a railroad, it seems that the Marx Brothers are making the decisions @ Amtrak!

Edited to reflect jis excellent point!


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## jis (Aug 13, 2015)

I suspect that the decision to operate a train a particular way on a single day based on equipment availability is more at Wilmington than 60 Mass. I think people have a mistaken impression of how big 60 Mass really is.


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## abcnews (Aug 13, 2015)

I thought I saw a recent Silver Star with only one Viewliner. It had an engine (just one), a baggage, one Viewliner Sleeper, one lounge and four coach cars. And that actually is 32 axles if you count the engine.


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## jis (Aug 13, 2015)

I have not seen anything recently since I have to drive 60 miles to get anywhere near a Silver anything. I am just reading stuff on trainorders from people who seem to stalk the Silvers for whatever reason.


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## Thirdrail7 (Aug 13, 2015)

abcnews said:


> I thought I saw a recent Silver Star with only one Viewliner. It had an engine (just one), a baggage, one Viewliner Sleeper, one lounge and four coach cars. And that actually is 32 axles if you count the engine.


You did. They shopped a view and there was nothing on the horizon so they let it go as is.



jis said:


> I suspect that the decision to operate a train a particular way on a single day based on equipment availability is more at Wilmington than 60 Mass. I think people have a mistaken impression of how big 60 Mass really is.


Actually, it has more to do with the facilities than it does CNOC. If CNOC says they want a car and there isn't one available, there is not much they can do.


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## jis (Aug 13, 2015)

Thirdrail7 said:


> jis said:
> 
> 
> > I suspect that the decision to operate a train a particular way on a single day based on equipment availability is more at Wilmington than 60 Mass. I think people have a mistaken impression of how big 60 Mass really is.
> ...


Oh absolutely! My point was that 60 Mass is way far removed from all that day to day stuff that happens when you are running an operation. CNOC cannot magically create equipment, but as the operations center hopefully they are aware of what exactly is running in each train at a given moment.


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## niemi24s (Aug 13, 2015)

Thirdrail7 said:


> If CNOC says they want a car and there isn't one available, there is not much they can do.


CNOC? Whuzzat?


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## Cho Cho Charlie (Aug 13, 2015)

niemi24s said:


> CNOC? Whuzzat?


Canadian National Operations Center?


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## OBS (Aug 13, 2015)

niemi24s said:


> Thirdrail7 said:
> 
> 
> > If CNOC says they want a car and there isn't one available, there is not much they can do.
> ...


CNOC= Consolidated National Operations Center or something close to that...


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## Thirdrail7 (Aug 13, 2015)

jis said:


> Thirdrail7 said:
> 
> 
> > jis said:
> ...


"Hopefully" is a good way to put it Jis! :giggle:


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## niemi24s (Aug 13, 2015)

OBS said:


> CNOC= Consolidated National Operations Center or something close to that...


That's exactly what it is. Google was no help and I would never have guessed. Thanx


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## rrdude (Aug 13, 2015)

niemi24s said:


> OBS said:
> 
> 
> > CNOC= Consolidated National Operations Center or something close to that...
> ...


Try Google again, with *both* "Amtrak" _and_ "CNOC"


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## AmtrakBlue (Aug 13, 2015)

2 sleepers on front of 92 today and 3 coaches on rear.


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## jis (Aug 13, 2015)

AmtrakBlue said:


> 2 sleepers on front of 92 today and 3 coaches on rear.


Yup, that plus lounge, baggage and one engine will give you 32 axles as reported before.


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## neroden (Aug 13, 2015)

It looks to me like 50 Mass Ave. NE is actually located physically inside DC Union Station -- am I mistaken? I'd think they'd stay in touch with the situation on the ground in the station which they are *actually working inside*.... they don't even have to cross the street...


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## Hal (Aug 13, 2015)

neroden said:


> It looks to me like 50 Mass Ave. NE is actually located physically inside DC Union Station -- am I mistaken? I'd think they'd stay in touch with the situation on the ground in the station which they are *actually working inside*.... they don't even have to cross the street...


Amtrak management concerned with the situation on the ground at Union Station or operations in general are not located inside Union Station. All the offices for the terminal and the operations center for Washington Terminal are in another building.


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## cirdan (Aug 14, 2015)

Hal said:


> neroden said:
> 
> 
> > It looks to me like 50 Mass Ave. NE is actually located physically inside DC Union Station -- am I mistaken? I'd think they'd stay in touch with the situation on the ground in the station which they are *actually working inside*.... they don't even have to cross the street...
> ...


I work for a big corporation.

My official work snailmail address is the company HQ. But in reality I'm not in the HQ building (and hardly ever even go there) but have my office in a smaller building more than a block away. The internal mailman brings me the mail there. But we still use the snailmail address of the HQ building. Maybe for prestige and recognition reasons? Maybe because its simpler to organize the mail that way? I don't know why. The only downside is that visitors don't always understand this and come to the wrong building, so I spend a lot of time giving directions to people.

Maybe it's similar with Amtrak.


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## Hal (Aug 14, 2015)

cirdan said:


> Hal said:
> 
> 
> > neroden said:
> ...


The corporate HQ is in the offices at 60 Mass, the CEO office is there. There is not enough office space in Union Station though for everything to be located there. Also Amtrak does not own Union Station. There are several other buildings in DC that have Amtrak offices. National Operations is at CNOC in Wilmington. Local operations in Washington Terminal are in another building. Day to day stuff with equipment will be decided at those operations offices. Certainly managers in the corporate offices are aware in general of what is happening nationally. There is a text message info system from CNOC in Wilmington. And the CEO is certainly getting reports. So in that sense they would be in touch with what is happening at Union Station. But they would also be in touch with what is happening in New York, California, New England.


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## Bob Dylan (Aug 14, 2015)

Good info Hal, but the question is what are they doing about it when things go wrong like is happening daily on all Routes?

Does the right hand know what the left is doing @ Amtrak? ( ie, the chronic Cluster flubs in Chicago)

The answer is Blowing in the Wind, but seems to be No!


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## jis (Aug 14, 2015)

Merely knowing about something and actually being able to do something about it after negotiating the gauntlet of Union and other (ossibly well intended but mutually contradictory) rules and protections and associated political connections is a separate matter. Every hand can know all that is there to know, but be quite paralyzed due to other factors. I have seen this sort of thing happen too often in many large corporations to dismiss it as an impossibility at Amtrak.


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## Anderson (Aug 14, 2015)

AmtrakBlue said:


> 2 sleepers on front of 92 today and 3 coaches on rear.


Was on this train RVR-WAS. Wondered why it looked a little short...

Edit: It's going to be darkly amusing if the diner cut is thrashing coach more than the sleepers. Then again, even Amtrak's numbers had hinted at this for a long time.


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## Thirdrail7 (Aug 14, 2015)

jis said:


> Merely knowing about something and actually being able to do something about it after negotiating the gauntlet of Union and other (ossibly well intended but mutually contradictory) rules and protections and associated political connections is a separate matter. Every hand can know all that is there to know, but be quite paralyzed due to other factors. I have seen this sort of thing happen too often in many large corporations to dismiss it as an impossibility at Amtrak.


You don't have to bring rules and politics into play. A more simple response is even if you are aware of the problems, are you giving people the proper tools to correct the situation? You can't complain about late trains and turning times if you're not providing the resources (finances, staff, equipment and most importantly time) to get what really get the tasks accomplished.


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## Chucktin (Aug 15, 2015)

We have round trip reservations for Winter Park (FL) to Philadelphia in September (bucket list trip). Is this what we'll encounter? Overnight without a dining car?


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## Railroad Bill (Aug 15, 2015)

Chucktin said:


> We have round trip reservations for Winter Park (FL) to Philadelphia in September (bucket list trip). Is this what we'll encounter? Overnight without a dining car?


If you are riding the Silver Star, there will be no dining car at least until end of the year according to Amtrak notices. We are going to

Fla this winter but will only be riding on the Meteor. No diner means no travel for us.


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## Chucktin (Aug 15, 2015)

Rats


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## Mystic River Dragon (Aug 15, 2015)

The one good thing about your trip without a dining car is that both ends have good food--there's a Panera in Winter Park (up by the Morse Museum), so you can stock up with sandwiches, salads, etc. for dinner. And when you get to Philly, you can't walk more than a foot without coming across somewhere with good food to eat (including good stuff at 30th Street).

What you will miss is the adventure of meeting new and interesting people in the dining car, plus a nice breakfast and lunch on the second day. I won't take the Star again unless they put the dining car back, so please say hello to Hamlet (cute station) for me as you go by. And let us know how the trip goes and what you think.


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## jis (Aug 15, 2015)

Thirdrail7 said:


> jis said:
> 
> 
> > Merely knowing about something and actually being able to do something about it after negotiating the gauntlet of Union and other (ossibly well intended but mutually contradictory) rules and protections and associated political connections is a separate matter. Every hand can know all that is there to know, but be quite paralyzed due to other factors. I have seen this sort of thing happen too often in many large corporations to dismiss it as an impossibility at Amtrak.
> ...


True that. However, in the situation that Amtrak is in, providing financial and other resources is intimately entangled in politics. This is not to say that there is not mismanagement. however, even in times of better management (as is allege in discussions here) many things that ought to have been fixed easier, were not. So I surmise that there are external problems and issues even beyond just internal bad management.


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## Cho Cho Charlie (Aug 15, 2015)

Railroad Bill said:


> We are going to Fla this winter but will only be riding on the Meteor. No diner means no travel for us.


+1

No way I would travel via Amtrak, on a LD train with no diner. No way.


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## jis (Aug 15, 2015)

I would have difficulty considering a two day ride on an LD without Diner. But on what amounts to a somewhat extended overnight ride from KIS to WAS, I have no problem. I'd take the lower fare. Though as I have said before I'd prefer that the train did have a Diner but buying the meal plan upgrade to the Sleeper transportation was not mandatory, since I seldom partake in all three meals, and the amount of food provided is way more than I'd normally consume.


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## VentureForth (Aug 16, 2015)

Jis - I would be very interested to know what the stress loading in the cafe is. Do they run out of food? Are the lines horrible? Is there still coffee and juice in the sleeper?


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## jis (Aug 16, 2015)

I will be on it in October on the way to the AU Gathering. I will let you know what happens.


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## neroden (Aug 16, 2015)

Anderson said:


> Edit: It's going to be darkly amusing if the diner cut is thrashing coach more than the sleepers. Then again, even Amtrak's numbers had hinted at this for a long time.


Yeah, this wouldn't surprise me at all, actually.


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## City of Miami (Aug 24, 2015)

I don't know If this has been noted before:

I'm planning for a tri to FL in Feb-Mar and I notice that the Silver Star 92 is showing both and diner and lounge for dates I'm checking.


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## the_traveler (Aug 24, 2015)

The "test" only goes to December.


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## jis (Aug 24, 2015)

the_traveler said:


> The "test" only goes to December.


Upto January 31st actually. Diner is supposed to be restored Feb 1 AFAICT.


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## The Davy Crockett (Aug 24, 2015)

With a new diner?


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## Ryan (Aug 24, 2015)

Doubtful.


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## jis (Aug 24, 2015)

OTOH, if no new Diners are in service by then, the date might get pushed back, if they have still been avoiding doing major overhaul on the old Diners as they come due, in the fond hope of having the new Diners online. Only time will tell.


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## The Davy Crockett (Aug 24, 2015)

I guess that blows my theory that this 'experiment' was done because some of the heritage diners are in such bad shape to no longer be road worthy.


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## The Davy Crockett (Aug 24, 2015)

I posted just after you jis!


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## cirdan (Aug 24, 2015)

jis said:


> OTOH, if no new Diners are in service by then, the date might get pushed back, if they have still been avoiding doing major overhaul on the old Diners as they come due, in the fond hope of having the new Diners online. Only time will tell.


I don't think they can just push out a new diner just like that.

The staff will need to familiarized and trained on the new car etc. All this takes time.


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## Just-Thinking-51 (Aug 24, 2015)

Very doubtful time line, but yes that the plan. The hole experiment is PR for a management call not to invest large funds for major work in the heritage cars. Or just a after thought.

Now will the Sliver Star or another train get the new cars first, is another whole another issue, but come 1 Feb (+/-) 2016 someone at Amtrak is hoping to have enough new dinners on the road to provide normal meal services.


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## Bob Dylan (Aug 24, 2015)

Concur, the time line is just too short @ the rate the bag cars have been entering full service.

Maybe 8400 and a couple of the Heritage Diners that are still in good mechanical shape ( some are better than others) can be dedicated to the Star until the new ones start entering Service?


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## The Davy Crockett (Aug 24, 2015)

Or maybe the 'experiment' will be deemed a 'success,' and extended, though it doesn't seem that way with what City of Miami found. OTOH, if Amtrak were to extend the experiment with short notice, it would hardly be the first time they pulled a stunt like knowing well in advance they can't deliver what they have sold.


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## Devil's Advocate (Aug 24, 2015)

The Davy Crockett said:


> Or maybe the 'experiment' will be deemed a 'success,' and extended, though it doesn't seem that way with what City of Miami found. OTOH, if Amtrak were to extend the experiment with short notice, it would hardly be the first time they pulled a stunt like knowing well in advance they can't deliver what they have sold.


Isn't that how this whole thing started in the first place? "Hello Mr. & Mrs Passenger, your sleeper fare no longer comes with any meals, welcome aboard the Silver Budget Express."


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## jis (Aug 24, 2015)

cirdan said:


> jis said:
> 
> 
> > OTOH, if no new Diners are in service by then, the date might get pushed back, if they have still been avoiding doing major overhaul on the old Diners as they come due, in the fond hope of having the new Diners online. Only time will tell.
> ...


Well, they have already used the VL I Diner Indianapolis several times on the Silvers. Since they were able to do that I have problem understanding why it would be so difficult to use VL II Diners, which are more or less identical to the VL I prototype as far as the Dines OBS equipment is concerned. Maybe I am missing something?


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## AmtrakBlue (Aug 24, 2015)

Spotted on 91 in WIL today. No, not a diner. This was between the engine & the bag.


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## keelhauled (Aug 24, 2015)

The window ahead of the forward door makes me think a cab car deadheading somewhere.


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## Bob Dylan (Aug 24, 2015)

keelhauled said:


> The window ahead of the forward door makes me think a cab car deadheading somewhere.


That or maybe an Inspection or Executive Car?


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## Ryan (Aug 24, 2015)

It's a DoT car.

PDF with more info than you could ever want.

https://www.fra.dot.gov/Elib/Document/2158


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## Thirdrail7 (Oct 1, 2015)

The  cafe car menu on the Silver Star has been altered to offer more choices. I think it is closer to the NEC menu.


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## rrdude (Oct 1, 2015)

Better late than never


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## Train2104 (Oct 1, 2015)

Thirdrail7 said:


> The  cafe car menu on the Silver Star has been altered to offer more choices. I think it is closer to the NEC menu.


This was the menu on the Pennsylvanian last week. I thought something was different from the last time I rode it....


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## Palmetto (Oct 2, 2015)

They also raised the price of a cocktail to $8.00. Right in line with the airlines.


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## neroden (Oct 2, 2015)

jis said:


> cirdan said:
> 
> 
> > jis said:
> ...


Well, the underfloor equipment will be different from the V I, but the same as the baggage car... training really should go quick...


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