Ask someone who has just made their first long-distance train ride what they liked most about the experience. Then find a veteran rail traveler, someone who’s made a dozen overnight journeys on passenger trains here in the U.S. and in Canada. Ask them the same question: What do you enjoy most about your long-distance train…
John Mica may be gone from the Congress, but his legacy remains and it’s still giving us heartburn. Thanks to Mica and his constant harping, it has somehow become accepted as fact that Amtrak should be making money on its food service … or breaking even at the very least. Really? Who says so? Where…
by Matt Melzer Dining by rail has always been an expensive, logistically complex endeavor, with heavy labor and supply costs not seen in normal restaurants. Amtrak’s periodic corner-cutting experiments have usually backfired and caused them to revert to the bedrock principle that food service is a loss leader that differentiates trains from other travel…
A couple of weeks ago, RPA President and CEO Jim Mathews had a lengthy sit-down with two key Amtrak executives: the President and CEO, Richard Anderson (below) and Chief Commercial Officer Stephen Gardner. Gardner, by th way, is supposedly leading the faction within Amtrak’s top management proposing to do away with the long-distance trains. …