OMG, the drama here, if the Lake Shore, crescent, and the Meteor get the new diners you are not going to have a line of unused ones. Further congress could care less if there are surplus diners.
Knowing how the food is prepared, and using common sense helps you make the best of a bad situation.
Having eaten it many times the food service on the Card and CONO are basically pre-cooked meals that the server/cook pops in a convection oven to re-heat. The diner is basically a cafe car with a convection over and cold storage for meals. I would say that it's better than no food service at all but sub par when compared to what is served on the full diner trains. Some items on those menus are not good, while others are passable. Kind of like eating a TV dinner but much of it depends on how long the meals are reheated. On one trip we had sausage and eggs for breakfast and the eggs were hard and rubbery. On a trip the following year we had an omelet that was soft and moist. If we take those trains again we will just ask the server what is good. Amtrak is also not doing its passengers much good when a single food server has the kitchen and serving duties for the entire train. That poor soul has to serve over 100+ people. I believe that it is possible that we may see a diner on the Card, CONO and Silver Star again when the full order of dining cars is delivered.
So, exactly how many cars would have to be surplus to constitute a "line" ?
Did the NYP>CHI section of the LSL lose its full diner, or just the BOS>CHI section?
Boston section has never had a full Diner. It had a full Cafe/Lounge (Amfleet II Dinette). That has been replaced by a Amfleet I Cafe-Club providing BC service in half the car.
Agreed about the omelet. Last fall when I rode the Cardinal. I ordered it thinking "How can anything go wrong with eggs?". That's how. Next time I ride an eastern LD train, it'll be one of the other options I order.
This is true, but the people who tend to dislike the food seem to do a much better job of taking the time to describe what precisely failed to impress while the average pro-Amchow post often regurgitates vague generalities about everything always being good/great.
Congress could indeed care less about Amtrak wasting money. In fact they could care a whole lot less. In the specific case of expensive hardware ordered and manufactured just to be dragged off and mothballed again, congress would actually be right to be critical.
I haven't seen the lower level of a Superliner diner in many years. Has anyone confirmed they all still have fully stocked and fully functional kitchens down there? Seems just as likely that some of the kitchen hardware may have deteriorated over time or have been removed or cannibalized to repair failures in other cars.
Yeah it'd suck, but for whatever reason(mainly scenery-related) I am intrigued about riding a few of those lines that don't have a full diner(mainly CONO and Cardinal). I'd be sure to bring enough of my own food, to less have to deal with the subpar food that'll be served from the cafe car on those lines!
This!
That change was made back in the Claytor years in an attempt to force some money into the dining service budget. Before the "inclusion" (forced prepayment) of dining car meals, so few passengers—both coach and sleeper—were eating in the dining car that dining service was in very real danger of being axed across the board. And dining car food back in the Claytor years was pretty doggone good....
Amtrak has a finite supply of sleeper rooms, so from a revenue perspective it makes sense to price them at the highest point the market will bear. That premium price includes meals which, as already noted, are also tied up with the dining car budget.
I like that idea, but I'm not sure how to work it with the demands that are already placed on diner LSAs. The most practical way I can think of would be a coupon which could be presented to the diner crew for meals and to the lounge attendant for coffee & tea and scanned or punched to prevent fraudulent re-use. Perhaps if you booked on-line in advance you could print your own coupon with a barcode for scanning, and if you booked at the last minute from an unstaffed station the conductor could be issued a few paper blanks which could be punched to validate them and to "X out" the meals which were not applicable.
We have nothing to scan barcodes with for verification, and you'd have to ensure that devices had a signal all the time to provide actual verification.
Cary station is just a block or so from a few restaurants. We walked around while waiting for our train. Not much in the way of nice places in our short walk but it was hot and sticky that day. Not a lot of downtown.
