- Aboard Amtrak train number 92, the northbound Silver Meteor, Sunday, May 6, 2007 between Fort Lauderdale and Jacksonville, Florida:Sitting in Viewliner roomette number seven, you realize you’re in a sleeping car that is only 12 years old, but looks much older. For those of us too young to have been alive at the end of World War II, you imagine the condition of this sleeping car must have been what it was like in a Pullman Company sleeper in 1945, when every piece of rattle-trap rolling stock was pressed into service to meet the demands of wartime traffic.
Also at the end of this trip, you realize, too, the horrible implications of a company that has traditionally been answerable to no one, and, even worse, of the many opportunities lost.
If you’re a first-time rider, you wonder in awe at how so many things in a Viewliner sleeping car are tucked neatly into such small spaces. If, like this writer, you’re a veteran, lifelong rail traveler, you already know the design of sleeping cars is calculated in inches and half-inches, not feet and yards.
The dining car, once a bastion of stylish service and cooked to order food that emanated from a compact, yet highly functional kitchen reminds you of a world renowned concert pianist playing an accordion.
Yesterday’s southbound trip from Jacksonville to Fort Lauderdale on train number 97, the Silver Meteor, displayed a trainset and crew at the end of a round trip run between Miami and New York City, totaling over 2,750 miles. The Jacksonville to Fort Lauderdale segment is 398 miles of the last 412 miles of the journey. The Saturday crew had left Miami on Wednesday morning, journeyed to New York City, and returned to Miami on Saturday night. The union contract for the sleeping car attendants allowed them a whopping four hours of downtime/sleep to rest to provide good passenger services.
Almost everyone in the onboard services crew on train 97 had a smile on their faces, and were willing to provide a good level of service. Paul, the sleeping car attendant with 32 years of service to Amtrak in the Miami crew base, was always moving about his car, making sure everyone had bottled water and ice, fruit juices, a newspaper, or fresh coffee. There were several elderly couples traveling in the car, and he provided meal service for them in their accommodations. Towards the end of the trip, when the train was running nearly three hours late after 7:30 P.M., he brewed a fresh pot of coffee for anyone wishing to have a cup. As passengers detrained, they were pressing tips into his hand.
On today’s trip on the Silver Star, via Tampa, the sleeping car attendant is a kindly, grandfatherly gentleman with a nice smile and pleasant demeanor. He seems genuinely interested in his passengers, but it is also clear he is on the glidepath to retirement, and just waiting out his time. He provides one bottle of water when boarding the car, no ice, lets you know breakfast is being served in the dining car (it’s 9:30 A.M. in Fort Lauderdale), and then promptly disappears, seldom to be seen again during the rest of the trip. No extra bottled water is stocked in the car’s service area, and no other offerings are made. No mention is made about making lunch or dinner reservations during the day, whereas Paul, the previous day, was absolutely adamant about everyone knowing the dining car was open and serving, including an extra dinner service which was provided because the Silver Meteor was so late into its destination.
- The trainset on Saturday’s Silver Meteor was turned Sunday morning in Miami for the Silver Star. The dining car was the same, but the Star’s menus were a different cycle from the Meteor’s menus. Both provided an interesting, yet limited variety of offerings, notable for how small the entree portions were, but how large the portions of cheap, “filler” food were, such as rice, vegetable, and potato chips. Notable was the amount of food left untouched on plates when the meal was finished, not just the filler food, but often the entree item, too.Depending on who is doing the seating in the dining car (it’s tough, these days, with only two working the seating area of the dining car, to distinguish between the single wait staff person, and the steward/lead service attendant, who is also waiting on tables and bussing plastic plates), the barbaric practice of seating strangers with one another in the dining car seems to be going away. Three out of four LSAs/waiters allowed diners to sit anywhere they wished, but one stuck with the older, outdated dining car tradition of pairing up diners, even if there were only two diners in the entire 40 seat area.
A high point of marketing in the dining car, even if ignored by the wait staff, is the availability of before- and after-dinner drinks. The offerings were all premium brands, and the price was fairly reasonable at $5.00 per drink. This has the potential of being a huge money-maker for Amtrak, but the lackluster promotion by the wait staff, beyond the printed drink menu on the table, means Amtrak is literally leaving money on the table.
Amtrak has become so determined to streamline the dining car service, even the setups of Amtrak branded flatware wrapped in cloth napkins are assembled prior to the dining car staff boarding the train. As a result, when passengers eat their salad with the salad fork, and the main meal with the other fork, and dessert comes along, a plastic fork is offered for the consumption of these rich desserts. A good New York style cheesecake, drenched in a delightful strawberry sauce somehow loses its punch when it is served on a plastic dish and eaten with a plastic fork, especially when you’re also using a cloth napkin.
- Amtrak has let too many equipment maintenance issues fester for too long. In the dining car, on Saturday, the door which closes off the car from the next car was broken, and held open. This was at the end of the car where the patrons were dining, so the entire meal consisted of listening to road and track noise while eating a meal. What should have been a pleasant experience punctuated by the sounds of light conversation instead was a cacophony of brakes squealing and steel wheel flanges straining against misaligned steel rails.In the Viewliner sleeping cars, maintenance issues abound. While overall, the car is clean from a quick surface view, it’s obvious these cars for a very long time haven’t received more than a lick and a prayer for any major cleaning. These are some of the newest cars in Amtrak’s fleet, only 12 years old, yet, they look tired and worm, with paint chipped away, rust evident everywhere inside the rooms, and plenty of grime well worn into surfaces. Windows are scratched and soiled, and many curtains don’t work properly.
The original small and very useful television screens and audio systems are gone, too. These small screens originally played movies and reruns of popular television sitcoms, plus had an outstanding choice of music to fit everyone’s taste.
One puzzling change, as noted in a previous TWA trip report, is the installation of fixed chairs in the full bedrooms in these cars. The chairs are small, immovable, and right up against the door of the lavatory in each bedroom. There is no way anyone other than a small child could fit through the lavatory door since the opening is impeded by the placement of the chair. What were these people thinking? A better solution, if Amtrak doesn’t want to have movable chairs, is to just get rid of the chairs, and let the long couch - that can easily hold three adults - be the only seating in the room.
Nice surprises in the roomette on the Meteor and Star include a current timetable and a return of route guides. The route guide contains lots of interesting and well presented information, but lacks the one things that could make it a profit center instead of an expense item - advertising. On the Star today, the timetable provided in the roomette is both used and soiled.
- The Silver Meteor and Silver Star were the two showcase trains of the Seaboard Air Line Railroad, with the Meteor debuting as an all coach train at the end of the 1930s. After the war, the Seaboard streamlined all of its major trains, and added the Silver Star as a companion train to the Meteor, and the Silver Comet, providing service between New York City and Birmingham, Alabama.The Meteor and Star both survived the merger of the Seaboard with the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad in 1967, and migrated to Amtrak in 1971. The only original Seaboard tracks in use today by the Meteor and Star in Florida are south of Auburndale, going into Miami. These tracks were built as part of the Florida land boom in the 1920s. The Star still uses part of its original route in North Carolina and South Carolina, between Raleigh and Savannah, Georgia.
The Silver Meteor, in its prime, hosted many celebrities traveling between New York and Miami. Jackie Gleason, who lived in Fort Lauderdale while producing and starring in his Saturday night variety television show in CBS from Miami Beach, did not like to fly, and often was a passenger on the Meteor. If he wasn’t traveling in a private car, he was ensconced in a Pullman drawing room in an 11-bedroom sleeping car that ran regularly on the Meteor. You always knew he was on the train, but he never left his accommodations, having his meals brought to him in his drawing room.
Today’s Amtrak Fort Lauderdale station, now primarily used by the successful local Tri-Rail commuter operation, is the same station where Elizabeth Taylor alighted from the Silver Star one day as part of filming her 1966 movie, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe?.
Most of the old Seaboard stations in Florida still exist, but have taken on new lives as combination Amtrak and Tri-Rail stations from West Palm Beach south to Miami. There is a stark contrast between the Tri-Rail parts of the station - bright and spiffy - and the Amtrak parts, often dull with faded paint and unremarkable features.
- The extremes of the cuts in payroll throughout Amtrak’s national system under George Warrington and David Gunn are still very much evident today. An example was the Star’s 45 minutes tardy arrival into Tampa Union Station.TUS has five station tracks, all workable. However, since there is now only one train a day in each direction through Tampa, and one Thruway bus connection in each direction daily, the station staff has been cut to the bone, and it hurts.
The northbound Star came into Tampa today on time, and pulled far into the stub-end station’s wye to back into the station. Then it sat. And, sat. And, sat some more, for a total of 45 minutes. The reason? Today’s southbound Star, running late, was already in the station, and the station staff could not deal with two trains in the station simultaneously, even though there was plenty of track and platform space available. The result was, along with a weather-related delay further up the line north of Sanford, a northbound train which was relatively on time, ended up in Jacksonville over an hour late, even with the enormous amount of schedule padding built into the Florida schedules.
The bottom line is a decision was made at some point to delay an entire train full of passengers, plus run late on CSX’s main line, because of lack of station personnel.
- The impressions one comes away from an Amtrak trip are many and confusing. In many instances, you find employees excited about their jobs, and their enthusiasm shows through with good passenger service. Other instances demonstrate how employees, with little motivation more than keeping their jobs in an often untaxing environment, don’t worry about such trivial things as passenger satisfaction, or making money to keep stockholders happy. Their only vision is one of survival.Amtrak has many unique assets, such as a congressional mandate which provides access to every freight railroad track in America. This grossly under utilized asset is evident through Amtrak’s glaringly sparse route system, which makes pitiful use of other assets such as stations and yards which must be maintained no matter how busy or quiet.
The size of trains is evident, too, at how much more demand there is for rail travel. Saturday’s southbound Meteor had two busy sleeping cars and four full coaches between Jacksonville and Orlando, with decent crowds to destinations south of Orlando, too. Today’s Star steadily picked up passengers all along the line, especially in Tampa and Orlando. By the time the train reached Jacksonville, things were jumping. Imagine, if Amtrak actually advertised its service, and put back on the road all of the equipment it keeps in storage. Deficits would quickly decline, and the system would become robust and ever more closer to self sufficiency.
Too much money is left on the table onboard the trains. Not much effort is put into selling things, like the dining car and lounge car. The usual assortment of barflies can, as usual, be found in the lounge car, their mere presence chasing away any opportunities for family activities. There are no onboard destinations for passengers, other than strolling through the aisles of coaches (which is a huge improvement over planes and busses, but still, not enough), or visiting the lounge or diner.
Walking through the coaches reveals a sea of faces that have become frozen into monotony, having been on the train for more than a day, and just waiting for their station stop to arrive. How easy it would be to offer these people books, magazine, or newspapers for sale, and even provide a reader’s lounge area in one car. Not many children were traveling this time of year, but replicating the Coast Starlight’s children’s play area has to be a good idea, not as much for the benefit of the children traveling, but all of the adults traveling near the children who inevitably become restless and bored.
- We continually hear the ignorant drumbeat that because no other passenger rail system in the world breaks even or makes money, that Amtrak MUST have the same fate. A trip on an Amtrak long distance train with an open mind, while knowing all of the internal numbers in the back of your mind, quickly proves otherwise to those with rational thought.Anyone who wants to keep Amtrak a captive of the federal budget process merely wants it to fail and remain a political play toy. Anyone with any sense of vision - knowing all of the limitations of a clogged freight rail system and the desires of the traveling public - knows Amtrak has a bright future ahead of itself if only someone will allow it to grow in a natural way.
- Want to see what a private rail company in Great Britain does for marketing? Check out this link (and thanks to Doug Alexander of Georgia for passing this along).http://richmedia.virgintrains.co.uk/fallinginlove.mpg
{ 2007 05 08 }