Question: Did Amtrak offer meal service in sleeping rooms in the 1970's?

I am thinking of the scenes in "Silver Streak" where Richard Pryor is a porter serving breakfast and coffee in a double bedroom.

The Pullman Company certainly did, and had rules for performing the service.

I figured that, but what about the Amtrak era?

I think this is offered today only for handicapped passengers in sleeping class. Am I correct?

Did the last 30 minutes of the movie, "Continental Divide" suggest room service as well? It's been a while since I've seen that movie...

I don't see anything that says that they will not provide in room meals for other sleeping car occupants-it may be permitted depending on staff availability a la hotel room service. I seem to recall that in room service was the domain of the car attendent rathar than the dining car staff-mostly to keep the dining car running at full staffing during peak times.

I rode the Pioneer in about 1995. I had a bedroom in one of the sleepers. The car attendant offered to go to the diner and bring me a drink/and or dinner. I took him up on the drink and then later went to the diner myself. He also brought coffee the next morning.

Thanks! That is pretty good evidence right there.

I found no mention of this at Amtrak.com, so I suppose it is offered only when workloads allow.

I'm not up on current policy, but when I was there, the sleeping car attendant served passengers in their car who requested it, not just the handicapped. Of course the hope was to increase the sleeper TA's tip at the end of the trip.

I suspect that is still the case. While there may no longer be any need for shoe shining, there are any number of reasons that a sleeper passenger might want or need to dine in his/her accomodation and meals are included in their accomodation package.

Having ridden the California Zephyr(#5) three days ago, I can state they still do.
Although I used the diner, I saw our room attendent carring a tray of dishes back to the diner.
Someone must have used the in room service.

This was the number 5 that was 17 1/2 late into Salt Lake City.

Wow; 17-1/2 hours late into Salt Lake City! The wife and I were on #5 in April and we were about 8 hours late into Denver. BUT, I am sure that most of this was not Amtrak's fault but freight train interference.

BTW, I have also seen in room service for sleeping car passengers, on the California Zephyr and on other trains. And this was not for handicapped passengers.

Les

Well, if the Zephyr had room service, they must have had food! I rode it from Emeryville to Denver two years ago, and they were running short of dinners as we were coming down the hill into Denver. Our friends who continued on to Chicago said that the only thing they had left for dinner the third night was vegi-burgers. I can see no excuse for that on an all-reserved train. Also, their food supplier was Sysco, the largest food-service outfit in the country, who must have a warehouse in Denver. Why couldn't they have called Sysco on the way down to Denver and asked for a delivery during the scheduled layover there?

Yes, you'd think that Amtrak would have contingency plans in place for re-provisioning extremely late trains. After all, it does happen from time-to-time, especially when the weather is horrible for an entire season, like this past winter. I know that the Auto Train carries enough canned beef stew to serve an extra lunch or dinner to it's entire passenger load (up to 450) if they are delayed long enough to run into another meal period. Beyond one extra meal period, they'd probably have to wing it and order food to-go from some local restaurant along the route. After all, since all of the passengers personal transportation beyond either Lorton, VA, or Sanford, FL is on the train, they can't just bus them to the end point and be done with them. When the outbound Auto Train has been extremely late on it's turnaround at either end point, Amtrak has bused the waiting outbound passengers to local restaurants for dinner, rather than make them wait until late at night to be served dinner on the train.

My understanding from years ago was that Amtrak had an arrangement with KFC to buy box chicken dinners for late trains at some strategic locations. Where there was not a KFC nearby, other arrangements were made. More than once I was part of delays on an Eastbound Capitol Ltd. where we were going to be delayed arriving in DC well past lunchtime (scheduled arrival was around Noon-12:30 so there was no provision to serve lunch in the diner). The CSX dispatcher for the Keystone sub would place an order relayed from the OBS Chief to the Roy Rogers near the Cumberland, MD station for chicken dinners, that the restaurant manager would deliver trainside himself, in his personal vehicle - and we're talking usually 150-200 meals. Either the diner or lounge LSA would pay for the meals in cash out of their car's revenue and turn in the receipt for the meals with their paperwork at the end of the trip.

The train I was on wasn't even late.

I used to work with a lady whose husband was a dining car waiter on the Desert Wind. Then they cut out the diner, and went to a cafe car. The train would stop in Barstow, and the local KFC would bring over a bunch of buckets of chicken. The waiter guy wasn't too happy about that; his tip income dropped considerably. Then, of course, they eliminated the entire train.