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New Amtrak Dining Car Menus: Yum!
Monday, December 17, 2007
As we reported in last week’s Hotline, Amtrak has improved the experience for long-distance train passengers with new, expanded, and varied dining car menus. Last Thursday, the day after they were launched, I had the opportunity to taste the improvements for myself while I rode Silver Star train 91 from Washington, DC to Miami. Other observers online have posted information about the menu offerings and their own experiences. Now, enjoy the photos I took of some of the new selections (dinner, breakfast, and lunch, respectively):
Though Cornish Game Hen has replaced Roast Chicken at dinner, on day two of the new menu chicken was still being served (presumably to use up commissary supplies). The chicken was perfectly seasoned. The short-grain saffron rice was a welcome departure from the usual rice pilaf. The beans, while fresh, were bland and could have used seasoning.
The Tilapia was served with a tomato sauce that my companion said made all the difference with the already-tender fish. The garlic mashed potatoes were also rich and creamy. Notably, she was not charged for a second can of soda.
The vegetable omelette with olives and red peppers was satisfactory (especially as pre-prepared egg dishes go), and the new chicken apple sausage was extremely tender and juicy. While grits are now available again, I still enjoy the shredded potatoes.
Belgian waffle with powdered sugar was the breakfast special on this trip. Alas, table syrup remains the only available topping, with no fruit toppings as one might expect.
The Greek salad with warm grilled chicken was fresh and flavorful. Amtrak has really improved its salad offerings; even the side salads are now based in spinach and dark lettuces, not wilted pieces of iceberg lettuce.
The Key Lime Pie with graham cracker crust has not changed much, but is still a fine product.
The new Red Velvet Cake by Sweet Street is of very high quality, especially with the richness of the cream cheese frosting, the moistness of the cake, and the apparent lack of chemical additives. This is probably one of the best desserts Amtrak has offered, and I understand it is one of many in rotation right now.
Clearly, Amtrak has listened to its passengers’ demands for better dining options (even while reduced staffing means plastic plates and cups continue to prevail on most routes). If Amtrak’s critics are so concerned about the company operating in a business-like manner, they should praise Amtrak for being market-responsive and instituting new service offerings that can drive revenue increases and win favor with the traveling public.
—Matthew Melzer
Posted by NARP
Tags: amtrak, food service, silver star,Report on Tampa National Train Day
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
NARP Vice President Robert Stewart reports that the entirely grassroots-organized event at Union Station in Tampa, FL was a great success. He writes:
It was a wonderful day and one of the highlights was the Amtrak coach for touring. This [Amfleet II] car and [P42] engine were in fantastic shape and [Amtrak’s] staff was wonderful with the visitors. As a matter of fact everyone there from Amtrak was a big help and had a great attitude. They were excited about the special day and being able to show off one of the passenger cars and engine.
We had 600-800 people during the exhibition time. Besides the Amtrak coach we had various model railroad layouts, operation lifesaver display, other displays, a guitarist and 3 gals that sang and pretended to be the Andrews Sisters from the 1940’s. We also cut a cake.
CSX did a good job of getting both [Silver Star trains] 91 and 92 on time into Tampa. Between both trains we were able to greet over 400 passengers.
The mayor of Tampa could not make it but she sent Elaine McCloud, Transit Manager, who read a proclamation from the city for National Train Day. Radio Disney did a live on site broadcast from the station.
Here are some photos he sent, along with captions (NARP Board Member Jackson McQuigg also posted a set of photos on Flickr):
Inside Tampa Union Station.
The Andrews Sisters performing on stage.
A nice looking Amtrak engine and coach. The inside was in immaculate condition.
E.M. Jones, Judy Loving, Ray Nunes, Israel Stallings, and Rick Hurst are all ready to greet the guests of National Train Day. (missing from the photo was Tom Fortune and Norma Johnson who were working elsewhere).
Three guys who worked very hard to make this a successful day: Steve Sayles (President of FCRP), Jason Sanford (VP of FCRP), and Jackson McQuigg, (Secretary of FCRP and NARP Board Member).
—Matthew Melzer
Posted by NARP
Tags: amtrak, national train day, silver star, tampa union station,A Tale of the Georgia Mixed
Monday, August 11, 2008
While this might be a bit more nostalgia than rail advocacy, it won’t hurt for our younger fighters to learn what America once had and might indeed need again.
Back in the ‘80s, the Amtrak Timetable still had a section of connecting or other services. This once was where the Southern Railway’s Crescent, Piedmont, Asheville and Lynchburg services, the Rock Island’s Peoria and Quad Cities Rockets and D & RGW Western services resided.
Knowing that it would likely soon disappear, I wanted to ride the Georgia Mixed from Augusta through Social Circle to Atlanta.
I wish I had time and money to have ridden the other services—Macon-Camack, Barnett-Washington, Athens-Union Point—but life moves on.
It seems the Georgia Railroad received a tax break if they maintained passenger service, so they hauled a boarded up passenger car behind their freights and allowed the public to buy tickets. In practice, I learned, you were offered the opportunity to ride in the caboose instead of the stifling or freezing coach.
The week before this odyssey, I called the Georgia Railroad to see how it worked I was politely told in a classic southern dialect that I was welcome to come down, but to be aware that the trains ran on a “leisurely” schedule. For instance, while the schedule called for an 8 or 8:30 departure, it was 11 AM And “We ain’t left yet!”
I booked a seat on the Silver Star to Columbia, wandered about town and departed on a Greyhound to Augusta in the wee hours of the morning.
Arriving early, I found a cab and went to Harrisonville Yard of the GA RR.
The departure being delayed as predicted, I was advised to take some nourishment along.
I called another cab, went to a 7-Eleven and bought a cooler, ice, Cokes and snacks.
Back at the yard, I was invited to the caboose and never even looked into the decrepit passenger car with unpainted plywood panels instead of window glass.
We finally got under way with 4 locomotives that I never saw because we had 133 cars.
I soon learned the powerful blows of slack runout and other things the professional railroader copes with daily.
We set out and picked up cars along the way.
I think it was at Social Circle, but it might have been one of the above mentioned points, that my conductor and guide led me to an old wooden- floored country store where we bought apples, bananas and a sandwich to go.
At 10 PM or so, we arrived at Decatur, GA and I was informed that the crew had “died” on the hours of service rule.
I was left with the whole train under my “command” while we awaited a taxi to bring the new crew and my conductor and the voices I had become used to by radio went their ways.
The new conductor boarded and we were soon underway to Atlanta.
As we approached Hulsey Yard, the new conductor asked me where I was going, the hour now being 11 PM or so.
I replied that I had a hotel room and wanted to get near MARTA.
He said he did not have a radio, but that we were coming near a parallel MARTA line and station.
He asked if I had ever jumped off a moving train as he had no way to signal the engineer.
I replied that I had (I will reveal that tale in a subsequent article and the danger, caveats and apologies to rail advocacy to go with it).
I donated my cooler to the railroad crews, handed my bag to my new conductor and, in my safest and most professional form, followed his detraining with the correct foot first that would throw one away from the train in case of tripping.
It was very dark. I was told I had done the jump like a professional and that I was always welcome to come back and buy a ticket on the Georgia Mixed!
He directed me to an iron walkway over the Georgia yard to the MARTA station.
Alas, the service soon went away and the only remnant left are the lyrics to a great Hank Williams tune: “They took me off the Georgia Main and locked to a ball and chain…”
—Jim Churchill
NARP Vice President
Posted by NARP
Tags: amtrak, churchill, georgia mixed, georgia railroad, greyhound, marta, mixed trains, silver star,New York Times looks at the pleasure of long-distance train travel
Monday, December 19, 2011
 |
| The Silver Star in Winter Park, FL [Image: Davisdrives] |
The New York Times featured a nice piece by Joe Sharkey in the Business Section concerning the lost art of the extended business trip. In his “On a Long Train Trip, Rare Pleasures Return,”, Mr. Sharkey began his trip on Amtrak’s Silver Star with trepidation, wondering whether the 26 hour trip from Tampa, Florida to New York City would be an excursion or an ordeal:
Before boarding, I was skeptical about this adventure, but I have to report that the trip was more civilized than air travel and worth it this one time. The dining car menus offer a good range of selections. Communal dining — that is, you’re seated at a small table with strangers — was a nice change from the general social alienation of air travel.
Early the next morning, incidentally, I was astonished when the sleeper car’s affable porter, Thomas Clemo, tapped on my door to deliver The New York Times, one in a bundle that had been picked up at a stop in North Carolina.
The writer concludes that he will most likely save train travel for business trips under 500 miles—but conceded that time spent sleeping isn’t really time lost, and arriving in downtown Manhattan was a “significant convenience.”
Unfortunately, Mr. Sharkey is a little too sanguine about the funding shortfalls facing intercity passenger trains, merely noting that the Congressional budget in the coming year is too tight to allow for any real expansion of service and that the High-Speed & Intercity Passenger Rail Program has become politicized. One would hope that a recent convert to the convenience and comfort of train travel would spend a little more time asking why government spending is a tiny fraction of what is directed to modes like highways and airports.
The last sentence almost makes up for this oversight, however, perfectly capturing what is so special about overnight train travel;
I slept well in my bunk with the gentle sway of the car. My ear never heard the mournful wail that the sad ballads claim for a train whistle. Instead, I heard soft chords that reminded me more of Duke Ellington’s rhythms as the Silver Star sped up the coast through the dark.
Posted by NARP
Tags: business travel, florida, joe sharkey, long-distance trains, manhattan, new york times, silver star, tampa,©2010 National Association of Railroad Passengers | » NARP website
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