First, Plan on spending a bulk of your time in the room. On my trip, there was a very limited ability to spend any time at all in the cafe car other than ordering food. On the Cardinal, it was specifically dictated that all lounge seating was off-limits.
Similarly, on my trip all meals were served in the room as well. Despite the fact that I had pre-ordered, the Crescent attendant took my order from scratch for all meals. Also, even though I pre-ordered lunch and dinner on the Crescent – they didn’t serve lunch out of New York.
The next day on the Cardinal (there had been no pre-ordering in place for my trip), I boarded at a similar time out of Charlottesville – but to my surprise they were ready to serve me lunch.
I think much of the activity of the sleeper attendant is geared around meal activity. On both trains, the attendant took the order – scheduled when I wanted to eat it, brought it to the room, and later retrieved the trash. So that’s keeping them pretty occupied.
For whatever it’s worth, the meals were fairly well prepared. It’s like receiving takeout from a restaurant – packaged very similarly. On the Crescent the dinner roll was heated – on the Cardinal it was not. On the Crescent I got a choice of Italian or Ranch dressing, on the Cardinal they just brought me Italian. I didn’t have breakfast on either train so I can’t speak to that particular meal. There has been a lot of hue and cry on the food – and it is a far cry from traditional meal service which I’m praying will come back someday. That being said, I thought the food was perfectly appropriate for a pandemic. You won’t go hungry unless you have specific dietary restrictions.
One thing that was new for this trip was 100% credit card purchases, no cash allowed in the café car. That was a new experience for me. On the Crescent the café attendant had a tip jar out, on the Cardinal the attendant did not have a tip jar out
I thought the amount of people in the sleepers for both the Crescent and the Cardinal was pretty normal looking. No, every room wasn’t booked – but it was probably about 75% capacity I would say. That surprised me.
Coach seemed less populated, but since I didn’t spend much time (if any) wandering the train I couldn’t tell you for sure how full it was. The one Coach I did wander into to use the restroom was pretty empty. But I think they’re still following the one person per row mandate at this stage in coach.
No, the sleeper coffee pot is not on and available. However – you can get coffee from the café at no cost pretty much at any time they’re open. The two times I went to get coffee, the attendant noticed I was coming from the sleepers, and provide the coffee at no charge. Also, the Cardinal sleeper attendant offered to get me coffee – but I went ahead and got it myself. The Crescent sleeper attendant was pretty busy as he appeared to be responsible for two sleepers.
The sleeper attendants on both trains I thought were pretty good. They were both on the younger side, were friendly and I thought did their job well. I was happy to tip them both – especially since they brought me meals.
In answer to your question about restaurants in the DC station – I didn’t go in myself but I can tell you what I heard. One passenger who went in said only Burger King was open. However, the attendant said that one of the two levels was pretty much open.
In summary, this trip was unusual as it was the most isolated I had ever been as a passenger on a train even though I travel in sleeper for all long-distance travel. I would say, that I never was concerned for my safety in regards to Covid. Of course I took the appropriate precautions and Amtrak seemed to do a good job of enforcing the mask requirements and implementing policies with a chance to keep everyone safe.
if Amtrak would just follow this reduced consist approach as we complete our journey through this crisis it would do the country a much bigger service then slashing everything to worthless three day a week service starting in October.
From what I can tell, more people are traveling, and not just for pleasure – I’m sure many out of necessity. In my case, it was returning home after driving with my daughter to her small college on the east coast. We decided to leave her a car for the semester – that meant I had to find my way home.
