I have just completed I rather large Amtrak journey, The Silver Star, Capital Limted and The Empire Builder.
OK lets start here, I had a roomette on the Silver Star which was nice the meals were ok but not great, the crew was better than I expected and we were only 45 minutes late into Washington DC, all in all great trip.
The Capitol Limted was a let down, I only had a coach seat which normally is not a problem and it wan't this time, the crew was terribe. They were rude and didn't seem to care about the large number of half drunk idiots in the lounge car or Mr Preacher who took it upon himself to talk every single coach passenger about how they must embrace got or die, we were 3 hours late into Chicago which I knew we would so I did not care.
Don't worry I will still ride Amtrak in fact I am riding Amtrak next week.
Here’s were it gets worse. The Empire Builder was two hours late leaving Chicago, but I did not mind at first since the crew was the best crew I have ever seen. I had some great conversations with a man from Germany and a father and children from Chicago. Now I know your thinking "wait he said it got worse" well here you go. It all started just before we reached Montana, both locos overheated and shut down so we had to wait 45 minutes until they cooled during that time there was no HEP. We finally got moving again now we were 3 hours 56 minutes late. We continued on and hit slow orders due to a signal black out. We then crawled our way through a burning Glacier Park and reached Spokane and 6 in the morning were the Portland section went by train to Portland while the Seattle section got crammed on to old, cramped buses for a 4 hour ride through hell to Seattle due to "Tunnel work in the cascades" at least that’s what they said. Oh and did I mention the large number of really pissed passengers, I can’t count how times I heard "Never again”, "I'll fly next time" and "! @#$ Amtrak"
I sympathize!
NEVER had a trip so bad as that on the Rio Grande Zephyr! Rode it at least 25 times!
Wow! What a difference between your trip report and mine!
I have to admit we had a pretty good trip down on the Zephyr earlier this week, and most of the people who rode seemed interested in riding again . . .
But then we were about 2 hrs late getting into Green River, which is actually an improvement over recent weeks . . .
Here is another complaint about Mr. Preacher on the Capitol Limited last week. It is comment No. 22 on the page. I guess he really made an impression. I would have complained to the conductor.
I've ridden that one and the Texas Eagle at least six times in 2005 and 2006 and pretty much had the opposite experience. I even wrote an e-mail to Amtrak about how pleasant and helpful every crew member was, far better than airline crew members I've seen lately.
One complaint I had was that they stopped showing movies. The lounge car attendant said that the movie companies charge them over $1000 to show a movie to a trainful of people, so Amtrak had to cut them out.
I hope to do another trip later this year.
cordon wrote:Here is another complaint about Mr. Preacher on the Capitol Limited last week. It is comment No. 22 on the page. I guess he really made an impression. I would have complained to the conductor. I've ridden that one and the Texas Eagle at least six times in 2005 and 2006 and pretty much had the opposite experience. I even wrote an e-mail to Amtrak about how pleasant and helpful every crew member was, far better than airline crew members I've seen lately. One complaint I had was that they stopped showing movies. The lounge car attendant said that the movie companies charge them over $1000 to show a movie to a trainful of people, so Amtrak had to cut them out.I hope to do another trip later this year.
Some other passengers did but nothing happend.
I thought some more about your trip report. One option you might possibly have investigated IF your trip was basically for pleasure and you had little time constraints, would have been to insist that you paid for a trip by train to Seattle and as long as such a trip was possible it was Amtrak's responsibility to give you what you paid for - taking the train to Portland and then going on Amtrak to Seattle. If you had done this quietly without making a big fuss, I think they would have accommodated you. This had been my experience in similar circumstances.
Regarding the quality of the buses, Amtrak may have had no choice but just take what was available on short notice.
But remember the Thistle mudslide, and how the D&RGW got the most comfortable intercity buses possible to replace the RGZ between Grand Junction and Salt Lake City ---until Amtrak took over and ran its bus Denver SLC till the tunnels were finished and the CZ could run over the D&RGW.
Last December I was on the Texas Eagle from Dallas to Milwaukee and then on to Portland, Oregon on The Empire Builder.
Due to bad weather, we were about five hours late getting into St. Louis. Amtrak terminated the train in St. Louis and sent us to Chicago on a bus.
When I got home I quietly asked Amtrak to refund me the difference between the first class rail fare and the bus fare from St. Louis to Chicago. They responded with a voucher that was considerably more than the fare difference. In fact, it paid for a subsequent trip, again first class, between El Paso and Dallas.
I have found that speaking up quietly usually gets some positive results.
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