Everytime you see a ‘Millennials kill x’ claim, you can switch out ‘millennials’ for ‘capitalism’ and get a far more honest answer. It’s probably too accurate for people who don’t want to admit that capitalism is killing itself with no help from anyone else.
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Yes. I use it regularly to get from that region to Québec, the Pacific Northwest, Southern California, and various states in the southeast. It’s much easier than driving. It also helps me reach cruise ports, which is helpful in avoiding flying.
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I for one am getting really tired of being blamed for shit en masse I didn’t do.
I think I won’t bother ever riding an Amtrak again.
For the record, I love trains, and really wanted to try the modern Orient Express, due to David Suchet
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The complacency and narcissism of GenX have done their damage
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No, dining is about hospitality. If you don’t create an environment and feel that encourages dining together with people you don’t know, it’s probably not going to work. If I were at Amtrak I would keep the dining cars and work with it’s dna. It’s a public transport company so this is probably unlikely.
Off train I would like an Automat.
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I suspect that these dining car employees are unionized. Killing the dining car takes care of that, and opens things up to bring in outside vendors handling food service and providing their own logistics. ViaRail in Canada is in the process of doing this very thing, and for some good reasons unrelated to union-busting, like the ability to handle credit cards electronically, a food partner that can re-supply along the route, etc.
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What killed it was when they stopped cooking on the train in the 90s in favor of airline-style meal delivery.
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Meh, I’ve got things to do. 
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That’s great, but how do you find the time? It sounds like you’re regularly taking 4-5 day round trip train journeys. I’m lucky to get a week off work at a time. The travel time alone would eat up nearly all my vacation.
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This is the captain obvious elephant in the room, fiddling with the dining experience is pretty irrelevant to the popularity of long distance train travel in the US when what you’re facing is that it takes two days to make a 4 hour plane ride. It would be hard for me to come up with a list of amenities luxurious and long enough to persuade me to pick that option.
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in 91 i took a trip from denver to dallas, dallas to indianapolis, and then indianapolis to denver over a period of two weeks. it was very enjoyable and the dining car experience was mostly a lot of fun. there was one occasion when it became very ugly. two other gentlemen and myself had been seated when a 4th was added to our table. he appeared to be in his late 70s or early 80s, he had pins from every named train that had existed in his lifetime, and he was nearly blind. after he got his meal and started eating he began an extended rant execrating the minority employees of amtrak who had destroyed the experience of riding on a train. he went on and on in a loud voice the rest of the meal. i got out of there as fast as i possibly could and apologized to every employee in the dining car for having the bad luck to be seated with that guy. the took it well and told me that they had seen, and heard, him on many travels he had made and they certainly didn’t hold me responsible for him.
i only had one more meal in the dining car, i was on my way back to denver at that point, but i looked carefully down the halls for any sign of that guy before i went in.
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I worked for one company with a generous PTO policy (pools of days). Still it took about six months worth of planning and training for a six-week vacation. I had to agree to call my team once a week, which was a bit of a pain. That was a combination of train and cruises, though, and my longest paid vacation. Working contract is easier, so trips can be taken between gigs.
Going to CA takes three days, so that can be covered in a long weekend. During other trips, I sometimes worked from the train. When I did that, my job was already set up for telecommuting. The connectivity was good except in a few mountain passes. That helped me to check email and attend conference calls on trips from DE to AZ.
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You can have a good experience or a not-so-good one. The last cruise I was on was a while ago, and we met some nice, interesting people at dinner. But one night we were seated with a guy who asked where we were from, and then opined that California would be a nice place, if weren’t for “all of them beaners.” That was a bit of an awkward meal. (We didn’t agree, but we didn’t want an argument, either).
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The reality is that Amtrak is finally paying attention to the long standing Congressional mandate to make dining service pay for itself. But even in the golden era of railroad travel dining service didn’t do that.
One possible solution is to make the dining service into a concession. However, union contracts don’t allow this.
Another possible solution is to pick up the meals from restaurants and caterers along the way. When running on freight railroad tracks the trains schedules are so erratic as to make this very difficult.
Sigh.
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Uhm… perhaps the food ain’t the reason why people aren’t riding so much anymore…
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True. I’ve been lucky to have more nice dinner companions than those whose questions are thinly-veiled versions of “What are you doing here?” I make a habit of adopting a travel persona and giving entertaining answers to the usual getting to know you Q&A, though. It seems unlikely that I’ll ever cross paths with those folks again, and adds a bit more fun to the journey.
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Hmmm… Seems to be discussions of different kinds of dining cars. If you are on a long haul train with sleepers the dining car is great. You can make a time approximate reservation, there are nice plates/tablesettings, the menu has great options (grilled trout, steak, etc.), wine options, great service. Yes, the tables seat 4 so if you are one person or a couple you will have to share. Which is a fun, pleasant way to meet people in a comfortable environment with beatiful changing views.
I don’t get people who take the train and then complain about everything intrinsic to train travel (It took so long! Expensive!). If you want a cramped, dehumanizing travel experience take a plane. You can be treated like crap for bargain prices.
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Last time I took Amtrak, I spent nearly ten hours on the goddamn train. When I went to get something to eat, I stood in line with drunk douchebags (at least one of whom hit on me relentlessly) for the opportunity to get a stale hotdog or cold ham and cheese sub. I got out of that line and just skipped dinner.
If “millennials”* killed the Amtrak dining car, good. It’s about time for it to go.
*people who are damn near forty yet who are still being infantilized
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Well, one of his more spectacular failures shares a history with Amtrack
In the mid-1970s, Trump obtained options to develop three of the choicest assets of the bankrupt Penn Central Railroad
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Sounds to me like he did a great job of destroying the experience in his own right.
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