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Calm down. Political Payback - “returning a favor as payback for political support”. That’s what this feels like - but hey - it is politics after all. Nothing illegal - just disappointing. Excuse me if the nominations of an urban housing specialist and a Union boss to a transportation post...

It’s not an encouraging group, to be honest. Mostly Northeasterners, mostly political payback. if there’s a transportation expert in the mix there – I don’t see them…

Don’t get your hopes up. There was a Trains article on the nominations Biden made today, and it looks like a bunch of political payback with no relevant experience, and not much representation outside of the Northeast. For instance, there’s an urban housing person and an AFL/CIO person on...

That won’t help. A lot of the café lounge cars have a dedicated office for the conductor. Basically, they store their luggage in it instead.

I concur with zephyr17’s take. Maybe a silver lining with the Covid induced early retirements will be that a lot of the regular poor performers I saw on trains over and over again have finally retired. On recent trips, I have gone out of my way to try and encourage the younger folks I see in...

It’s funny - it was recommended (by someone) I tip $10 per night when I took my first sleeper trip in 1992. Sounds like that’s still a pretty typical tipping level. Not everything goes up with inflation equally 🙂

In regards to all the discussion about water and coffee, in almost all cases both should be available in your sleeper car - if your SCA is on the ball. Despite the nice ice dispensers on the VL2 Sleepers, I have yet to see them in use. Kind of like the towel racks in the VL2 shower. Must take...

Yes. For me personally $20 would be typical, and $30 for exceptional service. I have certainly given $10 before for a trip where the effort was completely lacking and they weren’t obviously overloaded.

I just realized on my most recent trip one of the possible reasons why I enjoy sleeping in the bunk on the Viewliners best when I’m riding solo. When it’s only you, the SCA will most typically stack both thin mattresses together on the top bunk and you’ll sleep on top of both of them. Much...

Just a button up my experience on this trip with this crew. From an onboard service standpoint, I had the same group both directions. I have to say that while the food was still very much “Cardinal like”, and the crew takeover of the sleeper side of the Cafe remained complete, the onboard...

Yes, I was internally very livid - and I did start to argue with him - but quickly stopped myself. As far as I know - as the Conductor he has the authority to do whatever he sees fit at the moment. Later on, there may have been ramifications for him, but that wouldn’t help me get home. So I...

Well - the trip ended just fine - despite the drama. On Monday morning, when I went into the café car to talk to the Indianapolis crew - they were positive and apologetic. They saw the report from the Charlottesville conductor and apologized for any stressing I may have had. They said that...

Well… I’m not falling on my sword this week. I’ll work the issue through channels and see if it gets anywhere. I put a lengthy post elsewhere in one of the bicycle threads - but the bottom line is the conductor and I got into it a little bit over my bicycle. He claimed I should never have been...

Well…the return trip on Cardinal #51 with my bike is not going so smoothly. Sorry for the length of this post, but for bicyclists on Amtrak it’s important information. The Charlottesville conductor looked at me sideways when he scanned my return e-ticket to Crawfordsville IN with my bike. He...

I would argue that a lot of Amtrak Corridors these days are absolutely being hammered with freight delays. And this is worse customer expectation-wise (in my opinion) than LD delays. This was supposed to be improving with teeth being added to host railroad on-time requirements, but it obviously...

The big question really is why the federal government isn’t forcing the host railroad to update their antiquated system? People have supposedly died because of it. They don’t let car companies get away with that - they at least force them to issue recalls and correct the issues. If they don’t...

I’m riding tomorrow CVS (Charlottesville) to CRF (Crawfordsville IN). I’m going to be completely respectful, but I’m going to insist on eating dinner in the Café diner. Unless it is late - that will likely be my one meal. We’ll see what happens.

I have three different itineraries on the cardinal over the next few months. I wasn’t able to be moved over to that car on any of them. I’ll try again later, I guess.

On a train like the Cardinal, a Bag Dorm is a completely practical solution. The bag dorm increases sleeper capacity while maintaining baggage service. With the half baggage car, they now can accommodate large items like bicycles (which I use) and restricted items like firearms (which hunters...

Couldn’t Amtrak buy some “cheap” used boxcars to use as Axel count cars? Seems like an inexpensive, practical solution.