Amfleet said:
Is the Lake Shore still running with one Lounge to Boston, or is there another food service car besides the diner that runs to New York?
Sadly that is correct, the lounge goes to Boston and none is put on the New York section. This frankly IMHO is a big problem as it leaves the NY bound passengers without food for close to three hours.
One must plan ahead and buy from the lounge before the train reaches Schenectady. The lounge closes at Schenectady and remains closed until the Boston section leaves Albany.
The diner stops serving breakfast at 10:00 AM and does not serve any lunch for anyone, regardless of destination.
North/west bound the diner opens around 5:00 PM, around Hudson or so. Therefore NYP passengers have some food available to them prior to reaching Albany.
In an interesting side note, the typical free-for-all that used to occur in the diner, coming out of Chicago, has been eliminated. Before an announcement is made to the whole train about the diner, each sleeping car attendant picks about 10 to 15 passengers for a 7:30 PM seating. The rest are assigned an 8:30 to 8:45 seating. Once the first seating is seated, then the LSA announces that any coach passengers wanting to eat in the diner should come back and make a reservation.
If they have any seat available then those coach passengers who arrive first may actually get a seat, the rest will be paged by the LSA when a table is ready.
Personally I like this new arrangement, as in the past there were people in the sleepers who never got their included meal, as there was no table available to them thanks to coach passengers getting there first. Now this doesn't happen.
Coach passengers not wishing to wait, can either hit the lounge car or order take out from the diner.