On Saturday, December 7, 2024, the extra section was a coach cafe car. There was a "stored" curtain mid-car which was sometimes used to designate the front half as "business class" on other routes. On this train all seats were coach, and all passengers were destined to Bloomington-Normal, IL. The cafe was NOT in use. The cafe space seems to have been used as an employee lounge.
Thank you for the info. Seems odd that they wouldn’t add the service, but it is Amtrak.
If they can't consistently get a snack coach and provision it and staff it, or if the existing onboard F&B offering doesn't see elevated business volume during that period, I absolutely think they're correct not to operate the second snack bar.Thank you for the info. Seems odd that they wouldn’t add the service, but it is Amtrak.
Midrats on the old Diesel Subs was better. The stewards left bread, bologna, peanut butter and jelly out on the mess table. And any pie, cake or anything left. Only caveat, you didn't clean up after yourself at your own peril. But the worst Mess Crank was better than some of the Mess Cranks on Amtrak nowadays.
I did not mean to give the impression that the train did not have a cafe. The Texas Eagle that day did have a cafe/snack bar car between the last sleeper and the first coach toward the front of the train.
Currently Amtrak has 9 snack coaches on the roster, with 1 that seems to be out of service. As far as required services I believe they only need the 1 on the Heartland Flyer. So I would think keeping two cars dedicated to this service, as they seem to be doing now, wouldn’t be a big deal.
Considering the Eagle has it's own cafe I don't think it's necessary to have two cafes on a single train. If all the passengers were going to Bloomington-Normal too, that's not a very long trip, so no real need for a cafe.Thank you for the info. Seems odd that they wouldn’t add the service, but it is Amtrak.
Not to get off topic but I’m pretty sure the Chicago to Carbondale services (Illini/Saluki) run with snack coaches for the time being since the host railroad has forced Amtrak to run superliner equipment on this route.
Good point. So that’s 2 trainsets? So 3 cars are in required service. Thanks for pointing that out.
As long as Amtrak continues to run the Eagletes with 1 P-42 between Chicago and San Antonio, there will be lots of problems like this due to lack of spare engines, and the "rode hard and put up wet" condition of the P-42s!
Still embarrassing that they have no spare power in STL despite it being a critical stop for the Eagle, and two corridor routes (one of them being pretty big).
