Repaired Superliners

[Cho Cho Charlie]

Which makes absolutely no sense from a business point of view. ...

You don't put on 4 sleepers so you can sell more rooms at the low bucket fare. You're just going to end up with 1/2 full cars most of the time. Not exactly the ideal way to generate revenue.

...

Good, someone got my point.

So, someone waiting... hoping... that Amtrak would put on 4 more (repaired Superliner) sleepers so they can buy a room at the low bucket fare, probably will not happen. If the train they wish to take is currently selling at the highest bucket, they might as well just buy a ticket, before there are none left.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

What sort of state of repair are these 20+ Superliners in? Major structural repairs after an accordian derailment or interior refurbs?

A while back (A year or more) a guy named Al Papp brought up in a meeting that Amtrak had plenty of wrecks just sitting in Beech Grove. I responded telling him that "They have quite a few cars out of service in Bear that could be brought back into service, but everything in Beech Grove is beyond repair."

I got that information from a friend of mine who works in the Grove. And I was half right.

When the information from the stimulus repairs became public, Mr. Papp shot back at me over dinner before another meeting, "I thought you said they were beyond repair."

My response? "I did. And they are beyond economical repair. What Amtrak is doing is repairing cars uneconomically."

As Jishnu pointed out, some of these cars are getting $2 million worth of repairs. More than that, actually. When all is said and done, I think a few of those cars are gonna be more like $3 million. A new Superliner would likely be cheaper. The only problem is, and the reason they are repairing them, is you can't just call up Bombardier and order a Superliner. You have to put out bids, do R&D, and set up an assembly line. So by the time you're done, the cost to replace a single Superliner would be, say, $150 million. But the next car would cost you $2 million.

 

[Hanno]

Which makes absolutely no sense from a business point of view. ...

You don't put on 4 sleepers so you can sell more rooms at the low bucket fare. You're just going to end up with 1/2 full cars most of the time. Not exactly the ideal way to generate revenue.

...

Good, someone got my point.

So, someone waiting... hoping... that Amtrak would put on 4 more (repaired Superliner) sleepers so they can buy a room at the low bucket fare, probably will not happen. If the train they wish to take is currently selling at the highest bucket, they might as well just buy a ticket, before there are none left.

I appreciate all the response to the original question. Basically I will tell my friend that things are pretty much the way they are relative to pricing! I guess my thinking on the matter is that there are many people (my friend included) who would like to take the train but it is just too expensive at the high bucket prices. It would seem logical that if the pricing was done correctly (not necessarily pricing additional rooms as the lowest bucket) and more rooms were available more revenue could be generated.

Several years ago I took the Canadian from Toronto to Vancouver. I forget exactly how many cars were attached to that train (I think it was about 20) and it was sold out. I would guess the revenue on that train would be higher than on the Southwest Chief which has about 10 cars.

Anyhow, thanks to everyone for your input!

Bob

 

[ferroequineologist]

It sure is hard to keep a viable system operating when with money crunched funding and about the same number of cars owned as they had ten years ago, as then having congress to expect Amtrak to show a profit too, we might be better off to sell Amtrak to China!

 

[zephyr17]

Which makes absolutely no sense from a business point of view. ...

You don't put on 4 sleepers so you can sell more rooms at the low bucket fare. You're just going to end up with 1/2 full cars most of the time. Not exactly the ideal way to generate revenue.

...

Good, someone got my point.

So, someone waiting... hoping... that Amtrak would put on 4 more (repaired Superliner) sleepers so they can buy a room at the low bucket fare, probably will not happen. If the train they wish to take is currently selling at the highest bucket, they might as well just buy a ticket, before there are none left.

I appreciate all the response to the original question. Basically I will tell my friend that things are pretty much the way they are relative to pricing! I guess my thinking on the matter is that there are many people (my friend included) who would like to take the train but it is just too expensive at the high bucket prices. It would seem logical that if the pricing was done correctly (not necessarily pricing additional rooms as the lowest bucket) and more rooms were available more revenue could be generated.

Several years ago I took the Canadian from Toronto to Vancouver. I forget exactly how many cars were attached to that train (I think it was about 20) and it was sold out. I would guess the revenue on that train would be higher than on the Southwest Chief which has about 10 cars.

Anyhow, thanks to everyone for your input!

Bob

Except that the VIA equipment has about 1/2 the capacity per car as the Superliners (particularly the sleepers). Also currently Canadian sleeper rates are about twice as much as Amtrak's for the same distance covered. So they probably bring in as much or more revenue; they cost more.

If you can sell the room at $X, why should you market it at less than $X? Especially since the capacity is limited, making it a scarce commodity. The big complaint about Amtrak is that it loses money, they need to maximize the revenue of the equpment they have. Personally, I may not like the sleeper rates, but I understand and even support it.

Disclaimer, I LOVE Via's classic Budd streamlined equipment and much prefer them to Superliners. But the capacity is considerably less.

 

[pismobum]

when 'dreaming' about more sleepers, don't ignore the food capacity constraints for long distance trains. Even coach passengers often want more than a snack for meals on long trips, and 3 sleepers is the max capacity of a diner, with sometimes only 'take to your seat' meals available for coach. If you boost to more than 3 sleepers, you incur more 'non-revenue' car costs for additional dining capacity. Starlight is limited to 3 sleepers regardless of demand for exactly that reason.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

when 'dreaming' about more sleepers, don't ignore the food capacity constraints for long distance trains. Even coach passengers often want more than a snack for meals on long trips, and 3 sleepers is the max capacity of a diner, with sometimes only 'take to your seat' meals available for coach. If you boost to more than 3 sleepers, you incur more 'non-revenue' car costs for additional dining capacity. Starlight is limited to 3 sleepers regardless of demand for exactly that reason.

You know not of which you speak. A Superliner diner can comfortably serve more than that if it is staffed accordingly. The AutoTrain gets by hauling up to 7 sleepers with just a dining car and half the lounges seating capacity.

 

[alanh]

I'd agree with that. The diner service as currently staffed is really slow. With better staffing, they could move a lot more through.

 

[EB_OBS]

Personally, I'd like to see the staffing increased significantly. Put enough staff on in order to rotate time-off and then keep the diner open instead of closing between meals. There's a lot of down time currently in a LD diner. I believe that with 4 more employees you could very likely keep the dining car open from 6am to 10pm. The employees would rotate some down-time to rest and still work the same number of hours they do currently. Open hours from 6am to 10pm would be 5 to 6 more hours to serve each day.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

Personally, I'd like to see the staffing increased significantly. Put enough staff on in order to rotate time-off and then keep the diner open instead of closing between meals. There's a lot of down time currently in a LD diner. I believe that with 4 more employees you could very likely keep the dining car open from 6am to 10pm. The employees would rotate some down-time to rest and still work the same number of hours they do currently. Open hours from 6am to 10pm would be 5 to 6 more hours to serve each day.

Silly. At $20 an hour or so, that would add about $80 more per hour to the diners operations cost. Over the course of a day, that would raise your costs monumentally. The idea is to cut loss, not increase it exponentially.

 

[EB_OBS]

Personally, I'd like to see the staffing increased significantly. Put enough staff on in order to rotate time-off and then keep the diner open instead of closing between meals. There's a lot of down time currently in a LD diner. I believe that with 4 more employees you could very likely keep the dining car open from 6am to 10pm. The employees would rotate some down-time to rest and still work the same number of hours they do currently. Open hours from 6am to 10pm would be 5 to 6 more hours to serve each day.

Silly. At $20 an hour or so, that would add about $80 more per hour to the diners operations cost. Over the course of a day, that would raise your costs monumentally. The idea is to cut loss, not increase it exponentially.

I didn't fully explain myself. In the context of adding more capacity to a LD train, i.e. an additional sleeper or two and/or coaches, in order to feed everyone you would have to increase the dining car's capacity too. You could accomplish this, on trains with increased capacity by keeping the diner open. You could only keep the diner open full time by having enough staff to provide for rotation of breaks.

I know from experience that on the EB during the summer, at the current consist size, many many coach passengers who want to eat in the diner aren't able to. Where we are able to get around 180 in for dinner we could feed 240 with longer hours. If dinner was from 4pm - 10pm instead of 5pm - 9pm. It's pretty much the same logic for breakfast and lunch. Lunch on the EB is crazy since it's an hour shorter meal than on other trains. I know if I was a dining car steward I could feed a lot more passengers a meal if I had more time.

For space limitations there really isn't enough room in a diner for too much more staff. With rotating time-off, say 2 hours or so for example with 4 waiters instead of 3 you have 8 hours of down-time there. It certainly could be negotiated to be unpaid if it created another job. Actually it could work with three more staff not four, one additional waiter, one food specialist/chef and a full-time upper bar LSA to come in and give the diner LSA their break.

Anyways, the wheels just got to turning when I was reading this post earlier.

 

[AlanB]

Personally, I'd like to see the staffing increased significantly. Put enough staff on in order to rotate time-off and then keep the diner open instead of closing between meals. There's a lot of down time currently in a LD diner. I believe that with 4 more employees you could very likely keep the dining car open from 6am to 10pm. The employees would rotate some down-time to rest and still work the same number of hours they do currently. Open hours from 6am to 10pm would be 5 to 6 more hours to serve each day.

Silly. At $20 an hour or so, that would add about $80 more per hour to the diners operations cost. Over the course of a day, that would raise your costs monumentally. The idea is to cut loss, not increase it exponentially.

I didn't fully explain myself. In the context of adding more capacity to a LD train, i.e. an additional sleeper or two and/or coaches, in order to feed everyone you would have to increase the dining car's capacity too. You could accomplish this, on trains with increased capacity by keeping the diner open. You could only keep the diner open full time by having enough staff to provide for rotation of breaks.

I know from experience that on the EB during the summer, at the current consist size, many many coach passengers who want to eat in the diner aren't able to. Where we are able to get around 180 in for dinner we could feed 240 with longer hours. If dinner was from 4pm - 10pm instead of 5pm - 9pm. It's pretty much the same logic for breakfast and lunch. Lunch on the EB is crazy since it's an hour shorter meal than on other trains. I know if I was a dining car steward I could feed a lot more passengers a meal if I had more time.

For space limitations there really isn't enough room in a diner for too much more staff. With rotating time-off, say 2 hours or so for example with 4 waiters instead of 3 you have 8 hours of down-time there. It certainly could be negotiated to be unpaid if it created another job. Actually it could work with three more staff not four, one additional waiter, one food specialist/chef and a full-time upper bar LSA to come in and give the diner LSA their break.

Anyways, the wheels just got to turning when I was reading this post earlier.

It's an interesting idea that could perhaps be used on other LD trains as needed, especially the single level trains which have half the capacity of a Superliner Dining car.

In the case of the EB however, it's unneeded. In addition to the fact that Amtrak wants to provide hot cooked meals to those passengers riding between Spokane and Portland, the capacity issues of the dining car are the reason for adding the CCC to the consist. While it doesn't quite double the capacity of sit down dining service, it comes close.

I haven't heard just how they plan to use the CCC during the combined portion of the run, as in will the regular diner just serve sleeping car pax only while the CCC serves coach pax only, or if they'll just split the load and basically send all those riding 27/28 to the CCC and those riding 7/8 to the diner, or if it will be more up to you to choose which and that perhaps like they do with the PPC they'll offer a different menu in the CCC.

 

[Larry H.]

Personally, I'd like to see the staffing increased significantly. Put enough staff on in order to rotate time-off and then keep the diner open instead of closing between meals. There's a lot of down time currently in a LD diner. I believe that with 4 more employees you could very likely keep the dining car open from 6am to 10pm. The employees would rotate some down-time to rest and still work the same number of hours they do currently. Open hours from 6am to 10pm would be 5 to 6 more hours to serve each day.

Silly. At $20 an hour or so, that would add about $80 more per hour to the diners operations cost. Over the course of a day, that would raise your costs monumentally. The idea is to cut loss, not increase it exponentially.

Nothing more silly to me that walking into a superliner diner and seeing half of it closed due to no staffing while passengers are inconvenienced right and left. Its part of doing business to staff cars properly. How have we gotten to this stage of always siding with cuts in service while rooms skyrocket in price? That is the silly part to me. If a train carries another sleeper or two that revenue should be covering the extra help to fully staff the train.

 

[MikefromCrete]

Personally, I'd like to see the staffing increased significantly. Put enough staff on in order to rotate time-off and then keep the diner open instead of closing between meals. There's a lot of down time currently in a LD diner. I believe that with 4 more employees you could very likely keep the dining car open from 6am to 10pm. The employees would rotate some down-time to rest and still work the same number of hours they do currently. Open hours from 6am to 10pm would be 5 to 6 more hours to serve each day.

Silly. At $20 an hour or so, that would add about $80 more per hour to the diners operations cost. Over the course of a day, that would raise your costs monumentally. The idea is to cut loss, not increase it exponentially.

Nothing more silly to me that walking into a superliner diner and seeing half of it closed due to no staffing while passengers are inconvenienced right and left. Its part of doing business to staff cars properly. How have we gotten to this stage of always siding with cuts in service while rooms skyrocket in price? That is the silly part to me. If a train carries another sleeper or two that revenue should be covering the extra help to fully staff the train.

Blame the congressmen who micromanaged Amtrak's food service budget several years ago.

 

[Larry H.]

Didn't I read that in the new funding bills last year was money for increase help in the non revenue cars again? What happened to that, or was it like shovel ready jobs?

 

[EB_OBS]

I haven't heard just how they plan to use the CCC during the combined portion of the run, as in will the regular diner just serve sleeping car pax only while the CCC serves coach pax only, or if they'll just split the load and basically send all those riding 27/28 to the CCC and those riding 7/8 to the diner, or if it will be more up to you to choose which and that perhaps like they do with the PPC they'll offer a different menu in the CCC.

In the discussions I took part in, we talked about the CCC being positioned directly between the 15 coach & 27/2830 sleeper. The menu would be the same or very similar and the sleeper passengers could opt to eat meals in either the CCC or the Diner. The main advantage with this positioning is the distance to the diner. It's a common and frequent complaint walking 6 cars to the diner from that rear sleeper. In this scenario the SSL would move to be right behind the diner and would become part of train 7/8.

 

[AlanB]

The menu would be the same or very similar and the sleeper passengers could opt to eat meals in either the CCC or the Diner.

Thanks, that's the only thing that I've not yet heard about in this plan.

In the discussions I took part in, we talked about the CCC being positioned directly between the 15 coach & 27/2830 sleeper. The main advantage with this positioning is the distance to the diner. It's a common and frequent complaint walking 6 cars to the diner from that rear sleeper. In this scenario the SSL would move to be right behind the diner and would become part of train 7/8.

Agreed with the walk, and all the rest of your info is the same as what I've also seen/heard.

One other advantage of putting the CCC between the 15 coach and the sleeper(s) is that it will cut down on coach pax wandering into the sleeper. It makes a nice buffer.

 

[NorthCoastHiawatha]

So I've heard this talk of a CCC on the Empire Builder several months ago. Any idea when they are supposed to be added. I read a post on here sometime ago that mentioned June as a possible starting time.

 

[AlanB]

It won't happen that soon, as in June. Amtrak needed at least 2 or 3 of the 4 wrecked diners being repaired to be restored to service before they could take the CCC's off of the Capitol and replace them with full diners. It was those CCC's that would allow Amtrak to put them on the Builder. So far, only one dining car has been finished and released, and in the meantime Amtrak lost an existing dining car to a fire a few months ago. That probably means that they need all 4 diners repaired before they can make the change.

And I suspect that it will be much later in the year before we see all 4 diners back on the road.

 

[daveyb99]

Blame the congressmen who micromanaged Amtrak's food service budget several years ago.

how VERY true. Think of the $$MILLIONS$$ AMTRAK was forced to waste because one congressman thought he knew best. (remember all the 'meals and sleeper highly subsidized' blather)

 

[ferroequineologist]

Blame the congressmen who micromanaged Amtrak's food service budget several years ago.

how VERY true. Think of the $$MILLIONS$$ AMTRAK was forced to waste because one congressman thought he knew best. (remember all the 'meals and sleeper highly subsidized' blather)

________________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________

Consider too the cost of corporate attorneys required to attend at $220. per hour the many appropriation's meetings. Money promised during one congressional term is redirected into pet projects in the next term, forcing Amtrak to fight for the money promised and not authorized. Its a madhouse, if you want something to work, keep the government out, or expect rules, paperwork, more rule changes, and more paper pushing doing nothing, getting nothing, but making government bigger.

Fast trains, high speed trains, the only allotments for such things in thirty years was in the backyard to Washington,D.C.

Chicago-Detroit, I read write ups about high speed trains on those track since the 1960's and to this day the track speed is less than what it was in the 1940's when steam engines rules the rails.

High speed, what is needed is more trains, have them ALL operate at a minimum top speed limit of 79 mph FULL ROUTE as offering short bursts of speed does next to nothing for decreasing elapsed time from one end of the route to the other.

The Grand Trunk and Western Railroad operating in 1967 had high speed trains called "The Mohawks," operating east/west nightly seven days a week and doing so a 80/90 mph. now that was railroading!

Wood ties do fine for speeds below 100mph, and present everyday type passenger coaches with well maintained wheels and trucks can handle those speeds, sad though, but such speed limits allowed are few, and far between. Let those interested in high speed railroading put the money required up front, the Brits and French did not spend billions only to put a tunnel under the English channel and then limit the operation of their railroad by not purchasing enough equipment to make it run and do it efficiently and at a higher profit margin!

Ever ask why the companies operating the TVG trains fails to consider doing something similar over here?

 

[rrdude]

Blame the congressmen who micromanaged Amtrak's food service budget several years ago.

how VERY true. Think of the $$MILLIONS$$ AMTRAK was forced to waste because one congressman thought he knew best. (remember all the 'meals and sleeper highly subsidized' blather)

"Remember it" I LIVED it, well at least lived the first attempt at "modified meal service". Ugh. Makes me almost ill to think about what Amtrak offered Pax on LD trains.......

Chef and I on the Chief would go to the farmers market in LA (when it was over a day layover) and buy supplies for the "crew meals". Only caveat was that none of the Pax were supposed to see us eating these "off menu meals". But jeeze, you could smell it all the way thru the train. Even though I was an LSA, I got a Coach Attendant to work the lounge, while I "helped" the chef cook. (he told me what to do, I did it). Best Bread Pudding I have ever eaten. Leg of Lamb too. Damn, we USED those Superliner kitchens like they were DESIGNED to be used.

Only one Chef I knew who did that, so I crewed with him every damn chance I could. That crew ate like KINGS. Always under the threat of "being written up" though.

Sure made an impression on me though. Mmmm, Mmmmm, Mmmmmm.

 

[daveyb99]

Consider too the cost of corporate attorneys required to attend at $220. per hour the many appropriation's meetings. Money promised during one congressional term is redirected into pet projects in the next term, forcing Amtrak to fight for the money promised and not authorized. Its a madhouse, ... ...

How true. The flavor of the day changes twice a day. I am glad Oberstar did get a longer term funding bill in place.

if you want something to work, keep the government out, or expect rules, paperwork, more rule changes, and more paper pushing doing nothing, getting nothing, but making government bigger.

oh, please..... save us the ********* blather

 

[lyke99]

It won't happen that soon, as in June. Amtrak needed at least 2 or 3 of the 4 wrecked diners being repaired to be restored to service before they could take the CCC's off of the Capitol and replace them with full diners. It was those CCC's that would allow Amtrak to put them on the Builder. So far, only one dining car has been finished and released, and in the meantime Amtrak lost an existing dining car to a fire a few months ago. That probably means that they need all 4 diners repaired before they can make the change.
And I suspect that it will be much later in the year before we see all 4 diners back on the road.

Good to hear this report. I read about changes on this board months ago and kept wondering if my late June-early July trip on the EB would be with new arrangement or what I've become accustomed. That being said, additional dining capacity on the EB is probably needed.