meals per trip. Passenger dissatisfaction
triggered the introduction of hot items, but
the exclusion of coach travelers from the
dining car deprives this substantial clientele
of the valuable opportunity to escape their
seats for a time — a benefit unique to rail
travel — and eliminates potential revenue.
The downgrade is especially puzzling on
the single-level Lake Shore, which leaves
the Big Apple before dinner, has always
done big coach business to Upstate New
York, and doesn’t get a café car until the
Boston section joins the Chicago-bound
train at Albany-Rensselaer, N.Y. That
means the first chance to eat for coach
passengers who leave New York at 3:
p.m. doesn’t come until after 7 p.m.
The Crescent and Silver Meteor trips are
much longer and provide corridor-type
travel on portions of their routes, with
each train serving multiple breakfasts or
dinners, depending on direction. It isn’t
clear how pre-packaged meals might be
handled when the new service is imple-
mented. (Amtrak declined to make the
former airline executive in charge of “cus-
tomer experience,” Peter Wilander, avail-
able for a Trains interview in the three
months leading up to this report.)
Stark differences in food quality and
dining regimen between what Chef Gene
creates in the Madison, and “contemporary”
or café-car fare, are readily apparent on a
Chicago-to-New Orleans journey on the
Capitol Limited and Crescent in July. On the
Capitol, patrons are expected to pry open
plastic-encased, gummy-textured cold din-
ner rolls and desserts or burn-your-fingers
breakfast sandwiches. They also must un-
wrap separate sealed salads, dressing, and
entree containers, then dispose of the accu-
mulated trash in large cardboard boxes at
the end of the car. The company’s claim that
this is what people want seems laughable.
In contrast, dinner rolls arrived soft
and hot from the Viewliner II’s warming
drawer, and diners could specify side
dishes and the desired temperature of their
steak, as people generally do when order-
ing restaurant meals.
For Amtrak regulars, though, even
those meal choices may seem extremely
familiar. While the menus themselves have
been reprinted for generic use, eliminating
the specific names of trains and artwork
they previously featured, the choices at
breakfast, lunch, and dinner have not
changed since September 2017 — changes
implemented by two managers who soon
took buyouts when informed that their
jobs would be cut. Mussels as one of five
lunch-entree options might play for two
years on the Coast Starlight, but may not be
a “go to” item on the Texas Eagle, which
once offered barbecue and chili.
Accompanying the dearth of menu
variety and price options, there has been
no apparent effort to explore experimenta-
tion with a continuous dining model (rath-
er than regimented seating by reservation)
similar to one introduced briefly on the
Sunset Limited in the late 1990s. That ex-
periment was cut short by then-president
George Warrington’s recentralization. As a
condition of Auto Train’s 1983 launch,
Amtrak negotiated task-sharing by the
unions representing onboard coach and
dining car attendants. Today, reduced staff-
ing precludes any incentive or opportunity
to grow coach patronage on any train with
a full-service dining car.
Superliner-equipped trains in the West-
ern U.S. are reportedly unaffected by the
impending changes, but those trains have
their own issues. Coach passengers board-
ing the Empire Builder west of Chicago may
not be accommodated at dinner on the way
to St. Paul, as a Trains editor learned thissummer. And waits of more than an hour
between ordering and food delivery on July
journeys aboard the Texas Eagle and Sunset
Limited illustrate table turnover can’t be
maximized with only one assigned server
and one lead service attendant.
Equally concerning is that current man-
agement’s “hey, it works in a fuselage” out-
look could permanently limit future hospi-
tality options, if the Viewliner II diners’
spacious atmosphere and the kitchens’ abil-
ity to deliver quality meals is altered.
Food service is one way Amtrak can
counteract the company’s well-known
challenges — notably on-time performance
issues — by enhancing, rather than con-
stricting, nonrevenue space and the on-
board environment that is unique to rail
travel. So far, it’s an open question on
whether the current crop of managers
actually know how to add value on a train
rather than take it away. — Bob JohnstonTrainsMag.com 19The steak and crab cake “Land and Sea” entree is part of a menu that hasn’t been changed for
Amtrak’s long-distance trains in almost two years. Will it last or go away under changes?A pancake breakfast is served on the Crescent on July 21, 2019. Freshly prepared meals appear
to be on their way out on the Crescent and Silver Meteor that serve southeastern destinations.