An interesting article in the Washington Post concerning the phaseout of Dining Cars on one-night overnight routes.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/t ... spartandhp

Typical non-railroader management stupidity. Dining cars NEVER made money. They are a basic necessity for long haul trains. It's either that or stop the train at meal times for a half hour. The added weight and fuel burn is minimal compared to the business generated or lost for want of food service. The old heads knew that and you didn't see much messing with dining cars until the postwar period. In fact, in the old days, dining car service was one of the only ways to make your passenger service stand out against the competition. Every road had a signature dish and they knew how to economize without the passenger noticing.

Of course, that was when dining cars were only added for mealtime-they generally did not work the whole trip. Railroads economized by planning menus to minimize the cost of food transportation. On the L&N, trains going south and east served meats and trains going north or west had seafood on the menu.

An additional article on the same subject from the NY Post. The article appears to blame millennials for the change.

https://nypost.com/2019/09/22/millennia ... 4Pmd7Z01xE

I'm a millennial if I'm going to spend money on ticket to go on Amtrak for a long haul trip I want a home cook meal not a pre packaged meal. I haven't traveled on Amtrak before but if I do I want a home cooked meal on Amtrak to make my trip worth it. A train ticket on Amtrak go from anywhere from 90-400 a ticket I better get a home cooked meal at the dining car to make the trip and cost worth it. I'm sick and tired of Millennial bashing.

My guess is that it's all politics and maybe corruption but I'm not going there.

the dining car is a restaurant on wheels what does the passengers want? home cooked meals. No meals mean no passengers and that means no business. who is the head of Amtrak? anyway get someone in charge who knows how food is cooked and serve for a company that requires food for paying customers.

it's not that hard

What has to be understood is that a dining car does not make money. Old head railroad management knew that and understood that providing meal service was a necessity for operational efficiency. They maximized usage of dining cars by only running them on trains at meal time. Whenever possible, the dining car would be picked up and dropped off enroute to work its way between dining car terminals.

Richard Anderson is the current head of Amtrak and is doing what he can to keep to Amtrak's original mission-killing off long haul passenger trains.

I just rode the Silver Meteor right after the change from "traditional dining." I went in with an open mind.. I've had some fairly decent airline meals in domestic first class so I thought it might be ok. I was wrong. They are TV Dinner quality served in cheap disposable plastic bowls.

The salad is a small cup of iceberg lettuce with a single cherry tomato and the only choice of salad dressing is Ranch dressing served in small ketchup sized packets. (The previous amtrak side salads included carrots, tomatoes, and cucumber and had several choices of Newmans salad dressings. Dessert is a prepackaged brownie or cookie.

It's pretty sad to be eating this type of food in the beautifully designed Viewliner Diners. Seriously the Viewliner Diner is one of the nicest dining cars I've ever seen. It's such a shame to see it be used as a simple table car.

It's a shame they can't serve a decent meal. I think we can learn a lot from the European rail roads

They can, but they DON'T WANT TO. At least not at corporate. They don't have the will to do it, because it would get in the way of their mission. Historically, Amtrak was intended to wind down intercity passenger service, not encourage it.

Which European railroads have full dining car service? Other than the Pullman Dining car experience on the Great Western I'm not sure of any but I'm not an expert on those lines.

I think the food on the traditional amtrak dining cars is pretty good. Maybe not every dish, but the breakfasts, steak, salmon, and veggie burgers are all pretty tasty in my experiences. (Yes I eat the veggie burger for lunch and steak for dinner... the Amtrak veggie burger is quite good!).

It IS politics. John Mica rammed through the death by a thousand cuts wording as part of the PRIIA Re-authorization bill in 2008.

Much of the criticism towards the present leader of Amtrak fails to address the fact that he has a fully legal directive to do what you do not like. By law he is supposed to follow Congress's orders.

Brian

That's always been an interesting problem in the annals of public-facing railway operations. **Railfans have the most particular requirements, but they don't pay the freight**.

The dining car debate has its parallels in the "photographers vs. steam operators" debates, where the steam operators have to stay alive, and the photographers want expensive changes to suit them (whilst scarcely buying a ticket, due to the simple practicality that you can't photos of a train from inside it... except for photo-run-by-lineups, where you could never enforce a copyright claim since your pics can't be distinguished from those taken by the person to your left and right).

Or the museum operations where every railfan has a high opinion of what the museum should do, but somehow their donation envelope always seems to be lost in the mail.