TBH I really can't think of any real issue on any of my Amtrak trips. Other than having to detrain when I get back home!
Positive comments about Amtrak?
- Thread starter Oaxacajo
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PNW Pax
Train Attendant
I concur with your perception that the general vibe on AU is negative. I try to limit my time on this site to once a week so I can detox. My main reason for being here is to catch news about AMTRAK that I might not see elsewhere, and I really appreciate the pointers and explanations given by railroad employees who post. I will post something if I think I can contribute positively to a thread.
I am immensely grateful that AMTRAK continues to provide reasonable passenger rail service at a time when many people consider it an unnecessary publicly funded anachronism. When President Nixon agreed to the creation of AMTRAK, he did so with the expectation it would fail. Despite Congressional antipathy, federal budget crises, and opposition from some railroads, AMTRAK persists. Would I like European-style rail service? Sure. I belong to a couple of passenger rail advocacy groups, and I communicate with my elected officials about my support for regional and national passenger rail service. But most Americans long ago put their faith and funding in motor vehicles and airplanes.
I frequently ride the AMTRAK Cascades service between Seattle and Portland, OR. It is the most comfortable and reliable way to travel between those two cities. I take the Coast Starlight on at least one leg of my trips to the Bay Area whenever time permits. Most of my encounters with AMTRAK personnel have been friendly and helpful, and while the equipment is sometimes tired and worn, it is serviceable because of the many dedicated AMTRAK employees who work tirelessly to keep ‘em rolling.
Like many AU members, I am older (74) and experienced pre-AMTRAK passenger rail service. I rode the Southern Pacific, and it wasn’t all that great. So when I see posts unfavorably comparing AMTRAK with passenger service of the “old days”, I am tempted to write, “OK Boomer.”
I am glad you initiated this thread. I joined AU a couple of months ago, and you gave voice to a concern I have had as I spent more time on it.
I’ve recently seen an increase in Amtrak rides among my friends and family (probably because I’m now Amtrak biggest evangelist for them).
All of my friends who use the NEC love Amtrak. They say it provides a wonderful service, and the only reason they won’t take it more is due to the price(though they always come to me too find a discount here and there. I’m usually successful).
I don’t love Amtrak so much as I love taking the train in general. Oftentimes, Amtrak does indeed provide a good product (especially in the Northeast). So they do get things right.
Unfortunately, I imagine it would be harder to love Amtrak in other parts of the country.
All of my friends who use the NEC love Amtrak. They say it provides a wonderful service, and the only reason they won’t take it more is due to the price(though they always come to me too find a discount here and there. I’m usually successful).
I don’t love Amtrak so much as I love taking the train in general. Oftentimes, Amtrak does indeed provide a good product (especially in the Northeast). So they do get things right.
Unfortunately, I imagine it would be harder to love Amtrak in other parts of the country.
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True this! The NEC is how the Western ( and Eastern Trains) should be Operated by Amtrak!
Trust those who mention how badly Managememt has screwed up what was really a well operated System till Anderson and his crew tried to make Amtrak an Airline!
A key reason why Amtrak won me over, once I discovered it, was the seats in coach have so much more room than those on airplanes. I'm only 4'11'', but nevertheless I suffered a lot on the airlines due to the tight space. I have no idea how a normal-sized person could handle it.
It's on my shelf right now. Thinking of reading it again.
If I didn't view Amtrak as positive I wouldn't have been riding continously for over 30 years. The anticipation,the sight of my train coming into view and,the initial movement of the train in a sleeper never get old. We all complain about flex food and the high price of sleepers,but we still ride. Finding those low buckets make the ride even sweeter.
Henry,Zephyr is a marvelous read. I'll be on it January and will read it again.
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See, I have to totally disagree with this. I regard the LD train journey as the enjoyable part. I don't care if it's late, as I don't think you can reasonably expect reliable timekeeping until Amtrak is not held hostage to the freight railroads. I think the exception to this would be the NE corridor trains where timeliness is paramount but Amtrak reigns supreme. It's like the airlines- you can get angry with them for repeated maintenance and crew/ground delays; but for weather and ATC delays, there's not much they can do.
Thanks for the history. Nice report
As one who did travel in the 1950s onward and my parents of course also through the 1920s-40s, I can say the black & white movies are accurate. Everybody went by train and first-class was excellent. Amtrak long-distance coach seating is better than most of even the streamlined coaches were (many lacked leg rests apart from very long-distance streamliners). Unlike airplanes which have very little if any variety, trains had a large range of everything from design & paint schemes and other appearance features, to layout or structural nature, to interior furnishings of all sorts. Each RR had its own beautiful china patterns, Pullman had top-quality bedding, the porter shined your shoes (people wore leather footwear), the dining car food & service was as good or better than the finest restaurants although, again, RRs varied and trains varied.
danasgoodstuff
OBS Chief
And most could barely afford coach and switched to buses as soon as they were even fractionally cheaper. I have fond memories of pre-Amtrak rail travel but sleepers and all the rest of first class accommodations were either completely out of reach or a once in a very great while experience. Also take a look at vintage rail ads for how many people it took to provide that golden age of rail experience. Things could've been different and better in some ways, but passenger rail was going to face an inevitable reckoning post WWII. Much of what is now fondly remembered was simply not sustainable.
danasgoodstuff
OBS Chief
The two best case even within the realm of possibility scenarios I can imagine are either Amtrak happens a full decade earlier or even earlier than that there's a realization in the industry that the're doomed if they don't consolidate and radically change national transportation and tax policy. Even then we wouldn't have the passenger rail service that we had in the '50s carrying on to today. But we might have something like what the Rail Passengers hub and gateway proposal with some higher speed rail. But it would've taken some exceptionally farsighted and skillful folks to make anything like that happen. Things were going bad long before most had any idea. We could easily have ended up with no long distance passenger rail at all and only some commuter and maybe a little more than that in the NEC. So, my hat's off to Amtrak for surviving at all in a world that was indifferent at best and often outright hostile.
As a fairly frequent Amtrak traveler since 1971 and frequent passenger train traveler from 1948 through 1971, I can say that I am pleased that Amtrak is still around. If it weren't for Amtrak and advocate groups like AU and yes, even certain allies in the House and Senate, I don't think passenger trains would exist in the United States. I remember reading many obituaries for passenger trains that were suppose to pretty much eliminated by 1970 except for the Northeast Corridor and Commuter Trains, but here we are in 2021 with expanded passenger trains in California, Washington, Oregon, Illinois, Michigan, Maine, North Carolina and other places. Unfortunately, the Long Distance Train network hasn't changed much as promised by Congress in the early 1970s. The overall travel experience by Amtrak is much better than immediately before Amtrak with a few exceptions; The Santa Fe Railroad which maintained a high standard and Seaboard Coast Line which still had great service from New York to Florida until Amtrak took over. I remember riding coach only long distance trains with no food service leading into Amtrak. A good example was L&N's Georgian from St. Louis to Atlanta with no food service and no place to buy food in the 18 hour journey. L&N tried to discontinue a year before Amtrak, but the ICC made them keep the train running and add a "Snack Bar" Coach which usually out of everything. And then we had Southern Pacific with long distance trains offering high priced Vending Machines on coach only trains. Many railroads were doing everything they could to discourage passengers. Amtrak has done a great job maintaining what we have today. And there is bright hope for the future.
As an example of pre Amtrak travel. In November 1968 I took my first ride on a non commuter US train the Senator from Philadelphia to Boston. Very crowded being the day before Thanksgiving and I was lucky to find a seat in the smoking section of a former NHRR coach. The coach had dead batteries so the lights would go out when the train stopped and come on when it started moving. No HEP in those days, each car had a wheel driven generator and batteries. Eventually after Newark the lights gave out completely. There was a parlor car in th he consist and some kind of cafe car with a counter where you could buy food and drink. I did not sample it but on other trips I tried the dining car. The service was ok but they tended to run out of things or be unstocked even at the start of a run. Example a dining car on a morning train out of Boston with no eggs only toast and coffee. Cars were basically clean but old. Toilets were the old style that dumped on the tracks- "do not flush while standing in station".
As a railfan and this being all new to me I didn't mind at the time but today I would expect better.
As a railfan and this being all new to me I didn't mind at the time but today I would expect better.
If it’s not too self promoting what’s the name of the book. I would love to read it
I have been riding Amtrak since 1990, but only for short one day trips until 2004, when I rode my first long distance train. And have overwhelmingly enjoyed all my experiences. I do agree there are aspects of Amtrak that could stand improvement, especially with their IT system. Frankly, though, when I see some people complain bitterly about Amtrak, and never balance it out with anything positive, I pass that off as the mutterings of someone who aren't happy unless they're not happy. And when I see people say they like Amtrak no matter what, and people jump all over them for being positive, I wonder. What's so wrong with being positive??And you don't have to rant and rave like John Madden in a beer commercial to show you care about Amtrak. Letters to your Congressional representatives work just as well.
When I read about the early days of Amtrak, how it was basically set up to fail, how the food service was reduced to inedible swill, and other things, and how they've been strung along with pittances from Congress, I think of the old William DeVaughn song "Just Be Thankful For What You Got".
When I read about the early days of Amtrak, how it was basically set up to fail, how the food service was reduced to inedible swill, and other things, and how they've been strung along with pittances from Congress, I think of the old William DeVaughn song "Just Be Thankful For What You Got".
Or
As for the complainers, W.S. Gilbert summed them up nicely when he wrote, "Isn't your life extremely flat when you've nothing whatever to grumble at."
As for the complainers, W.S. Gilbert summed them up nicely when he wrote, "Isn't your life extremely flat when you've nothing whatever to grumble at."
I don't know much about "how it was set up to fail", any places I can go to read about it?
Bembidion
Train Attendant
If you can find the Book To Hell in a Day Coach you will read about some of the abominable service people experienced in the pre-Amtrak era. It's an eye-opener. There probably were a few bright spots but railroads were losing so much money on passenger service that some were trying to do anything to drive customers away. That way they could go to the ICC and make the case for abandoning passenger service. Incidentally, the book I cited was published in 1968.
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But were they driving customers away because they were losing so much or were they losing so much because they were driving customers away and wanted to make more money on freight which they could do if they didn't have pesky passenger customers?
The chicken or the egg?
Did they make a real effort to keep passenger trains even if some of them had to be consolidated and did they attempt to change their ways of doing business to save those trains and not lose so much money? Did they care about public service? We know they forgot about all the money they made on the land grants and government bonds which was often to build passenger rail.
Then, remember the agreements they made and have been trying to get out of since to give passenger trains priority in return for abandoning their commitments to provide the service paid for by those bonds and grants.
Actually, in the early days of Amtrak, the food was pretty good. (I sampled the dining car on the Broadway Limited in 1973 and the Merchants Limited in 1975.) Sometime in the 1980s, the food went downhill for a while, but never quite to the level of flex dining. I had fish on the Crescent during a ride in 1990. The fish was OK, but possibly microwaved and served on a Styrofoam plate. The next time I sampled an Amtrak dining car was on the Capitol Limited in 1997, and by then the food was pretty good again.
It's possible that some of the railroad companies didn't even want to make money on freight, as many could make more (at least in the short term) selling off real estate assets. Of course, passenger stations in prime downtown locations were worth a lot more than some freight yard out in the boonies, so I guess they would focus on dropping passenger service first.
I seem to remember that B&O/C&O trying to encourage passenger traffic in the mid 1960s. Not sure how well it helped their bottom line. As for the land grants and government bonds to build the rail lines in the first place, I'm sure that the government was also interested in those railroads providing freight service. Of course, the skeptics didn't believe that there was any market to be had for any kind of transcontinental railroad service, passenger or freight. (Remember that in 1860 there was pretty much nothing between Omaha and Sacramento.) That's why private capital wouldn't invest in the construction, and government bonds and land grants were needed.
neroden
Engineer
I love taking any train. And most of the bottom-level employees at Amtrak are dedicated people who are really helpful, making it a good experience. Prior to the gratuitous attacks on food service, the food service was actually really nice, comparable to restaurants I would actually go to -- with the incomprehensible failure to provide ingredients lists being the only downside (and when they serve fresh-made steak, eggs, and oatmeal, I can work around it because those have simple ingredients lists).
The last few years of Amtrak mismanagement have been... gross. The bottom-level employees feel the same way. The complaints are because we were watching what was a pretty good institution being sabotaged from the inside, and nobody likes to see that.
The fact is, right now, given a choice between commuter rail and Amtrak on the same route, I'll usually take the commuter rail -- which may say something about the nature of the problems with Amtrak right now. But often Amtrak is the only train option. I don't actually have high standards, but Amtrak has managed to fall down on the job in places where every basic, barebones commuter railroad succeeds. Timetables, for example. ADA assistance.
The last few years of Amtrak mismanagement have been... gross. The bottom-level employees feel the same way. The complaints are because we were watching what was a pretty good institution being sabotaged from the inside, and nobody likes to see that.
The fact is, right now, given a choice between commuter rail and Amtrak on the same route, I'll usually take the commuter rail -- which may say something about the nature of the problems with Amtrak right now. But often Amtrak is the only train option. I don't actually have high standards, but Amtrak has managed to fall down on the job in places where every basic, barebones commuter railroad succeeds. Timetables, for example. ADA assistance.
Bembidion
Train Attendant
I have read in Encyclopedia Brittanica that the railroads repaid their land grant money and then some through carrying government freight at reduced rates. Even if this is not entirely true, the economic scenario of the 1950s to 1960s was much different from that of the mid-1800s. Railroads of the former era did not face state sanctioned competition (I.e. government built roads and airports). I think one could argue that said commitments were no longer ethically in force due to the radical changes from the mid1950s on.
Now to your main point, you pose a valid question. I do know the full story of all of the railroads but do know that the Monon fought tooth and nail to keep excellent passenger service under John Barringer. I think Southern and Santa Fe were relatively pro-passenger. Regardless, I think all of the cards were stacked against the railroads with regards to passenger service. I think the interstate system, railroad management, and unions all have had a part in this.
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