Experimenting with dropping a diner from a long distance train (Silver Meteor) and reducing sleeping car charges by the 10% for free meals surcharge. In this next issue of Trains. Don't want to spoil the article for anyone so lets wait another few days for everyone to get their mailed copy.
The author in the article is complaining about the fairness of the test as Amtrak is not testing retaining the Dining Car and adding Premium meals but also dropping the sleeping car surcharge for free meals and making sleeping car passengers pay.
I cannot believe that only 10% of a sleeper covers all the meals in the Diner. Heck the Texas Eagle it is $350 each way in a Economy Sleeper so thats $35 for Dinner, Breakfest and Lunch? No way are those three meals together only $35. Which is what I suspected when reading about the Dining Car deficits. The Sleeping Car Passengers are not paying the market costs of the meals consummed.......gesh!
The 10% is illustrative. There was a fairly long section in the OIG food service report explaining that the transfer was based on the menu prices. For Acela they compare hotel provided meal prices.
The Trains item says it is the Silver Star. Did the powers that be at Amtrak decide to take the diner off the Silver Meteor instead?
Johnny
CMStPnP Experimenting with dropping a diner from a long distance train (Silver Meteor) and reducing sleeping car charges by the 10% for free meals surcharge. In this next issue of Trains. Don't want to spoil the article for anyone so lets wait another few days for everyone to get their mailed copy. The author in the article is complaining about the fairness of the test as Amtrak is not testing retaining the Dining Car and adding Premium meals but also dropping the sleeping car surcharge for free meals and making sleeping car passengers pay. I cannot believe that only 10% of a sleeper covers all the meals in the Diner. Heck the Texas Eagle it is $350 each way in a Economy Sleeper so thats $35 for Dinner, Breakfest and Lunch? No way are those three meals together only $35. Which is what I suspected when reading about the Dining Car deficits. The Sleeping Car Passengers are not paying the market costs of the meals consummed.......gesh!
Presumably the food surcharge is on a cost basis, not retail. Even so, $35 cost for those three meals sounds low. But then, the diner food isn't worth it in the opinion of many who do not patronize the diner for all three meals, maybe none.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
Deggesty The Trains item says it is the Silver Star. Did the powers that be at Amtrak decide to take the diner off the Silver Meteor instead?
No I was going from memory so I probably got it wrong.
Amtrak refuses to adjust food charges to cover costs...simple as that, railroad food has always been cheap compared to what you find anywhere else. If they went back to the cooked on board food and priced it accordingly(to cover all costs, materials and wages), then they wouldn't have such huge loses in the food deparment, and people will pay for good food...no ifs, ands, or butts about it.
GERALD L MCFARLANE JR Amtrak refuses to adjust food charges to cover costs...simple as that, railroad food has always been cheap compared to what you find anywhere else. If they went back to the cooked on board food and priced it accordingly(to cover all costs, materials and wages), then they wouldn't have such huge loses in the food deparment, and people will pay for good food...no ifs, ands, or butts about it.
It's doubtful that many people would use the dining car you describe with passing on all the full costs to patrons.
Preparing the food entirely onboard increases your food cost and it will take longer to serve a meal on a per passenger basis. Look at it as a fixed business.
Lets say a daily lease on a Dinning Car or Car dedicated to eating is approx $7,000.00. Now add on the onboard service people that you have to pay full time around the clock wether they are working or not. Add those two together and add 25-30% for food costs. Then divide by number of passengers on the train that will use the diner for a sitting (I would esitimate that on average Amtrak has three sittings per meal and they are not all 100% occupancy.....so count the seats in the Diner and figure about 70-80% occupancy.
That will give you how much in average check each diner will have to pay to at least break even.
The only way your going to fix part of this is:
1. Lowering the cost of the lease on the Diner, maybe only use half a car instead of a full car and use the other half of the car for coach passengers.
2. Lowering the food prep time and costs allowing the dining car to serve the food quicker and perhaps do two to three more seatings per meal. This would also reduce labor requirements.
3. Reducing the staff on the diner.
So redo the above calculations and cut the lease per day by half to $3500, Reduce the food costs and labor both by 15-20%, with a smaller diner you might not serve the same amount of passengers so you might have to cut number of passengers served. But now you can add in revenue from half the car being coach seats. Even with all those changes your going to be hard pressed to break even and offer decent prices in the dining car. As even a half car of coach seats does not cover the fixed costs of running a dining car by itself.
CMStPnP 1. Lowering the cost of the lease on the Diner, maybe only use half a car instead of a full car and use the other half of the car for coach passengers.
When you say half I hope you mean half of the passenger area. At least one quarter of the car's already devoted to the galley or kitchen.
Patrick Boylan
Free yacht rides, 27' sailboat, zip code 19114 Delaware River, get great Delair bridge photos from the river. Send me a private message
I think we're playing Congress' game and losing sight of the big picture. It's as ridiculous to demand that the diner be a profit center as for a grocery store to require that everything in its inventory make money.
I have no idea what grocers make on, say, dairy products. Maybe it's a lot, maybe not. (The latter, I think, if everybody is as picky about freshness dates as I am.) The point is, nobody would shop at the store if he couldn't pick up milk while he's at it.
Similarly with the LD diner. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that this has to be the most expensive form of food service going, and that if you charged what it cost nobody would pay. At the same time, the alternatives, including no food service at all, have all been tried and found wanting.
If we're going to run the LD trains, everybody needs to grow up and accept the full-service diner as part of the cost. (Everything on the train loses money, starting with the locomotive engineer.)
To me, it isn't about turning a profit or even breaking even. It is about the wisest use of tax monies, based on the mission of Amtrak (transportation) and providing the greatest good for the most people (you can serve far more people with well-developed corridors than with sparse LD trains).
Specifically, full-service LD dining cars are a nice-to-have option, but only in the context of a segment that is growing in numbers of passengers served and having a ppm subsidy similar to that of the rest of Amtrak. The growth of the LD passenger ridership is flat (hence a declining percentage of Amtrak's growing total) and the ppm subsidy is the highest segment of Amtrak, by far. How can that be justified? How can the provision of highly-subsidized, old-fashioned, costly and relatively luxururious food services by a government agency be justified? Are the few patrons of Amtrak LD sleepers and dining cars some kind of elite who need a subsidized china and tablecloth food service?
Congress has mandated for years that Amtrak food services break even. The difference is that now they seem to mean it. And they could easily have the public on their side. I can easily imagine some pol running TV spots showing happy, laughing passengers in an Amtrak dining car eating their dinners with a word overlay showing the subsidy amount for each food item.
dakotafredIt's as ridiculous to demand that the diner be a profit center as for a grocery store to require that everything in its inventory make money.
Congress has only mandated the Amtrak food service to break even. And to clarify your analogy, you have a grocery store that loses so much money on one segment that it causes the whole store to be a loss, even though some product lines lose only a bit or even make money.
gardendanceWhen you say half I hope you mean half of the passenger area. At least one quarter of the car's already devoted to the galley or kitchen.
I know.....but compare that space on a dining car galley compared to what is allocated on an airliner galley, I think they can shrink the amount of space dedicated to the galley on a railroad dining car for food prep.
I think they are stuck with food storage space though since most airliners only serve one meal and I believe the transatlantic or transpacific flights have elevators to the cargo space for additional food storage. Or maybe they can cope on one level.....not sure.
dakotafred I think we're playing Congress' game and losing sight of the big picture. It's as ridiculous to demand that the diner be a profit center as for a grocery store to require that everything in its inventory make money. I have no idea what grocers make on, say, dairy products. Maybe it's a lot, maybe not. (The latter, I think, if everybody is as picky about freshness dates as I am.) The point is, nobody would shop at the store if he couldn't pick up milk while he's at it. Similarly with the LD diner. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that this has to be the most expensive form of food service going, and that if you charged what it cost nobody would pay. At the same time, the alternatives, including no food service at all, have all been tried and found wanting. If we're going to run the LD trains, everybody needs to grow up and accept the full-service diner as part of the cost. (Everything on the train loses money, starting with the locomotive engineer.)
I think your right that unless we are talking a 26 to 30 car passenger train. I do not see how on Earth a Railroad Dining car can be profitable unless they raise the prices to a price point that most people will not pay. Folks here do not realize how price sensitive the public is when it comes to food.
I had people walk away from my Sub Sandwich place because they thought $6 for a Submarine made up of largely fresh and premium ingredients was too high to pay for a sandwich. What I found interesting is I increased the price of soda by 30 cents each...........nobody noticed / nobody complained. I tried it with a Sub and it was like I was price gouging and lots complained or would not pay it. Very interesting......I still cannot explain why the response was different between the two items.
Now some of a meals price increase can be offset by percieved value by the customer. You jazz up the presentation on the plate and people are willing to pay a little more for it (Rocky Mountaineer does this). You work on the packaging and folks can be fooled they are getting a larger food portion when actually it is less. Also, interesting.
"Lets say a daily lease on a Dinning Car or Car dedicated to eating is approx $7,000.00"...
Uhmm, a $4 million car on a thirty year lease would be $320,000 a year for capital, or $902/day + 10% spares, $0.65/carmile in incremental haulage costs (fuel and track fees) and $0.30 carmile for heavy maintenance on say 900 daily miles gets you to $855.
So $1850/day + daily maintenance and staffing at $2650/day perhaps, so a total of about $4500/day + food and consumables. $4 million would be Superliner, so figure 3 meals at 140 patrons each, about $10.75 per patron to cover the "house" and staff + food and consumables at a few dollars over that. You would skew the fixed cost recovery to the meals that people expect to pay more for, breakfast and dinner.
The primary issue is putting a large volume of patrons through a full service dining car and having it open for outside of normal hours as a coffee shop or bar.
I believe I have indicated an approach to reducing costs while preserving quality and also making the lives of food service people a bit more normal and pleasant. But based on some of the ideas expressed, as well as some history, I would go further. The New Haven diners were reputed to make money. But it was not the dining car service that made money; the money was made by the bar service cars on evening commuter trains, which charged double and triple for drinks as compared with a neighborhood bar, and still had people line up two and three deep at the counters. Possibly dining cars should offer souvenere merchandize related to train travel and the specific scenery viewed from the train windows? Or are there other services or products that can be sold on a train to bring in a profit? One time on the all-Pullman 20th Century I had my pants pressed. I think I just tipped the porter two dollars instead of one dollar, but this could have been a charged-for service. I was tempted to use the on-train barbershop but did not.
V.Payne "Lets say a daily lease on a Dinning Car or Car dedicated to eating is approx $7,000.00"... Uhmm, a $4 million car on a thirty year lease would be $320,000 a year for capital, or $902/day + 10% spares, $0.65/carmile in incremental haulage costs (fuel and track fees) and $0.30 carmile for heavy maintenance on say 900 daily miles gets you to $855. So $1850/day + daily maintenance and staffing at $2650/day perhaps, so a total of about $4500/day + food and consumables. $4 million would be Superliner, so figure 3 meals at 140 patrons each, about $10.75 per patron to cover the "house" and staff + food and consumables at a few dollars over that. You would skew the fixed cost recovery to the meals that people expect to pay more for, breakfast and dinner. The primary issue is putting a large volume of patrons through a full service dining car and having it open for outside of normal hours as a coffee shop or bar.
All the more reason to contract the whole thing out to Darden or similar.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
I was throwing numbers out there based on leasing an existing private dining car and they are probably on the high side. However, I very seriously doubt your going to get a 30 year lease on rail passenger equipment. Let me know when you do.
$2650 a day for maintenence and staffing? Too low.
140 patrons eating in the dining car in all three seatings? Which Amtrak LD train are we talking and whats the average train ridership per day?
$10.75 avg check. For the amount of patrons you give, thats going to be approaching break even but it will not be profitable......even with the extra service.
You need "hundreds" at least at each sitting. Ridership on Amtrak LD is nowhere near that. Maybe another solution have Amtrak run pubilcly open eateries out of some of the more better located stations and just carry the food to the train based on orders? Somewhat like Harvey?
daveklepper I believe I have indicated an approach to reducing costs while preserving quality and also making the lives of food service people a bit more normal and pleasant. But based on some of the ideas expressed, as well as some history, I would go further. The New Haven diners were reputed to make money. But it was not the dining car service that made money; the money was made by the bar service cars on evening commuter trains, which charged double and triple for drinks as compared with a neighborhood bar, and still had people line up two and three deep at the counters. Possibly dining cars should offer souvenere merchandize related to train travel and the specific scenery viewed from the train windows? Or are there other services or products that can be sold on a train to bring in a profit? One time on the all-Pullman 20th Century I had my pants pressed. I think I just tipped the porter two dollars instead of one dollar, but this could have been a charged-for service. I was tempted to use the on-train barbershop but did not.
CMStPnPAlso, I would allow smoking again on at least one Amtrak car. Banning it might have been PC but in the long run Amtrak excluded clients that pay a lot to drink and smoke.
Banning smoking was NOT 'PC.' It was a sensible public health decision based on irrefutable epidemiological research.
The problem with smoking on Amtrak was that there was no way to confine the smoke to the designated smoking area. On the Superliners, for instance, it always leaked upstairs, to the discomfort of nonsmokers there. I'm sure, on single-level equipment, it moved to cars on either side via the end doors.
A former smoker myself, but no zealot on the subject, I see no practical way to restore smoking on Amtrak.
Superliner diners seat 72, so with three mealtime seatings, 140 total patrons per each meal is possible at 65% occupancy. The capital cost of the car is not the issue nor a full or half car used for dinning it gets down to enough volume to make any operation able to pay fixed costs. So about $10.75 + food and consumables if you can get the volume through there, and you have to have a long enough train to have enough patrons to do so.
ROSCO lease for rates equivalent to 30 years in the UK as I understand it, but the government coordinates these somewhat with franchises. Actually, NRPC did the sale-lease back hear during the Warrington years, but regardless the 30 years is used for the lease/loan term to calculate the economics as it is less than the 40 year life of the equipment, the real terms are whatever mix of equity and commercial bonds can be had.
The diners have been removed from the Silver Star not the Silver Meteor. My family frequently takes the Sikver Star from Newark to Hamlet; not an overnight ride so no need to book sleeper however twelve-hours aboard means our meals in the diner are a welcome highlight. AMTRAK obviously doesn't want to understand that once aboard a long-distance train more than half the coach passengers make reservations for the dining car. Forcing all passengers, whether sleeper or coach, to purchase the mostly inedible microwaved offerings from the cafe/lounge is not just a bad idea it is frankly an asinine idea. Then there's the question of space: a cafe/lounge has very limited seating so persons wanting to eat have to compete for table space with those who are playing cards, surfing laptops, chatting on their cell, or just hanging out. AMTRAK seems to be full of idiotic bureaucrats more interested in cost accounting than the needs of the fare-paying passengers.
New Jersey ---
No argument from me. But Joe Boardman and your Senators and Congressman are the ones who really need to hear your opinions. Those on this forum are either convinced already, or won't ever be convinced.
Tom
(Railroad) Equipment Trusts typically have a lease term of 15 years.
Railroad car leases these days are 7-10 years, seldom more than 12.
When I travel and eat in a diner, I do not take count as to how many of my fellow eaters are traveling in sleepers and how many are taveling in coaches--but I do notice that many do come from the coaches to the diner to eat. At lunch today, I shared a table with two other sleeper passengers and one coach passenger, and that was not an unsual experience. Having had to eat breakfast on #1 after leaving New Orleans, and eating on Cascades trains, I deplore the decision made by Amtrak. May irate passengers, both those who pay for their meals when buying their transportation and those who pay when they eat rise up in high dudgeon.
When Amtrak started the service between Seattle and Vancouver, there was a diner on the train which offered good food. Now, you have the "cafe" which offers not as good food.
I would't want to pay a high price for a meal either. When 2 friends and I went UP City of St. L to CA, we packed a bunch of snacks, so we didn't have to buy much. One friend brought a bunch of hard boiled eggs, peanut butter and crackers.We were traveling in a Pullman bedroom so all 3 of us could sit together. We did eat breakfast and skipped dinner and usually ate supper. Once the waiter asked if we didn't eat lunch, he noticed and we said we brought our own. I like the idea of meal price included in sleeper fare,and I don't have to haul snacks with me. But the cafe car is usually cheaper.
I do remember the "red carpet" treatment those of us in sleeper got on Coast Starlight. We had to be bused from Eugene to Klamath Falls, OR. They gave us box lunches when we boarded at Portland and diner was kept open for us at K Falls. It was past 10 pm and because we'd missed the wine/cheese party, we all had complimentary wine with our meals. So we didn't miss out eating. If they cut that out, and you board late, the cafe car would probably be closed.
Sunnyland I would't want to pay a high price for a meal either. When 2 friends and I went UP City of St. L to CA, we packed a bunch of snacks, so we didn't have to buy much. One friend brought a bunch of hard boiled eggs, peanut butter and crackers.We were traveling in a Pullman bedroom so all 3 of us could sit together. We did eat breakfast and skipped dinner and usually ate supper. Once the waiter asked if we didn't eat lunch, he noticed and we said we brought our own. I like the idea of meal price included in sleeper fare,and I don't have to haul snacks with me. But the cafe car is usually cheaper. I do remember the "red carpet" treatment those of us in sleeper got on Coast Starlight. We had to be bused from Eugene to Klamath Falls, OR. They gave us box lunches when we boarded at Portland and diner was kept open for us at K Falls. It was past 10 pm and because we'd missed the wine/cheese party, we all had complimentary wine with our meals. So we didn't miss out eating. If they cut that out, and you board late, the cafe car would probably be closed.
What would be your opinion of buying a boxed lunch from a three or four star hotel along the route. BTW, Rocky Mountaineer also does this for it's Motorcoach tours option. They buy boxed lunches from Chateau Lake Louise, put them in a cooler down under the bus where the baggage is stored and serve them for lunch. It's another option open to Amtrak but never tried. I understand the logistics of delayed trains and such but hey have a plan B and plan C for such occurences.
I find it a little encouraging that Amtrak is at least experimenting. Do I think their management is cut out to evaluate this issue fairly and completely......probably not.
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