I am of the opinion that Amtrak should suspend running their long-distance trains in the winter and run them as tourist trains, with all the attendant amenities of the days of yore, in the better weather. Coast to coast on a train is not a convenient form of travel for any other reason but sightseeing. Regional service for heavily populated urban areas. can be established as needed
Most LD routes should be modified or eliminated totally. Why should tax payers subsidize land cruises?
In the world of PSR railroading - the freight carriers ought to shut down during periods of Winter weather - they don't employ sufficient personnel to be able to sustain reliable operations.
Only one thing holds Mother Nature at bay during the Winter - Manpower in mass quantities.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
243129 I am of the opinion that Amtrak should suspend running their long-distance trains in the winter and run them as tourist trains, with all the attendant amenities of the days of yore, in the better weather. Coast to coast on a train is not a convenient form of travel for any other reason but sightseeing. Regional service for heavily populated urban areas. can be established as needed
Amtrak is the political solution that has kept passenger rail running for the last 50 years. Your solution is wishful thinking that will lead to the political erosion of support for subsidies, and virtual elimination of all passenger rail.
Winter is when I travel on those trains. When I ride the Capitol, I see families, young folks (like college kids), and I see darn few "upscale" looking riders. To us it is a reasonably priced way to get somewhere. At a leisurely pace.
I have been searching for a reasonable train vacation for my upscale sister. SOmething lke VIA maybe. Problem is when it comes with a $10,000 pricetag, they lose interest.
If the automakers had to pay for the highways, and the airlines had to pay for airports and air traffic control, those modes would not be profitable either.
Still in training.
Enzoamps I have been searching for a reasonable train vacation for my upscale sister. Something lke VIA maybe. Problem is when it comes with a $10,000 pricetag, they lose interest.
I have been searching for a reasonable train vacation for my upscale sister. Something lke VIA maybe. Problem is when it comes with a $10,000 pricetag, they lose interest.
Rocky Mountaineer is the best choice in North America. It's expensive but well worth the price.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
The RM looks like a great experience.
But I like being in a room/roomette on a moving train at night. It's true you miss a lot at night, but there is something magical to me about looking out at night. Especially waking up in the dark to find you're stopped and wondering where and why. Or what station you're at. Etc. There is nothing quite like being in a dark compartment and being able to see out well, and watch all these mysterious, sometimes hardly-lit, vignettes flash by. Just lights in house windows seem to tell a story. Grade crossing red flashers rushing by suggest an almost emergency urgency.
Think I'm a romantic ... ?
The preceding posts seem to support my opinion that LD trains should be related to tourist trains.
Lithonia OperatorThink I'm a romantic ... ?
Either that or you're channelling Rogers E. M. Whitaker!
Well, here's a subject that's never, ever before been discussed in these forums!
MY opinion (!) is that the public through their (so far) duly elected representatives, has for over half a century supported LD trains, and Amtrak recently received an encouraging vote of confidence from Congress in a concrete form we all know about. So I'd say, Checkmate.
Lithonia Operator: Trains at night are certainly romantic. Ever notice how two people in a roomette or bedroom don't necessarily require all the bunks to be in use? Talk about cosy! And while we're at it, how about being upstairs in the dome of the Capitol Limited when it carried a dome car, and riding through a thrilling and vivid electical storm!
Flintlock: Agreed! But without belaboring the point, Frimbo was a hard-headed, realistic Manhattan executive. He knew all too well the chapter and verse of why passenger trains in his day didn't pay and the many and varied reasons the railroad companies themselves contributed to that state of affairs. His essays consistently showed he was under no illusions about anything.
No worries. Amtrak's long distance trains aren't going away anytime soon.
243129 The preceding posts seem to support my opinion that LD trains should be related to tourist trains.
Since Amtrak, there have been about a dozen private LD tourist operations in the US. All have gone out of business, except that the one successful Canadian company, Rocky Mountaineer, has started a tour on ex-Rio Grande Denver/Moab. We will see how that goes.
Remember - the way Congress created Amtrak, they expected it to be DEAD in 5 years. The fact that Amtrak has made it past 50 years is indictative of Amtrak's refusal to die.
BaltACD...The fact that Amtrak has made it past 50 years is indictative of Amtrak's refusal to die.
As long as Congress doesn't pull the feeding tube.
NKP, your dome/lightning experience sounds awesome.
MidlandMike 243129 The preceding posts seem to support my opinion that LD trains should be related to tourist trains. Since Amtrak, there have been about a dozen private LD tourist operations in the US. All have gone out of business, except that the one successful Canadian company, Rocky Mountaineer, has started a tour on ex-Rio Grande Denver/Moab. We will see how that goes.
So doesn't that suggest that people who ride endpoint to endpoint on the CZ and EB are using a subsided cruise? The failure of private cruise trains is because charging actual cost plus turns folks away. If Amtrak charged just cost on those Western LD trains for sleeper class, there would be almost no first class passengers.
MidlandMike BaltACD ...The fact that Amtrak has made it past 50 years is indictative of Amtrak's refusal to die. As long as Congress doesn't pull the feeding tube.
BaltACD ...The fact that Amtrak has made it past 50 years is indictative of Amtrak's refusal to die.
Amtrak knows how to play politics.
And ahain, I believe losses could be cut greatly by full-service hotel-likie stationb restaurants with full home-and-business take-out and even delivery, and on-board catering just a small fraction of the take-out business. Mariott could do a great job.
Even at the height of the 'golden age' of passenger rail, most trains had the equivalent of separated first class and steerage on liners, usually implemented as coaches one side of the diner (which, remember, usually operated as a loss-leader) and Pullmans with strict access restrictions on the other.
Ed Ellis and others tried a logical less-expensive version of Joe's suggestion: add a couple of cars' worth of luxury experience on a scheduled basis to an 'ordinary' Amtrak train. This provides the cruise luxury even if 'the rest of the train's s a regional or providing emergency transportation between isolated 'flyover' destination pairs unserved by other mass transit.
To my knowledge every attempt at this has sooner or later gone under; even if it is on average profitable, any sufficient 'lean time' leads to the usual death spiral disasters... and extinction is forever. In my opinion you set up ways to subsidize this at lean times, perhaps set up analogous to the original Social Security plan...
The other half of this (and we had active threads about this very recently) is that there are many places Amtrak service could be improved at comparatively little or no cost. "Regime change" or mandatory re-education camp equivalents for surly employees are one good place; a managed version of food delivery services coordinated with actual station stops (or deliveries to stopped trains) is another. There is often a way to lower Amtrak's costs without cheapening or removing service, and a process very similar to the one Delta engaged in a couple of years ago could be set up for Amtrak to prioritize and test.
In a sense, the response to the pandemic has made bricks-and-mortar station restaurants much less necessary if they can't fully pay their own way locally. We had a discussion about 'ghost kitchens' a few years ago -- no reason why an Amtrak commissary couldn't provide such contract services for additional revenue, serve as an analogue to Lavista Equipment Services in supplying and maintaining satellite-location equipment expeditiously and at minimum expense, or otherwise de-leverage their high stranded cost and distance from any desirable or necessary resupply points.
That last paragraph is intriguing. Could you restate more cogently and with fewer obscure references?
BaltACDRemember - the way Congress created Amtrak, they expected it to be DEAD in 5 years.
The way I remember it....
Amtrak was a compromise between Nixon and the Congress. Congress was leaning towards full federal takeover of the nations railroads (full nationalization) and had that attitude through at least 1977-1978. Nixon just wanted to pull passenger trains out of the Class I's because all of them were complaining in unison that they were being bled to death by passenger trains and threatened more bankruptcies if not given some kind of relief by the Feds. It was a compromise, Congress got nationalization lite with just Passenger trains. Nixon got an organizational structure so Amtrak was partly private and in a future year subsidy could be zeroed out.
OvermodIn a sense, the response to the pandemic has made bricks-and-mortar station restaurants much less necessary if they can't fully pay their own way locally. We had a discussion about 'ghost kitchens' a few years ago -- no reason why an Amtrak commissary couldn't provide such contract services for additional revenue, serve as an analogue to Lavista Equipment Services in supplying and maintaining satellite-location equipment expeditiously and at minimum expense, or otherwise de-leverage their high stranded cost and distance from any desirable or necessary resupply points.
Sounds like your proposing to bring back the Santa Fe / Harvey House relationship. Which might be a good idea because those establishments would not be limited to selling to just train passengers but could also open to the local public and in that way could be profitable. With Amtrak schedules having so much padding. Would it really hurt to stop the train for 2-3 hours at meal time? Or maybe with technology all you would need is a 20-30 min stop and give the restaurant wait staff boarding ability to deliver their meals that were preordered prior to train arrival. Plan the LD train to just break mid run for lunch. Breakfest prior to boarding, Dinner would be the overnight stop where people detrain for the hotel.
LD trains do not need sleepers either, VIA Rails Skeena does not have a sleeper, the train pauses overnight and passengers as well as train crew find their own hotel in Prince Gorge..........then reboard the train the next day for the rest of the journey. You can plan that to coincide with the stop for dinner.
Overmod add a couple of cars' worth of luxury experience on a scheduled basis to an 'ordinary' Amtrak train. This provides the cruise luxury even if 'the rest of the train's s a regional or providing emergency transportation between isolated 'flyover' destination pairs unserved by other mass transit.
That is a great idea........for non-winter travel. What with the monumental delays incurred because of winter weather why bother running passenger trains over the Rockies and the Sierras?
CMStPnPSounds like your proposing to bring back the Santa Fe / Harvey House relationship. Which might be a good idea because those establishments would not be limited to selling to just train passengers but could also open to the local public and in that way could be profitable. With Amtrak schedules having so much padding. Would it really hurt to stop the train for 2-3 hours at meal time? Or maybe with technology all you would need is a 20-30 min stop and give the restaurant wait staff boarding ability to deliver their meals that were preordered prior to train arrival. Plan the LD train to just break mid run for lunch. Breakfest prior to boarding, Dinner would be the overnight stop where people detrain for the hotel.
This is exactly what DaveKlepper has been proposing for years on this forum.
I'm not sold on the idea, especially with the failure of so many restaurants over the past few years. The idea that a stand-alone restaurant at a train station would attract non-passengers as part of its business seems unlikely to me, and I doubt a restaurant that served only train passengers could remain in business.
The trains not running at night seem to be exactly what Charlie calls a land cruise. I seriously doubt the number of passengers for something like this is around. The people that need to get somewhere will fly, and the people that want a land cruise will be unlikely to spend a large amount of money to view Nebraska cornfields.
York1 John
charlie hebdo MidlandMike 243129 The preceding posts seem to support my opinion that LD trains should be related to tourist trains. Since Amtrak, there have been about a dozen private LD tourist operations in the US. All have gone out of business, except that the one successful Canadian company, Rocky Mountaineer, has started a tour on ex-Rio Grande Denver/Moab. We will see how that goes. So doesn't that suggest that people who ride endpoint to endpoint on the CZ and EB are using a subsided cruise? The failure of private cruise trains is because charging actual cost plus turns folks away. If Amtrak charged just cost on those Western LD trains for sleeper class, there would be almost no first class passengers.
The number of passengers on the private tour trains was so miniscule as compaired to Amtrak, that its obvious to me that ATK riders are taking the trains for many more reasons than a tour. That also confirms what I have learned from talking to other passengers. Also if all passengers had to pay the full costs, there might be no passenger trains of any length.
Seems if the new Harvey Houses suggested were to live off local business mainly and Amtrak would just be icing on their cake, then they could survive without Amtrak. SO they should already be there. They are not.
MidlandMike Also if all passengers had to pay the full costs, there might be no passenger trains of any length.
What's the "full cost" of freight trains?
Examples: In Cleveland, a switch was installed for about $1m so the Capitol Limited could access the old New York Central tracks and get to the station and then to Chicago. The rest of the day freight trains get to use the switch, which Amtrak paid for. It's a busy switch.
In nearby Ravenna, O., local money is helping to pay for a W&LE subsidiary to build a spur to a new factory.
I don't know for a fact, but I'd be surprised if the new NS bridge over the Genesee River in Letchworth State Park was funded 100% by railroad money.
Taxpayers subsidized about 20% of the cost of re-routing the tracks so the Libby Dam could be built in Montana (about 1975).
I read about railroads getting all kinds of help from local governments, often in the form of tax abatements, or subsidies to install crossing gates and lights, etc. The companies also are generally exempt from paying sales and use tax on locomotives and freight cars.
Trying to figure out the "true cost" of operating trains, be they passenger or freight, is rather like peeling an onion or an artichoke. There are many layers of complexity. The days of railroad companies paying 100% of their own costs and improvements are over.
MidlandMikeAlso if all passengers had to pay the full costs, there might be no passenger trains of any length.
In terms of covering above rails cost, it varies depending on segment: prior to Covid, HSR in NEC had a profit; regional service broke even; State-supported corridors a loss; LD service a large loss overall, with sleeper class LD a huge loss, requiring the biggest subsidy per passenger.
York1The idea that a stand-alone restaurant at a train station would attract non-passengers as part of its business seems unlikely to me, and I doubt a restaurant that served only train passengers could remain in business.
I think that is a proven concept actually. KC Union Station brings in most of it's restaurant patrons locally vs from the trains. A number of smaller stations that have been sold in Texas to private individuals do the same. One former Milwaukee Road Station in Oconomowoc, WI does an excellent business as a restaurant. So does the former C&NW stations in Green Bay, WI as well as Waukesha, WI. I am pretty sure the Food Courts at Union Station in Chicago as well as the to be food court in Chicago Union Station pull in folks from off the street that are not traveling on Amtrak. The station restaurant in Milwaukee's Depot pulls in locals off the street........though in Milwaukee's case I believe it operates at a loss because of location but it is a well known multi-location in Milwaukee establishment so people know they serve good food.
Milwaukee's current depot is too small to handle their long-term plans of expanded rail service. They gave it a facelift not too long ago but Milwaukee needs a larger depot if it is to serve more trains and passengers. The waiting room especially is tiny if you have multiple trains at once in the station. Currently with the timetable they do OK because that situation is rare and usually there is only one train in the station at a time but hearing WisDOT talk about how great it is Milwaukee has multiple tracks.......it's great until you use them simultaneously.
EnzoampsSeems if the new Harvey Houses suggested were to live off local business mainly and Amtrak would just be icing on their cake, then they could survive without Amtrak. SO they should already be there. They are not.
In fact they are already there as I mentioned in my post above. I am beginning to wonder about the vision of some of the Forum Posters here. In fact one of the eating establishments in KC Union Station is named Harvey's.......gee I wonder where they got that name from? Where you see them NOT THERE, is when the Station Location does not merit enough foot traffic or is in a bad neighborhood or will not lease to restaurants. Which underlines a point I made in an earlier thread that Amtrak needs to reposition some of it's Depots to reflect changing area demographics over the last 100 years.............has Amtrak done so on a Nationwide basis? I think that is why you see most of the passengers at Mitchell Field International Airport in Milwaukee getting off at that station to get into their cars vs onto a plane.......which was not the intent of that station and I do find a little comical that Amtrak Management and WisDOT are kind of oblivious to where the traffic is actually going.
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