Product review: In the lap of luxury

This is one of those summer weekend days that those of us within the Northeast Corridor dream about: sunny with hazy clouds, low humidity and pleasant temperatures. And I get to enjoy it from the first-class car of an Amtrak Acela Express.  When things go right, there is no better daytime travel experience in America than the car I occupy. Today, things are really looking up.

This is not always the case. As you probably suspect, the difference between a ho-hum (or oh-dear) experience and a memorable one is the human touch, the level of service you get. I've ridden this car when the two attendants do the absolute minimum and then hide the remainder of the trip. Today is the polar opposite, although it didn't start off well. The food and beverages were not delivered to the train until minutes before it left Washington, D.C. Rather than let it cause a problem, lead attendant William Johnson (that's Johnson on the left of the top photo)  has us laughing at the absurdity of the situation. After all, how put out can you be waiting five minutes for a Coke or coffee? 

What I liked about the service was that neither Johnson nor attendant Andre Thomas forgot about us for a minute on our way to New York City. More water? Wine? Can I take your lunch tray? Would you like a New York Times (oops, they forgot to ask, and the Sunday papers went undistributed).

First class Acela itickets come with a meal. The afternoon and evening menu today is a Mediterranean plate of roasted red pepper hummus with sun-dried tomatoes, olives, aspargus, and baby patotoes; Cuban pork marinated in lime and orange juices, with onions, garlic and olive oil; chicken Marsala served with mushroom orzo pasta and glreen peas, and Soba noodle shrimp salad served over mesculin green, shredded carrots and red cabbage and a pan-Asian drerssing. Congressman John Mica, who is making a career damning Amtrak's "gourmet" servings: Get lost. The price of this meal is baked into the first-class ticket price. Precooked and frozen, this is not a gourmet meal but a good one, and I enjoyed the chicken.

If you haven't ridden an Acela, it's a unique Amtrak experience. The fixed consist is power car, two business class cars (one a quiet car), cafe car, two more business class cars, first class car, and power car. Business class is two-two seating (coach class under another name, really) and first is two-one seating.. All cars have windows approximately twice the height of those on Amfleet I cars. The result is a big contrast to the dim interiors of Amfleet cars. The menu on the mid-trtain cafe car is a small cut above what you're offered in Northeast Direct cafe service.

As for ride quality, well, you cannot hide bad track. A rough spot will be felt, but today I don't seem to notice them.

An elderly man in s clerical collar came to talk to me as we neared Newark. He'd heard me tell Johnson that I know good service when I experience it. "In the 1940s I worked in food service at Yankee Stadium," he said. "The people who ran it had strict standards on how to treat customers. This guy [Johnson] is cut from that cloth."

Nearing New York, Johnson tells us we'll have a sell-out leaving town. "This will be National Make A Friend Day," he says. Is that not the nicest possible way to tell people to get their crap off the adjacent seat?

As you can tell, I'm having a hard time finding anything wrong with this experience. I don't often shell out the bucks (an extra $116 in this instance) to travel first class on the Acela. When I do, I expect snappy service. This time, I got it.--Fred W. Frailey