The Amtrak representative who spoke at the RPA Fall Council Meeting pretty much said unequivocally that it is in the works. I don't know how much clearer a message could be.
I rode the Capitol Limited in Coach, Pittsburgh to Washington, and the cafe attendant had no problem with me sitting in the coach end of the Cross-Country Cafe car (i.e., the "dining car") while I ate the breakfast I bought there.
I can only hope it's the first of the month, or at least the first Monday for my return leg.
The same sorts of supplier shortfalls have happened at the retirement home where I live. Just as on Amtrak, the service problem is confounded when employees try to substitute items without asking the customer first -- or as on Russian trains -- the customer is handed a beautiful menu and then it turns out that the items were never on that day's train. OBS training needs to include ways of coping with this.
I thought the answer was specific to the Crescent, but I may have misheard.
Before the Crescent he did say something about there not being a commitment at this time to routes outside the Silver service and the routes which currently already have traditional dining.
Well, operationally there is a difference between LSL and the Crescent. LSL already has the necessary hard product (Viewliner Diner) in it, the Crescent does not, and they do not have enough Diners until they get them out of Mothballs to equip the Crescent with the necessary hard product. It is much easier to launch a soft product on an available compatible hard product than in the absence of it. Cardinal of course never really had full service Dining in the recent or even distant past, so it is an entirely different kettle of fish.
I dug up this consist for the Pioneer. It's from the tri-weekly period, but shows a regular diner being used as a lounge.
If management really hated long distance, they wouldn't have restored traditional dining to the Zephyr, Chief, Builder, Starlight, and Sunset. They also wouldn't be planning the imminent upgrades of food service on the Silvers.
Lake Shore is actually treated pretty well and service on board is pretty good. While it isn’t slated for traditional dining restoration at this time it has one of the least meal periods so it’s understandable it wouldn’t be a huge priority for that and in other areas it seems to be a higher priority than the Capitol or crescent. It’s running with a viewliner 2 diner, has 3 sleepers reliably. and compared to other trains a decent amount of coaches and one of the few LD trains where they’ve added coaches to meet demand. It’s definitely the preferred train by management for East - Chicago and is definitely on the “A” list as far as priority. I’d define the “B” trains (the ones management doesn’t seem to know what to do with) as the Eagle, the Crescent, the Cardinal, and the City of New Orleans.
And where is all the necessary single level equipment (specially Sleepers, Diners and Lounges) going to come from before the LD equipment replacement happens? It may be easier to fix the 60 or so Superliners that are awaiting restoration to service.
Barely enough to add one more Viewliner to each of the current single level trains.
As I recall you wanted to complain about your food experience, which I presume you did. Do you seriously expect to get compensated for your entire trip just because of your food experience? Was there additional disruption which was not mentioned by you? I traced back to the original message and could not find anything.
