People always say this until they realize they just pay the same inflated prices but without the included food. Norwegian Cruise Lines went down the road of charging extra for things that use to be included and their prices didn’t drop dramatically.
True - but that was a Mica, Anderson & Trump problem. Now it’s a Covid problem that (in my opinion) will prevent us from lobbying for improved food until it’s over. When Covid ends - we’ll see if the lack of Mica, Anderson and Trump will help our efforts or not.
The forum was started by an Amtrak employee with management's awareness and approval, members have provided information and explanations that rank and file employees don't seem to know about, some uniformed staff have said they know about the forum but don't comment because they have been told it's monitored, members more connected than I have stated that management sometimes monitors the forum, we've had at least one contributor who sounded like a focus group plant, and I've had someone claiming to be Amtrak management reach out to me to inquire about comments in a post. It doesn't seem to be as common these days and maybe in a vacuum none of these examples would mean much, but when viewed in totality I'm inclined to believe it.
Field work is a different world from desk work. Amtrak is super progressive compared to the freight industry but I'd still be careful about admitting rail fan status. Even if the hiring manager did not personally care he'd know you're someone who volunteers information that could potentially cause friction with other resources. As a trainspotter I've certainly experienced "suspicious activity" shakedowns after a train passed by. I get that safety warnings come with the territory but when I was a kid they let me walk through active yards unchallenged and now they hassle me ten feet away from the loop track. I will say that for some employees it's the recording (and potential for reporting) that bothers them more than simply being a rail fan. I'm generally pretty safe at work but if someone pointed a recording device at me I'd probably consider them more of a threat than a friend.
Fauci says masks will continue after the vaccines as vaccines are not 100% effective so looks like a very long haul...and there are now new strains in the UK and South Africa that will almost certainly reach USA. Will new vaccines be needed?
Brian has been and probably still is a member of AU. In the past he has posted on AU several times even when he was Boardman's right hand man, although not necessarily about any deep Amtrak secrets or insights. He is a good friend of several of us. He is still quite active on Facebook among friends. Too bad he is not as active in Amtrak operations any more. He might have retired from Amtrak finally, though I am told he is still occasionally seen at the Albany base, which was always his home base. Anderson pretty much sent him off to purgatory as far as I can tell.Brian Gallagher, when he ran operations at Amtrak, certainly was aware of AU...had the pleasure of his company on an Amtrak Autumn Excursion, and he teased a few of us, warning he'd "better not read his insider comments on AU"...
The current prognosis is that the affected parts are not the specific spike proteins used in the vaccines. But of course that could change since RNA viruses are expected to mutate faster than DNA viruses. But we also know how to gin up a new vaccine in a matter of days now too.
In the days before the WWW, it was known that Amtrak presidents Paul Reistrup and Graham Claytor read the blog-like little magazine Rail Travel News. I was asked a couple of times not to write up something that was not supposed to be happening. And in the early 80's an Amtrak marketing planner rode VIA Rail across Canada specifically to see how they did things.
Hand me enough lemons and I can make a lot of lemonade!
