Any Changes so for under Mr. Moorman?

[Palmetto]

Chicago VP has not been named. That might be saying something about the morass that exists there.

 

[Thirdrail7]

With the current Chief Transportation officer retiring in a few months, it seems Mr. Moorman has inserted a former NS manager with 13 years in the industry to the position of Vice President Safety, Compliance and Training (the former Chief Transportation Officer.)

 

[cirdan]

There's a point where government subsidies should stop. If you take Interstate highways as an example, that point might be "above the rails" for Amtrak. Subsidise the track, bridges and other basic infrastructure, then run the railroad on the basis of value given for value received. If there are special reasons to subsidise service – service to isolated rural communities, traffic reduction in urban areas – then, fine, go for it. But there's a point where you stop providing extras if people don't value those extras sufficiently to pay the cost. Or alternatively, you raise prices and/or cut costs to the point where cost and revenue are in balance. Or find another company that doesn't have Amtrak's cost structure and let them make a go of it. Dining car meals are a good example of that.

I don't think its that easy just to bring in a catering company, show them the dining car, and tell them, get on with it.

At times SCAs and other train staff will double as servers in the dining car or cafeteria car. If you farm that out to a separate company, how would that work?

A dining car is not a diner that just happens to be on a train, any more than airline catering is not a catering service that just happens to be on a plane. The staff need special training and also perform other tasks.

I think that Amtrak either needs to run all catering, or drop it. Maybe on a one off basis you can have something like a PV dining car that just happens to be included in an Amtrak consist, and that just happens to allow passengers to walk in and eat, but this is for exceptional situations. I don't think you can make that work across the board. And if you can, it won't be cheaper than what you have today.

 

[west point]

Any private dinning car service runs up against of passengers expecting them to help in an emergency. We cannot think of any way to separate passenger expectations of help from any OBS no matter either Amtrak or private.

 

[zephyr17]

Just FYI, Alaska Railroad outsources their dining car, IIRC.