A New Amtrak Marketing Strategy: Piss Off Customers.


 For years, Amtrak has hauled vintage passenger cars around the country at the rear of regularly scheduled passenger trains. For this service, the owners of the private cars pay about $2.75 per mile, plus additional charges for switching, storage, etc.
 
Six months or so ago, Amtrak announced tough new restrictions on these private rail cars. The cost-per-mile went up and the handling—coupling and uncoupling from regular Amtrak trains, parking on sidings, storage, and other services—became more difficult to arrange and those costs also went up.
 
With the stroke of a pen, Amtrak had come up with what seemed to be arbitrary and feeble ways for making life more expensive and considerably more difficult for the owners of these wonderful old cars—a small segment of the market, to be sure, but one that generates something between 4 and 10 million dollars a year in much needed revenue for Amtrak. (Amtrak won’t say what the exact number is, so let’s assume it’s closer to ten than to four.)
 

 Private car owners were still simmering over the restrictions and costs imposed earlier this year when, a couple of days ago, Amtrak put out another memo—this one saying that people riding in these private rail cars would no longer be permitted to be on the viewing platform of the rear car while the train is moving. This has got to drive the owners of these rail cars batty because the cars with the small rear-facing platforms were designed with gates and railings and barriers so that people could safely stand or sit and watch the scenery slide by.
 
As far as I know, there has never before been a safety issue with open platforms and observation decks on these vintage rail cars. But all of a sudden something that had been safe and acceptable for years has now been deemed unsafe and is forbidden.
 
Go figure.