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[quote user="Dragoman"] Sam1: A)  The complaint about too few sleepers is not just from subjective, general observations -- Amtrak says so, including in the various press releases, including those on its website discussing the new equipment. B)  It is just possible that Amtrak has taken the IG's recommendations to heart in the last 6 years and improved the revenue-to-cost ratio for sleepers (but of course, I can't say for sure). [/quote] But Amtrak has not made public any numbers showing the occupancy rate for its sleeping cars or the number of passengers turned away for lack of space.  As the commercial said a few years ago, where is the beef (numbers)?  Management can make all kinds of statements about capacity, etc., but until it shows me the numbers, I assume that it is puffing.   Based on my observations, Amtrak management, as is typical for public service bureaucrats, has thwarted the IG's recommendations.  I would be surprised if it has made much headway on the IG's recommendations.   Amtrak was supposed to drop the dinner on the Texas Eagle, convert half the lounge car to tables, and provide take away food service from the lower level of the lounge car.  This was designed to achieve some of the cost savings recommended by the IG whilst preserving on-board food and beverage space together with a lounge.  It got the lounge car conversion done.  But it did not drop the dinners.   Last week I rode the Eagle from Temple to Dallas and back.  The crew consisted of one engineer, who only goes as far as Austin, where another gets on to take the train 90 miles or thereabouts to San Antonio, one conductor, one trainman, one sleeping car attendant, one coach car attendant, one dinning car cook, and two dinning car waiters.  All for a approximately 70 passengers south of Fort Worth.  I counted them. A competitive business enterprise, e.g. commercial airline, intercity bus company, either controls its costs or it goes out of business, as indeed many of them have.  Not a government agency like Amtrak.  They have a magical way of perpetrating themselves.  Why not?  When all else fails, they simple turn to the taxpayers to bail them out.
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