Dining Car meals served on trains...

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H

HARHBG

Service Attendant
Joined
Sep 13, 2015
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148
Someone went to a lot of trouble and work to post what meals are served on each long distance train but I can't find the post. I've looked for several days at all the various different subject forums and tried the search feature. No matter what I enter into the search engine I stll come up with nothing.

Can anyone with more experience help?

THANKS!! so very much........
 
A great big THANK YOU to all contributing info, ......... ESPECIALLY .....Istone19 , for finding the page I was looking for ........

AND an even BIGGER AND MOST GRATEFUL THANK YOU BIG TIME to andersone, for putting all the info together so beautifully.....

A piece of ART..andersone...send Amtrak a bill for that one!!!
 
I haven't seen any referenc here at AU to a post by Jim Loomis reacting to an Amtrak speaker ar the NARPFall meeting who seemed to say the 'no diner' experiment on the Silver Star is being accepted. He feels Amtrak may be tilting the results to biast it that way.

"Say It Ain’t So, Joe Boardman! "

http://www.trainsandtravel.com/

It concludes:

"On Sunday, the final day of the National Association of Railroad Passengers’ annual Fall meeting, an Amtrak executive spoke to our gathering. He was asked how passengers on the Silver Star were responding to the no-dining-car experiment. He said it seemed clear that people were willing to give up dining car meals in exchange for lower fares.

I must say in all honesty, I don’t believe him. In fact, I don’t think most of us in the room believed him. But if that is what Amtrak announces at the end of the year, I’m very much afraid they will have rigged the results to justify further cost-cutting at the expense of sleeping car passengers and in a naive attempt to appease Congressman Mica. You can’t imagine how much I hope I’m wrong."

and the subsequent 4 page thread ar TO started by Gene Poon Oct 19

"Goodbye Dining Cars? Say It Ain't So, Joe Boardman"

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?4,3870539
 
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It's clear from the published financial results so far that the Amtrak exec is simply wrong. Or lying. Ridership & revenue down on the Star, up on the Meteor.
 
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neroden said:
It's clear from the published financial results so far that the Amtrak exec is simply wrong. Or lying. Ridership & revenue down on the Star, up on the Meteor.
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Amtrak is neither wrong nor lying, their methods are just faulty. If you gauge the success of the "no-dining car program" based on a poll of Star riders, of course they're fine with the change. If they didn't like it, they'd be on the Meteor - or not riding a train at all. They're only talking to a biased sample.
 
Speaking of he Star I noticed it was running with only three Coaches. Is that normal for it? Or did it manage to get the number of Coaches normally assigned to it from 4 to 3 sometime during the summer?
 
D.P. Roberts said:
neroden said:
It's clear from the published financial results so far that the Amtrak exec is simply wrong. Or lying. Ridership & revenue down on the Star, up on the Meteor.
Click to expand...
Amtrak is neither wrong nor lying, their methods are just faulty. If you gauge the success of the "no-dining car program" based on a poll of Star riders, of course they're fine with the change. If they didn't like it, they'd be on the Meteor - or not riding a train at all. They're only talking to a biased sample.
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They judged it based on a *poll of Star riders*? That's ridiculous, to the point of being deliberately dishonest. The only way to judge it is by how the riders vote with their money, obviously. Star is down, Meteor is up.
 
And I would add many casual riders in the Coaches probably are not even aware of the Dining Car option. Many just get in their seat and pretty much stay there for the duration, unconcerned about Lounges and Diners.
 
The problem with vote with their money argument is that I would expect revenues to be lower on a train on which the fare buckets have been reduced, and as I notice, even a Coach car seems to have been reduced. I was under the impression that the Star previously carried 4 Coaches. now I see it carries three.

But seriously when I have heard two different Amtrak execs in two NARP meetings say almost opposite things, I don't attach much credence to either, and just await the real official numbers.

On the Silvers I have always met at least a few Coach passengers in the Diner for every meal. So any claims that Coach passengers do not use the Diner is spurious in my humble opinion based on my limited experience of riding the Silvers and the LSL at least a couple of times each year.
 
I agree with jis, coach passengers know there is a dining car. They are usually making a rational economic decision not to use it based on their perception of the value, etc, plus the discourgement of the fact that the sleeping car passengers get first crack at reservations so there may not be all that many for coach passengers, or at desirable times.
 
zephyr17 said:
I agree with jis, coach passengers know there is a dining car. They are usually making a rational economic decision not to use it based on their perception of the value, etc, plus the discourgement of the fact that the sleeping car passengers get first crack at reservations so there may not be all that many for coach passengers, or at desirable times.
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Yes and no. In my experience from riding coach on the Crescent is that many coach passengers do NOT know there is a dining car (or confuse the cafe car with the dining car) or think it's for 1st class only.

In my experience is unless the car attendant or someone else makes a point of announcing the presence of a dining car, is many coach passengers aren't aware of the dining car. The ones who are, are often veteran riders.

As I've said many times, I think Amtrak could do a FAR better job of making coach passengers aware of the existence of a dining car.
 
As I said my experience is mainly from the Silvers and LSL, and on those many Coach passengers do know about the Diner and the difference between the Cafe and the Diner. They even know enough to complain loudly about the lack of a Diner in the Star these days. That is of course not to say that every Coach passenger knows or cares. I am sure there are many in Coach who don't know or even if they know, don't care to partake. After all Dining Car food is not cheap by any means.

At least the Silvers that I have been on, the existence of the Dining Car (on the ones that have one) and the fact that the LSA will come by to take reservations is announced on the train-wide PA system. Perhaps in addition, they could place the menus in the seat pockets. That would be easy to do and inexpensive. After copying a bunch of menus on plain paper should not cost that much.
 
If they eliminate proper dining car service on LD trains, I don't think I'll ever ride one again.
 
They will not eliminate proper dining car service on LSL or even on the Silvers beyond the current Silver Star silliness. I have heard this from a usually very reliable source over this past weekend.
 
On my LSL 48 trip last Friday, the announcement was made for dining in the diner at lunch time and they came around and took reservations for lunch. Only about three people in my coach opted for the diner. At breakfast I had to ask my car attendant and the conductor when breakfast would be served since it is still a quiet time in the morning for announcements. When I went up for breakfast at 6:30 there was only one other passenger in the dining car. They welcomed me as a coach (paying) customer and service was great.
 
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