Came here for the Matt Dillon flamewar. Disappointed.
The piano! I once found myself in a train car in the middle of the night that had nothing in it but an upright piano. Of course I played it (not that well). I thought to myself, “I’ll probably never get to do this again.”
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I have not ridden in decades, but it used to be assigned common tables in the dining car, which was only open for meal seatings. You got seated with other passengers at a table, ate a meal and chatted with them and then left. It was usually pretty enjoyable. Met some interesting people that way.
In the U.S. these were called open sections. Amtrak never ran any but VIA Rail Canada still runs some. http://destinationmike.blogspot.com/2012/04/via-rail-sleeper-plus-class-berths.html Amtrak did inherit a number of Slumbercoaches which it ran for a while but didn’t replace them when they wore out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slumbercoach
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Eat the First Class!
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By Amtrak’s day rail travel in the US was well on the decline, but there were thousands of Pullman cars in operation in the early 20th century.
These are called couchettes on European trains. I won’t take one if I’m travelling alone, but they’re great if your family can take all 4 bunks, or 3 bunks but buy 4 tickets…This only works if the couchette cars aren’t segregated by sex.
With those pods you can draw your curtain and have a bit of privacy.
Just like the “open-section accommodations” Pullman introduced in the 19th century.
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You’d be wrong. Because ‘young people’ from the 50’s didn’t have the excess income to do any travel without mom or dad. Certainly not jet-set travel.
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Complaining about the youth, an age old sport:
And they are high-minded; for they have yet not been humbled by the course of life, but are unexperienced in peremptory circumstances: again, high-mindedness is the deeming one’s self worthy of much
Aristotle’s Rhetoric, 4th century BCE
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Millennial here. I absolutely loved the Pacific Coast Starlight when I took it 2 years ago from Seattle to LA.
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Via text.
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In Russia they are called platskartny.
Millennial here, of the Generation Y wing (Y & Z are vastly different, why are they even in the same category? Oh, right, an easier catch-all to disparage).
Love trains, wish the western hemisphere were at parity with the eastern hemisphere in terms of service. Here’s to continued dreaming.
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I’m a millennial that paid good money to eat in that car on a long haul trip from LAX-HOS, but that’s neither here nor there. The food wasn’t really all that good, even if it was made to order.
On the other hand, the Pullman car from Chicago to West Lafayette, IN was fantastic. It’s possible to make it good, but Amtrak doesn’t.
Which is named after the time Paul McCartney visited Plattsburg, NY, in 1964.
I think the gatherings of characters in the types of murder mysteries you’re thinking of tend to happen in the parlor car/lounge car more often than in the dining car.
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I wonder whether you’re thinking specifically of the dining car menu situation on the Lake Shore Limited, the Capitol Limited, the Cardinal, and/or the City of New Orleans, all of which have been marred by a diminished dining car experience at one time or another in recent years without that experience being totally removed. Most other overnight trains–the Silver Meteor, the Crescent, the Empire Builder, the California Zephyr, the Southwest Chief, the Texas Eagle, the Sunset Limited, and the Coast Starlight–have kept the dining car experience largely intact up to now (September 28, 2019).
Also, is this impression you have of Amtrak’s dining cars based on personal experience, or just on the “research” you mention having done? You can’t always trust what you read about Amtrak on the Internet or in the news media, or hear from people in conversation: a lot of it is wildly inaccurate, exaggerated, and overemotional.
It’s the same now, on all of Amtrak’s trains where some semblance of normal dining car service has been retained.
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