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» RAILforum » Passenger Trains » Amtrak » Expanded (and newly edited) Report of a Brief Overnight Ride

   
Author Topic: Expanded (and newly edited) Report of a Brief Overnight Ride
notelvis
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We had a family event (on my wife's side) in Florida this Memorial Day weekend which required my presence only part-time.

As a result, I was able to do a 'quick overnight' Amtrak trip departing Winter Park Sunday afternoon on #98, the Silver Meteor. I rode overnight to Baltimore Penn Station, caught the light rail to BWI, and flew home on Memorial Day.

There is much construction going on at the Winter Park station area due to the coming of Sunrail. One job that is completed now - the small middle platform has been removed and the outer track has been moved nearer the existing station. New platforms are under construction 'across the tracks' where the outer track used to be. This new platform seems to be complete in the block north of the existing station but seems to be waiting for inlaid brick across the tracks from the station.

South of the existing station the platform roof has been removed and new platforms are under construction. Some trees (but not as many as one might expect) have been removed and the foundation has been poured for a new Amtrak station building. Renderings of the new station are posted and while it looks very attractive, it does not appear that the new station is going to be any larger than the existing station. This was somewhat of a surprise.

It was also a surprise (this one pleasant) that much of this construction is hardly evident from the park on the east side of the railroad tracks.

Even on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, there was some signal work going on between Winter Park and Sanford. This work delayed the southbound Silver Meteor by an hour beyond the 30 minutes it was already running late. The northbound Silver Meteor, on-time as far as Orlando, lost an hour through the work zone as well. It was not clear to me whether the signal work was 'part of the plan' or if it was some unforseen problem which the guys in hard hats were trying to correct. I suspect the latter. With schedule padding, the train was not even thirty minutes late into Washington, DC and, at most, only ten minutes late at Baltimore.

Some reactions - The original Viewliner Sleepers are becoming threadbare. The help which is on the way for them cannot arrive soon enough. Things worked but there were rattles from the compartment and buzzing from the various fixtures which suggested something less than a first class experience.

My roomette was oriented in such a way that I could either sleep with my head nearer the front of the train or with my head by the toilet. I went with head forward even though I normally do not sleep as well that direction.

I've concluded that I prefer the superliner roomettes...... either upstairs or down..... simply because I prefer not having the toilet in the room with me. If I ever used the upper berth (which I do not), I would likely think differently. I also would not book a roomette if I were traveling with another adult.

Of course I 'really' most liked the roomettes in the old 10 & 6 Heritage fleet sleeping cars. Think 'thicker bedding' here.

The train was pretty nearly full with three sleepers and five coaches. The coach load benefitted from a girl scout troop boarding in Jessup, GA.

I was hoping for the prototype Viewliner Diner but was not disappointed to instead get one of the remaining Heritage Fleet Veterans. The dining car staff was not unpleasant though they could have been a little more efficient. I wasn't able to determine whether one of the servers was brand new or if it was the first time this dining car crew had worked together. What needed to be done got done but it seemed like at times the youngest server had no clue as to what should happen next.

There were a couple or three things I had never seen done before which this dining car crew did - 1st, at lunch (where I just made 'last call') the LSA in the diner also took our dinner reservation but distributed no little slips. 2nd, the LSA asked us if we wanted to have an alcoholic beverage with dinner and took prepaid orders from those who said yes BECAUSE it was Sunday and the Blue Laws prevented her from selling alcohol with dinner as we would be in Georgia and then the Carolinas.

(an aside - liquor laws in North Carolina are far less restrictive then they were a generation ago. Alcohol sales are allowed after noon on Sunday for at least 30 years..... first I've heard of alcohol not being available for Sunday dinner on an Amtrak diner in North Carolina...... and unless I'm mistaken it's business as usual in the cafe car on the southbound Carolinian even on Sundays.....)

Finally - the dining car staff made it a point of providing receipts to every patron..... even those of us in sleeper..... showing what the cost of our meal would have been had we been paying for it outright.

Why is this? Are they hoping to increase the amount of their tips (and I generally tip at 15% of what my check would have been......a little more for exceptional service) by making it clear what our bills 'would have been'? Are they providing us with a tool for expense account travelers to use in preparing their tax returns? Why would we suddenly need our receipt for a dinner that was paid for as part of the accommodation charge when we did not before?

But I digress - the trip was 'more positive than negative' but until some stunning new equipment arrives and needs to be tried out, I think I've seen all the pine trees (and kudzu) along the former ACL route to/from Florida that I can handle going forward.

--------------------
David Pressley

Advocating for passenger trains since 1973!

Climbing toward 5,000 posts like the Southwest Chief ascending Raton Pass. Cautiously, not nearly as fast as in the old days, and hoping to avoid premature reroutes.

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smitty195
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Thanks for the report. Every person who has ridden in a Viewliner Sleeper lately has reported back the same thing---that they are desperately in need of an overhaul. I wonder if Amtrak has plans to do this once the new cars arrive? If my recollection is correct, I don't think those cars have ever been in for a "major" refurb since the day they were put in service ("major" meaning like they did with the Superliners).

I'm a little bit confused on the alcohol thing that you described--can you clarify that? If alcohol can not be sold on a certain date/time, yet they were selling it in advance, then how does that work? Do they serve your alcohol with the meal anyway since you're technically not buying it---you bought it earlier in the day? Is that what they're trying to accomplish there? I wonder what the origin is of these laws? I live and grew up on the west coast in California, and we have no such laws so it seems really goofy to me.

Interesting about the receipt....I wonder if this is strictly an internal auditing thing or if they indeed are trying to get sleeper passengers to tip appropriately.

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notelvis
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Smitty -

I have heard - assuming that the funding holds out - that as the new Viewliner sleepers begin entering the fleet, the original ones will cycle through Beech Grove for a makeover which will include reducing the number of revenue roomettes from 12 to 10..... this because the toilets will be coming out of the individual roomettes to be replaced by public toilets where a pair of roomettes once were. The toilets in the bedrooms will remain. In this way, the revenue space in the existing Viewliners will eventually match that in the new ones.

Recently on another forum I read a report of a dining car crew on the Texas Eagle actually making PA announcements that it was appropriate for even passengers receiving complimentary meals to tip...... and then followed through with shoddy service. That is why my initial thought was that perhaps they were trying to loosen the tip coin purses a bit...... though it might be a new internal auditing thing.... perhaps brought about by an agency constantly under pressure to explain and reduce it's meal service expenses.

As for the alcohol thing - YES. The dining car wait staff happily served alcohol at dinner to any passenger who had paid for their beverage order at lunch while the train was still in Florida.

I had never witnessed this before and the LSA explained that this was in order to reduce complaints from passengers when she could not 'sell' alcohol to them at dinner.

Having grown up in the south, I'm not unaccustomed to 'blue laws' restricting the sale of alcoholic beverages on Sunday. It's always been pretty patchwork with different rules in different states - even from county to county within a state for that matter*. Things have changed over the years so I do not know what actually is or is not permitted state-by-state here in 2013. I do know that off the train after Sunday noon in North Carolina that anything goes. On Amtrak, who knows..... just that on this past Sunday the diner on 98 was 'dry' once the train passed through Folkston, GA...... unless you had a prepaid drink order.

First time I have ever experienced this. But then I don't think I've ever been on #98 on a Sunday before so I don't know if this has been standing Amtrak policy for some time, if it is something 'new', or if it is something that this dining car crew went rogue on and figured out for themselves. I do suppose that a well-oiled dinner patron is likely a better tipper.

* A for-instance - in the 1980's in North Carolina beer and wine sales ended at midnight Saturday (to be exact, 12:01am) and could not be sold again until after 2:00pm on Sunday. (I worked in a convienence store for a time while in college.) For a few years that 'start-time' was 1:00pm during the warmer months but moved back to 2:00pm each year with the fall time change. There were no 'mixed drink' sales allowed then because North carolina had not yet passed 'liquor-by-the-drink'.

Meanwhile, 15 miles from my house in Tennessee, mixed drinks were available in restaurants and roadhouses cluttered hard by the statelines of two-lane mountain roads....... except on Sunday where no alcohol sales of any kind were permitted.

Again, things are different and somewhat more liberal across the south now...... attracting conventions is big business and no one wanted a little thing like Blue Laws to get in the way of that. As far as I can tell we're no further down the road to perdition as a result.

--------------------
David Pressley

Advocating for passenger trains since 1973!

Climbing toward 5,000 posts like the Southwest Chief ascending Raton Pass. Cautiously, not nearly as fast as in the old days, and hoping to avoid premature reroutes.

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notelvis
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A short and totally unrelated 1980's convienence store story - One Saturday evening I legally sold beer and wine to a young woman ringing the sale precisely at midnight.

A one minute difference either direction would have made the sale illegal. 12:01am would have clearly been on a Sunday. 11:59pm would have been a minute before the young woman turned 21.

--------------------
David Pressley

Advocating for passenger trains since 1973!

Climbing toward 5,000 posts like the Southwest Chief ascending Raton Pass. Cautiously, not nearly as fast as in the old days, and hoping to avoid premature reroutes.

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RRRICH
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Thanks for the trip report, David!! I ran into the alcohol thing last summer on my trip on #98 from WPK to WAS on a Sunday. I was eating dinner in Georgia (before Savannah, but could not get alcohol because of the SOUTH CAROLINA blue laws, yet we weren't even in SC yet!!
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notelvis
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Thanks for that confirmation Rich. I'm guessing that on your trip they were not taking 'preorders'?

In looking back, with one exception where my wife and I were riding #98 (in coach) and getting off in Savannah, all of my previous northbound Amtrak trips out of Florida have been on the Silver Star where dinner is served before the train leaves Jacksonville.

On that earlier #98 trip....... which was on a Sunday..... knowing that we were going coach, we actually had a big lunch at the Olive Garden in Winter Park BEFORE getting on the train and had a somewhat smaller dinner in Savannah after we arrived.

--------------------
David Pressley

Advocating for passenger trains since 1973!

Climbing toward 5,000 posts like the Southwest Chief ascending Raton Pass. Cautiously, not nearly as fast as in the old days, and hoping to avoid premature reroutes.

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RRRICH
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I seem to recall that back in the 1970's or 1980's when I first began riding AMTRAK, there were some kind of funny "blue laws" in Kansas, and I couldn't order a beer ANYWHERE in Kansas on ANY DAY on the SW Chief. Can anyone confirm that?
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Henry Kisor
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David, in Illinois a person legally reaches a birthday on the day BEFORE that birthday. This means that if you are one day short of 21 you can get your first legal drink.

Back in 1961 on the eve of my 21st birthday I informed a bartender of this interesting fact and asked him to serve me an Old Style.

He threw me out.

It might have been because I ordered an Old Style. Today I would throw me out just for that reason.

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TwinStarRocket
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Rich, I remember dry Kansas on the Chief as well. The Amtrak explanation I heard was that Kansas had "dry counties" and it was too complicated to figure out when it was legal.

In those days the Chief ran so fast through Kansas that you might cover 3 counties per beer.

Henry, I too once drank Old Style, -fine Viking swill in returnable bottles that apparently survived many raids.

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notelvis
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Ha ha ha -

Henry, perhaps it was because prospective writers and aspiring attorneys were unwelcome in that establishment and the barkeep pegged you as one or the other!

--------------------
David Pressley

Advocating for passenger trains since 1973!

Climbing toward 5,000 posts like the Southwest Chief ascending Raton Pass. Cautiously, not nearly as fast as in the old days, and hoping to avoid premature reroutes.

Posts: 4203 | From: Western North Carolina | Registered: Feb 2004  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Geoff Mayo
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Possible pint of interest: in the UK you could buy a drink on a train even when the stores/bars were not allowed to (I think alcohol could be served 11am-11pm Mo-Sa but the laws are more relaxed now). Bloody Mary for breakfast anyone?

--------------------
Geoff M.

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palmland
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In our county in SC, Sunday beer/wine sales allowed just last year and curfew until 1:30Pm on local stores for non essential stuff was also lifted. Seems many think time for religion more important than retail.
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