Analysis of the Gardner/Harris May '23 train rides, intentions, speculations

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AmtrakFlyer

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For this of you that follow “Come ride with me” ( a senior on board employee) on face book he’s got a lot of photos this week with Gardner and Harris on the Cardinal, Eagle and possibly the Sunset. This guy is one of Amtraks best!
 
AmtrakFlyer said:
For this of you that follow “Come ride with me” ( a senior on board employee) on face book he’s got a lot of photos this week with Gardner and Harris on the Cardinal, Eagle and possibly the Sunset. This guy is one of Amtraks best!
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Yes indeed. Lamar is certainly a great "cheer leader" for Amtrak and life itself. Met him two years ago on the Sunset Limited.
 
zetharion said:
Figures. Cant be bothered to ride the product they put out.
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Sidney said:
I m sure they were fed quite well and were no where near flex territory. Would be nice for these higher ups to experience what average passengers experience
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Spot on. Same hypocrisy most everywhere, I guess. When I worked Concierge, I'd escort our VP's and CEO's to the gate for their flights. Oh, everything was just so, so, perfect. Lots of gate agents, boarding flawless, never mind that the rest of the time the same flight usually had just one agent running crazy trying to get the flight out on time. LOL. Corporate America at its finest!
 
alpha3 said:
Spot on. Same hypocrisy most everywhere, I guess. When I worked Concierge, I'd escort our VP's and CEO's to the gate for their flights. Oh, everything was just so, so, perfect. Lots of gate agents, boarding flawless, never mind that the rest of the time the same flight usually had just one agent running crazy trying to get the flight out on time. LOL. Corporate America at its finest!
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Reminds me once again of riding SP Train 12 on the night that Biaggini rode it in '67. In the middle of the night men in suits just happened to be hanging out on the platform at Dunsmuir as we pulled in on time.
 
alpha3 said:
Spot on. Same hypocrisy most everywhere, I guess. When I worked Concierge, I'd escort our VP's and CEO's to the gate for their flights. Oh, everything was just so, so, perfect. Lots of gate agents, boarding flawless, never mind that the rest of the time the same flight usually had just one agent running crazy trying to get the flight out on time. LOL. Corporate America at its finest!
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Sure sounds like a familiar scenario, across the board in just about all similar corporate “inspections”.
But I don’t know what is worse…the Top Hat being unaware that the word got out beforehand, and extraordinary steps were taken to make everything appear great…or the Top Hat wanting it “leaked”, and pretending to be naive…🤔😉
 
I have a bad feeling about these two trains if the House cuts the budget at all. From all accounts it doesn’t look like management was mingling with passengers. It’s so rare management rides the trains an employee brought up an ominous remark in comments on another forum. When Anderson rode the Coast Starlight he had nothing but positive things to say, especially about how nice the parlour car was, 6 weeks late he ordered them parked. Another comment that hit home to me about Gardner’s and Harris‘s trip last week was that they didn’t ride the Cardinal or Eagle. They just attached a private car to the end, only they didn’t have to pay the exorbinate fee most private car owners have to.

Why did they pick this two trains to observe? Are they the weakest links in the system? Why didn’t they stay in the regular trains accommodations, especially since the Eagle had a presumably empty transition car added specially to it to make the corporate car connected to the train?
 
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I think the Board should set a policy that Amtrak executives should travel in standard revenue sleepers on trains that are equipped with them. Only services available to ordinary passengers should be available to them. If no sleeper space is available, I'd allow that a another sleeper could be added, with any space not needed in the extra car released for general sale. Any exception must be requested in writing with justification.

Of course, the current board would not do such a thing.
 
It’s not a “private car” inspection cars for the execs are nothing new. Im all for them mingling with the passengers and hope they did here but if they didn’t put the beech grove on and housed them in an extra Normal sleeper we’d be complaining about that - if they took up revenue space with their entourage we’d be complaining about that, and if they didn’t take the train at all we’d still be complaining. I think just about any way they did this trip someone on this and other boards would be complaining. The way I see it is they got out on the network - which is a good thing all around. Using the inspection car makes it least disruptive to the passengers aboard and the crew trying to serve the normal fare paying passengers. In this digital age the idea of Gardner and Harris doing a secret trip in a sleeper by themselves with no one knowing simply isn’t going to happen.
 
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lordsigma said:
It’s not a “private car” inspection cars for the execs are nothing new. Im all for them mingling with the passengers and hope they did here but if they didn’t put the beech grove on and housed them in an extra Normal sleeper we’d be complaining about that - if they took up revenue space with their entourage we’d be complaining about that, and if they didn’t take the train at all we’d still be complaining. I think just about any way they did this trip someone on this and other boards would be complaining. The way I see it is they got out on the network - which is a good thing all around. Using the inspection car makes it least disruptive to the passengers aboard and the crew trying to serve the normal fare paying passengers. In this digital age the idea of Gardner and Harris doing a secret trip in a sleeper by themselves with no one knowing simply isn’t going to happen.
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I don't care about secret. I care about them getting the same product their paying passengers and subsidizing taxpayers do.

I know use of business cars is nothing new. That doesn't mean it should continue routinely.

Since they managed to scare up a transdorm anyway, maybe they should have ridden in that.

In any case, the biz car chefs should be reassigned to regular service and traveling execs should use the food service on the train they're traveling on, biz car or no biz car.
 
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On a trip to Florida last year the execs had “American View” paired with a regular Viewliner sleeper (American view does not have sleeping accommodations) so they would have had to have slept in the extra regular Viewliner sleeper. Not too long ago Harris reportedly rode the builder all the way - it had American View and a transition dorm - he must have slept in the latter as again AV has no bedrooms.
 
lordsigma said:
On a trip to Florida last year the execs had “American View” paired with a regular Viewliner sleeper (American view does not have sleeping accommodations) so they would have had to have slept in the extra regular Viewliner sleeper. Not too long ago Harris reportedly rode the builder all the way - it had American View and a transition dorm - he must have slept in the latter as again AV has no bedrooms.
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Okay, that's fine. Let them have an office car to use or a "theater"/inspection car like American View if that's needed. But standard sleepers and most especially regular food service.
 
Amtrakfflyer said:
I have a bad feeling about these two trains if the House cuts the budget at all. From all accounts it doesn’t look like management was mingling with passengers. It’s so rare management rides the trains an employee brought up an ominous remark in comments on another forum. When Anderson rode the Coast Starlight he had nothing but positive things to say, especially about how nice the parlour car was, 6 weeks late he ordered them parked. Another comment that hit home to me about Gardner’s and Harris‘s trip last week was that they didn’t ride the Cardinal or Eagle. They just attached a private car to the end, only they didn’t have to pay the exorbinate fee most private car owners have to.

Why did they pick this two trains to observe? Are they the weakest links in the system? Why didn’t they stay in the regular trains accommodations, especially since the Eagle had a presumably empty transition car added specially to it to make the corporate car connected to the train?
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"Let them eat Cake!" Marie Antoinette
 
Amtrakfflyer said:
I have a bad feeling about these two trains if the House cuts the budget at all. From all accounts it doesn’t look like management was mingling with passengers. It’s so rare management rides the trains an employee brought up an ominous remark in comments on another forum. When Anderson rode the Coast Starlight he had nothing but positive things to say, especially about how nice the parlour car was, 6 weeks late he ordered them parked. Another comment that hit home to me about Gardner’s and Harris‘s trip last week was that they didn’t ride the Cardinal or Eagle. They just attached a private car to the end, only they didn’t have to pay the exorbinate fee most private car owners have to.
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That sort of thing occurred to me when I saw the board packed with NEC addresses. A hasty budget cut in general would turn into specifics at the board level.
 
Willbridge said:
That sort of thing occurred to me when I saw the board packed with NEC addresses. A hasty budget cut in general would turn into specifics at the board level.
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Well, the good news is the board nominations are stopped in the Senate precisely due to the fact they are in contravention of the recent law that requires board seats be distributed among non-NEC states as well as NEC. They shouldn't be NEC concentrated as they have been. Sen. Tester (D-MT) halted them, with bipartisan support. The bad news is the term-expired board members are still sitting.

Hopefully, President Biden will submit a new set of nominees that conform to the law. And drop the renomination of that stupid 🤬, Gardner's buddy, Coscia.
 
Bob Dylan said:
"Let them eat Cake!" Marie Antoinette
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Who as far as we know never actually said that, it was attributed to her as part of the general anti-royalty feeling at the time of the French Revolution,

Yes it would be ideal if the top brass at Amtrak were to mingle with the people and see how things actually are on the ground. Sadly this is too rare in any company, not just Amtrak. At least they are actually experiencing the train trip and not just flying.
 
Amtrakfflyer said:
“The bad news is the term-expired board members are still sitting.”

Meaning Coscia is still in charge, for now..
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It’s certainly plausible that Coscia will be chair even with a reconstituted board. Part of what makes this process a pain is the partisan divide. Technically Biden’s original democratic picks could have met the requirements if the Republican picks had filled the network requirements but it got messed up when the first republican pick was also from an NEC state. I’m sure Biden is going to try to defend his democratic picks and try to fill in the network requirements with the GOP picks.

While I absolutely support the effort for geographic diversity on the board it doesn’t remove the requirement for vetting. There are probably picks from certain non NEC states that would be far more destructive to the network than some NEC picks. As someone who lives in an NEC state, living there does not automatically convey an indifference for LD services. So as part of getting this geographically diverse board we need to also ensure the picks actually support passenger rail and aren’t just fiscal hawks looking to gut Amtrak funding.
 
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