Passenger Trains > The Daily Advisory with LSL & CL Food Service Details

New Food Service on Lake Shore Limited and Capitol Limited Trains Effective June 1, 2018

April 19, 2018

Amtrak will offer contemporary, fresh dining choices for sleeping car customers onboard its Capitol Limited and Lake Shore Limited trains, starting June 1. On-board meal preparation will be replaced with a small variety of quality, fresh and ready-to-serve boxed meals. The service model for both routes will include an onboard food & beverage staff of two (2) LSAs using two (2) food service cars, one (1) LSA in each car.

In the initial phase of the presentation, which is subject to refinement as we move forward, sleeping car customers can continue to be served in their Bedrooms or Roomettes or use a private area aboard these trains when they choose from the following entrees, as examples:

Lunch & Dinner: Chilled beef tenderloin, Vegan wrap, Chicken Caesar salad, Turkey club
Breakfast: Assorted breakfast breads with butter, cream cheese and strawberry jam; Greek yogurt and sliced seasonal fresh fruit plate

This change will contribute to improved financial performance and more contemporary service delivery on these overnight routes between the East Coast and Chicago at an estimated annual savings of $3.4M across both routes, some of which will be reinvested in the product.

Program Details:
During the summer on the Capitol Limited and Lake Shore Limited,

The Capitol Limited will operate with 2 coach cars, 1 baggage coach, 2 sleepers, 1 sleeper lounge, 1 sightseer café/lounge (Superliner I or II), 1 transition dorm, & 1 baggage car.

The Lake Shore Limited will operate with 6 coaches, 2 baggage cars, 3 sleepers, 1 sleeper lounge (new CAF car) and 1 café/lounge car (Amfleet I split club). The café/lounge includes 18 business class seats and the standard Amfleet Café module and 24 booth seats.
After boarding, sleeper attendants will ask passengers to select a preferred time for in room dining. Reservations will continue to be available in frequent intervals consistent with today’s standards
Sleeper car passengers who do not wish to dine in their room will have the option to dine at available seating in the sleeper lounge. Sleeper passengers will have exclusive access to tables in sleeper lounge. Seating will be on a first come basis and there will be no at-table dining service.
Sleeper and business class customers will also be offered unlimited soft beverages, 1 complimentary serving of beer, wine or a mixed-drink and an amenity kit.
Meal service continues to be included as part of the sleeping car accommodation charge.
These meals may be available for purchase by business and coach customers on a limited basis.
The existing café menu will continue to be available to all passengers through the café/lounge.
Breakout of service by class is below.

Sleeper Class
Food: Fresh ready-to-serve and pre-packaged meals
Beverages: 1 Alcoholic beverage and unlimited soft beverage
Other Amenities: 1 Complimentary amenity kit.

Business Class (Lake Shore Limited)
Food: A la carte purchases from Café/Lounge menu
Beverages: 1 Alcoholic beverage and unlimited soft beverage
Other amenities: 1 Complimentary amenity kit.

Coach Class
Food: A la carte purchases from Café/Lounge menu
Beverages: A la carte purchases from Café/Lounge menu

Note: Pre-packaged meals may be available for purchase by business and coach customers on a limited basis.

Q: What is the time frame of the program?

The first phase of the program will begin June 1.

Q: Will meal service hours remain the same?

Yes, meal service will continue to be provided during normal hours.
Breakfast 6:30 am - 10 am
Lunch 11:30 am - 3 pm
Dinner 5 pm - 9:30 pm

The attendant in the Sleeping Car Lounge will be on duty from 6:30 am to 10pm with the exception of allotted breaks.
The Sleeping car Lounge will be available for passenger use for the duration of the journey.
Q: What are the anticipated benefits of the program?

The revamped meal offerings will be a more sustainable approach for F&B meal items producing less waste and providing a more contemporary food service model and product (with in room service) for our premium passengers. In future phases, our customers will be able to pre-order/pre-select meal options prior to departure. The anticipated cost savings are an annualized $3 million reduction in operating costs on these two routes. Some of which, will be reinvested in the product.

Q: If passengers currently holding reservations on the Capitol Limited or Lake Shore Limited wish to postpone or cancel, will additional fees be imposed?

Passengers wishing to modify or cancel existing reservations will be subject to standard Amtrak cancellation or change fees.

Q: Are fares being changed on these trains to account for the lower food service costs?

Ticket prices / fare structure will remain the same.

Q: If a passenger chooses to receive in room service but then s/he decides later s/he needs an additional item, will s/he need to walk all the way to the sleeper lounge for service?

Sleeper attendants continue to be on call to support customer requests (within reason, of course!) With safety as our first priority, our objective is to ensure customer onboard experience is enjoyable and worth repeating.

Each ready-to-serve meal comes completely packaged with necessary condiments, napkins and cutlery. If a customer finds something missing from their package, needs another beverage or needs assistance moving from their bedroom or roomette to another car on the train – the sleeper car attendant or other employees can provide assistance.

Q: Have the impacted employees been notified?

Crew base management has been notified and will be reviewing the changes with the crews as we roll out the program. Communications will be ongoing.

I'd never heard of "...Lunch & Dinner: Chilled beef tenderloin..." but Mr Google has. Apparently it's a popular contemporaneous "foodie" thing.
"Chilled beef tenderloin?" Cold beef?

Q: If passengers currently holding reservations on the Capitol Limited or Lake Shore Limited wish to postpone or cancel, will additional fees be imposed?

Passengers wishing to modify or cancel existing reservations will be subject to standard Amtrak cancellation or change fees.
=========================================

Of course, this is so that Amtrak will not have to admit that passengers
cancelled their trips due to the downgrade from dining car service to
s̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ cold meals.

And then, afterwards, when they don't come back begging for more
s̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ cold meals and whatever more downgrades Delta Dick the
Airline Boy can come up with, Amtrak can point to decreased ridership,
as in, "NOBODY RIDES THE LONG DISTANCE TRAINS."

Sounds like the sandwich stuff that Delta now hands out in economy on some of its transcon flights.

Not to bad for the cheap seats on a 5 hour flight, but on a long overnight train for sleeper passengers paying high prices?

Give me a break!

Let me get this straight, they are putting diners back on the LSL finally, but downgrading to catered food?

mp51w Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Let me get this straight, they are putting diners
> back on the LSL finally, but downgrading to
> catered food?

What a revolting development ....

So lets say I book my trip on the EB for October to get to Martin's charter in Oregon. And lets say in July they decide to eliminate the diner on the EB and provide the airline style meals in rooms. And they are saying I can't get a refund so I can fly instead. From what I have read, there is absolutely nothing on the new "menu" that would appeal to me or sustain me for a 3 day trip. They should at least provide refunds to those who don't want to put up with this. If I had the time, I would take VIA to Vancouver instead. But can't be away for that long (or longer given their track record) during that time. And what do they mean exactly when they refer to the "sleeper lounge." Last I looked, neither the Cap or LSL or any other Amtrak train has one of those.

How big of a tip should I leave, after being handed a box containing a cold sandwich? Sounds like the LSA's function is to dole out the boxes, make sure no one gets two, hand out drinks, and take out the trash.

Is it what we've come to? And it's a really spectacular return on investment in a dining car that cost $3-4 million.

Paul Wilson
Arlington, VA

Will there be hot coffee or tea?

Let me take an alternate view...

The Lake Shore serves two meals westbound (unless you are on 449), dinner and breakfast. Most folks do not seem to eat breakfast, based on my observations. Dinner, if you are connecting from Boston, is after 730 pm and is the last seating.

On the return to NYC, it is just breakfast and lunch.

The Capitol has dinner and breakfast each way, but again, it is not an extended trip with the need for fine dining and its associated costs.

The big question is this: What happens to the trains on longer runs? NYC to Florida and NOL bear watching. And all of the western trains. With multiple days of travel and the simple need to move around and meet people, if traditional dining goes away on those trains, I will be concerned.

I do wish Amtrak had announced this as a test, to see how passengers react. This is not a smart move if it is permanent. It will require adjustment.

I find it amusing that these boxed meals are being referred to as "dining." I am further amused by the reference to "airline meals." Passengers who travel many hours in first/business/club class (whatever the forward cabin may be called) do not get a cold boxed meal - certainly not on any airline I have flown with. Even Air Transat, a so-called low cost carrier, served us very good meals on a recent London-Toronto flight in club class.

Amtrak could serve catered meals as VIA does on the Montreal-Halifax Ocean. There are photos on another thread on this topic. Some main courses are better than others, but the meals are heated slowly in ovens (not microwaved as some claim), plated and garnished in the galley and served on china plates with metal cutlery on cloth-covered tables. They even have hot soup.

The Crescent is a longer run, but the train is just 2/3rd the size of the Lake Shore, and is lightly patronized south of Atlanta, probably 1 sleeper and 2 coaches would suffice. For most, it is also a 2 meal train.

Yet, they go after the Lake Shore with 6 coaches and 3 sleepers, which is pretty well loaded between Albany and Chicago. Then they relegate all 360 coach passengers to a half dinette with 8 tables. The other OBS person on the Sleeper's lounge gets to wait on all of 60 people. The unbalanced workload is scandalous.

This won't work. People who don't eat in the diner to begin will now be standing in line for a half hour through the coaches to get a cheeseburger, then have no place to eat it, and have difficulty working their way back to their coach seat.

This is all to reduce Lake Shore and Capitol Ltd's OBS staff by 2 people each and save $3 million. Andersen has made this is miserable as he possibly could because he can't tell 6 contiguous Amcoaches from a 767 fuselage with multiple flight attendants doing the fetching.

After the first posting above there is only one way to describe this Amtrak policy, COMMON (in the derogatory sense).

Dining car staff on Capitol 29/30 in a 30 day schedule could amount to 25-30 folks. So apparently they all lose their jobs. The coach lounge staff is doubled so maybe that picks up some of those who lost their jobs. Wonder how much furloughing will cost based on union contracts?

I remember when UAL took over Continental (merged) at least on Continental on short hops (PBI-EWR) you at least got a piece of pastry, UAL killed that. UAL gave you nothing unless you wanted to buy a packaged snack box. But this Amtrak move, especially for sleeper passengers, is just plain beyond contempt. Remember when they took away from Auto Train the complimentary buffet before departure.

anyone know what they are referring to when they say the Capitol will have a (Superliner) sleeper-lounge? are they reconfiguring other cars to include both sleeping and lounge space or are they planning on using cross-country cafes or some other variant of Superliner dining car or Sightseer lounge?

One possible positive is the implication that there may be separate lounge space for sleeper passengers.

The 37xxx diner car is being re-designated "sleeper-lounge", which means lounge for sleeper passengers only. Except for desire of some of them to walk to the Sightseer lounge for some hot microwave food, they might as well lock the door between the 2 cars.

swirsk53 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> anyone know what they are referring to when they
> say the Capitol will have a (Superliner)
> sleeper-lounge? are they reconfiguring other cars
> to include both sleeping and lounge space or are
> they planning on using cross-country cafes or some
> other variant of Superliner dining car or
> Sightseer lounge?
>
> One possible positive is the implication that
> there may be separate lounge space for sleeper
> passengers.

Yes, the separate sleeping car lounge is a plus. Sounds like they'll use the existing dining car, or cross-country cafe car, for the sleeper lounge.

The biggest negative is cold meals. Warm food is needed.

In the off season, will it be just the cafe car offerings?

andersonb109 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So lets say I book my trip on the EB for October
> to get to Martin's charter in Oregon. And lets say
> in July they decide to eliminate the diner on the
> EB and provide the airline style meals in rooms.
> And they are saying I can't get a refund so I can
> fly instead. From what I have read, there is
> absolutely nothing on the new "menu" that would
> appeal to me or sustain me for a 3 day trip. They
> should at least provide refunds to those who don't
> want to put up with this. If I had the time, I
> would take VIA to Vancouver instead. But can't be
> away for that long (or longer given their track
> record) during that time. And what do they mean
> exactly when they refer to the "sleeper lounge."
> Last I looked, neither the Cap or LSL or any other
> Amtrak train has one of those.

Just fly and be done with the whining already.

Better to let off energy whining than to actually go postal and cause real harm I suppose ;)

Mr. Anderson, what you are dealing with here are something called RAILROAD PASSENGER TRAINS, not airliners! It is apparent you do not know much about railroad passenger trains and what it is passengers enjoy about such.

Everyone probably better go enjoy the final Wick M menus while they can and enjoy the surf and turf for dinner, pancakes for breakfast, and steamed mussels for lunch.

As for me, I will enjoy VIA Rail Canada's Canadian to go west even if it is running late and I have to go out of my way to get where I am going.

It might be easier to buy airline tickets for the longer haul passengers.