United Rail Passenger Alliance

… Of course, Austin was also a founder of the Florida Coalition of Rail Passengers and a former Board member; he was also on our Advisory Board until he passed away. In fact, the day before his death the FCRP membership re-elected him by a unanimous vote to the Advisory Board, with full knowledge of his condition. We all thought that much of him.We have sent flowers to Austin’s service and have contacted his daughter to express our sympathies.

The rail passenger advocacy movement has lost one of its giants. He will be sorely missed.

Sincerely,

Jackson McQuigg, President
Florida Coalition of Rail Passengers

By the way, the reason Mr. Coates retired from his business here in
Jacksonville and moved to his hometown of Helena, Arkansas in 2001 at the age of 68 was to take care of his mother, who was in her early 90s and still living in her home.

First, the good.

Mike Chandler, who has been superintendent of road operations in Los Angeles for the Amtrak Southwest Division, has been appointed Acting General Superintendent for the Southwest Division, following Richard Phelps’ selection as Vice President, Transportation.

There could be no better news for Amtrak passengers and employees in Los Angeles than this appointment, even on a temporary basis (and, hopefully to be made permanent). Mr. Chandler is a consummate railroader and a great leader. To work with him is to work with a professional who has been down in the trenches fighting and risen to higher levels solely because of great competence and a desire to always do the right thing.

Prior to moving to Los Angeles, Mr. Chandler was the product line director for the Crescent, and previous to that, was one of the Crescent’s service managers in Atlanta, Georgia. Mr. Chandler was running the Crescent while the Mayor of Meridian, Mississippi, John Robert Smith, was Chairman of the Board of Amtrak. Since the Crescent serves Meridian, and Mayor Smith first became involved with Amtrak because of the Crescent, the Mayor/Chairman thought of the Crescent as “his” train. Mr. Chandler deftly handled things expertly while running the Mayor/Chairman’s train. He will do well running the Southwest Division. He has a complete understanding of operations, equipment, and most importantly, passenger service.

On April 9, 2007, a woman riding on San Joaquin Train 704 removed an emergency exit window on the lower level of Coach C8205 and jumped out, 23 miles out of Sacramento (California) in Elk Grove. Train stopped upon crew being notified by other passengers.

Crew of UP freight train behind Train 704 found the passenger lying alongside the right-of way. She was airlifted to the trauma center at UC Medical Center.

Passenger had been recognized by the Conductor as a prior fare evader; upon finding she had no ticket, he asked her for a credit card. However the credit card authorization was declined and Conductor had arranged for Lodi Police to meet the train and remove the passenger.

The woman even asked a male passenger to help her remove the window. He refused to assist, and moved to another car.

Law enforcement officers determined the identity of the train-jumper and ascertained she had outstanding warrants for her arrest.

Amtrak Road Foreman met the train at Modesto and put back the window; but until it could be permanently reinstalled, the lower level of the car was closed off.

Delay: 1 hour, 47 minutes

Anyone who has had any lengthy conversations with Amtrak train and engine and onboard services crews knows the ongoing craziness which can be found with Amtrak passengers. The woman jumping from the train must really have preferred hospital food over jail food, or maybe she has seen one too many action/adventure movies and thought you could really get away with such foolishness. Of course, she had no concern for anyone else on the train and what happens when a window that is never designed to be open except in case of an extreme emergency is opened while a train is moving at speed.

On March 18th I departed the [San Francisco] Bay Area on the California Zephyr bound for a Cardinal connection in Chicago to continue travel to the east coast. The Zephyr trip was okay, despite the bus trip around the trestle problem. The Cardinal was a horror show, almost beyond belief.

My Zephyr was the first train to not detour via Marysville [due to the Union Pacific Railroad trestle fire]. We were bussed to Roseville and departed only a few minutes late. My bedroom E in a rebuilt Superliner I was in good shape, though five minutes with a wet wash cloth made the difference between “broom clean” and clean. My only real complaint about these rooms is the new chair that has replaced the folding chair. The new chair’s support post is welded to the exterior wall and the chair is mounted such that the back of the seat bottom is higher than the front of the seat bottom. You can perch on the chair, but you can not sit there. I suspect a fixed chair is a safety mandate, but there is no excuse doing the job in a manner that negates the amenity.

The train left Roseville with food supply and refrigeration problems. Thus, dinner every night was limited to baked chicken, chicken fried steak or a burger. Pizza was available at lunch. Breakfast had one choice, the continental. Coach passengers were asked to eat from the lounge. Even with two sleepers seemingly filled, the diner was never very crowded. Sadly, low volume didn’t lead to more carefully prepared food. My chicken two nights in a row was cold and dry, but I survived.

We averaged about 90 minutes late throughout the trip, which is pretty good for the Zephyr. The scenery is terrific and the redone lounges are a bit more comfortable than before. Certainly the blue decor is cheerier than the 1970s chocolate brown. The tops of the small tables in the lounge section were never washed in 3 days — every last one was sticky with soda.

We arrived Denver 90 minutes late, but left two hours late. Despite the hour, [9:30 P.M.] the new conductor made a 10 to 12 minute welcoming announcement that seemed never-ending. If that had been his only sin, it would have gone without mention. At 6:00 A.M., prior to arriving in Omaha, Nebraska, he got on the PA for another ten minutes of “myself welcomes you to Omaha . . . .”. He had the PA on max because there was no escaping it, despite the fact the system was in the “off” position in my room.

There is something I love about traveling by train so I thoroughly enjoyed myself even considering the cold food with limited selection and harassment by a verbose conductor.

We arrived in Chicago at 5:46 P.M., almost three hours late, and my connection to the Cardinal was at 5:45. I was quite happy to learn that the Cardinal’s departure had been delayed until 6:00 P.M. [Due to mechanical difficulties on the Cardinal trainset.] This ride was going to mean that I have traveled on ALL Amtrak’s long distance trains.

The Cardinal, in the vernacular, sucked. It could not have been worse. I have now experienced the Twilight Zone. The Viewliner sleeper must have been used in Bagdad recently. The newly rebuilt Amfleet II Diner/Lounge is an example of what you get when the mechanical department is given responsibility for design; the food was vile, and the service worse. The track during the night was like riding on a roller coaster and caused the suspension to bottom out with a metal on metal “smash, bang, boom,” and the coup de grace was riding from Huntington, West Virginia to Charlottesville, Virginia [328 miles] on a bus to get around a freight derailment.

The Viewliner sleeper was in its original livery and five years past the date it should have gone into the shops. This was my first time in a Viewliner Bedroom. Though I prefer the Viewliner roomettes over Superliner roomettes, the bedroom was awful. There is such a large expanse of unrelieved gray plastic that you feel like you are in a jail cell. The carpet was a virtual science experiment. The PA did not work. The curtains were hanging. The walls were filthy. The welded chair in this bedroom blocked the bathroom door from fully opening such that I (at 175 pounds and a 33 inch waist) had to squeeze into the bathroom. One more pound and I would have had to walk back to coach. The sleeper was the first car after the engine, which meant I was within 50 feet of the horn, which went off every three minutes. Between the suspension bottoming out and the horn, there was no sleep.

The brand spanking new Amfleet II Diner Lounge is a tragedy. The person responsible for the rebuilding must suffer from cerebral rectal insertion. The interior panels are bright white and someone thought 45,000 watts of lighting was appropriate. The sheer glare makes you feel like you are in a room where the CIA questions Al Quada suspects. Talk about off-putting! A very large handicapped restroom has been added to the short, “diner” end. Its wall ends right at the edge of the window’s glass. It is at this point an oversized wheel chair booth has been created — the problem is this booth goes to the middle of the next window’s glass. Thus, each successive booth has the wall pillar in the middle of the table. The row ends with a short space where a table for two has been created with the benefit of “all glass.” It was occupied by crew. Okay, you must think at least they got the other side of the aisle right, i.e., tables are lined up with the windows. WRONG. The screwed up positioning of the restroom side was matched on the other. Both tables for two were occupied by crew and the wheelchair area at the handicapped table was piled with luggage. This car day No. 1 out of the shop was the worst train food service car I have ever seen. Seeing it is wanting to cry.

Dinner was as bad as the car. Shortly after departure an employee literally pounded on my room door. When I opened the door he poked me in the chest with what turned out to be the dinner menu, waited a second and said at maximum volume, “What you want? What you want? What you want?” Aside from being poked and the words quoted above, there was no other communication. Later, he would literally scream at colleagues in the diner who were 25 feet away and then giggle for a prolonged period. He, alone, thought his act was funny. It was the Twilight Zone.

The food was flopped on the plate like one would expect at a soup kitchen. The nut-job server made choices for customers and matched my beef with rice and carrots. The beef had curled into the shape of a taco shell, the rice had been mixed with wall paper paste and the carrots were frozen. Get the picture?

After my miserable night of no sleep, we were thrown off the train in Huntington, West Virginia about 8:30 A.M. A freight had derailed ahead and we were to be bussed to Charlottesville, Virginia. The bus was ready by 11:00 A.M. Every seat was taken; the air-conditioning died and could not be fixed despite stopping twice to try to fix it; and I sat in front of a schizophrenic guy who talked to himself some of the time, and yelled at everyone the rest of the time. All this on no sleep!

It is important to say the Cardinal would have been Hell on earth without the bus ride. The decrepit condition of the sleeper, the otherworldly, Twilight Zone quality of the diner and the nut-job waiter were each alone trip destroyers. Together, they made for the trip from Hell.

The trip on the Cardinal made me think (just for a minute) that the only thing to do with Amtrak is to take it out to the back of the barn and shoot it — put it out of its misery. Underfunding was certainly part of the problem. Ineptitude was most of it.

(Groan) All of this was going on during low season travel, when things shouldn’t be too crowded and equipment can be rotated for cleaning and repairs.Here are some questions which have to be asked about this:

• Will more free federal money fix these problems? Very little of this had anything to do with budgets; it was mostly related to employee problems either in the mechanical department or onboard services department.
• Which Amtrak officers are responsible for the conditions described? We have seen some very good choices in the past few weeks for new Amtrak leadership on the operations level. Can we hope those responsible for this abomination of a travel experience have either left the company or are on their way out?
• Which Amtrak officers will state on the record whether this experience does or does not represent an acceptable level of service on an Amtrak overnight train?
• What would VIA Rail Canada do with a train like this? The departure times and trip profile match pretty closely VIA’s Ocean operating between Montreal and Halifax. What would Virgin Trains do? Both VIA and Virgin have good reputations for onboard services. Even though VIA’s equipment is often older than the majority of Amtrak’s equipment, it is generally maintained at a much higher and more dependable level.
• What would Marriott do to a franchised Marriott that delivered this experience to a guest? Most likely a franchised Marriott would eventually get the financial death penalty if this type of result was routinely reported. In the real world, accountability matters.If this passenger paid full fare for his trip from the west coat to the east coast, both in full size bedrooms, as described, and was traveling alone, his total fare was $2,223.00. Does anyone think he received true value for his money?

By William Lindley

It is curious there has been so little mention in the past twenty years of Amtrak’s early successes. I started reading Model Railroader in grade school, TRAINS around 1978 in junior high, Passenger Train Journal in the 80s, and the NARP newsletter in the early 1990s. In all that careful reading, the only mention I ever saw of a ridership jump on Amtrak was vague comment about “in the aftermath of the 1973 Arab Oil Crisis …”

I was dumbfounded that Amtrak had a ridership surge BEFORE the ’73 gas crunch. I was amazed that Amtrak operated a western long distance train route more often than daily — and in 1972!

For all I ever knew, intercity train service started sliding in the early 1960s and never once took an upturn. Why has contradictory evidence seemingly been suppressed for decades? Even today, Google can hardly find mention of it. Jim Coston’s remarks hit the nail on the head.

To help clear the record, I collected a small selection of historical notes:

A brief history of original and current Amtrak routes:

http://www.trains.com/TRC/CS/forums/715912/ShowPost.aspx

On Wikipedia, some history and photographs of the Chief, Super Chief, and Southwest Chief:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_(passenger_train)
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Chief
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Chief

“Everything” is another participatory online information project like Wikipedia; here’s what it has to say:

• http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Amtrak

I hope some of our readers out there will fill in any remaining gaps of knowledge.