Some unhappy events with Amtrak Rail Passes

An open letter to Amtrak

Compuserve Magazine August 1993 contained an excellent article by Robin Garr:
"A Holiday on Track". Sometimes everything goes as planned and sometimes
nothing works. My story gives some words of warning for foreigners planning
to travel by trainin U.S.A. The European standards of railways are miles
ahead compared to situation onthe other side of the Atlantic. The Customer
Relations Office of Amtrak has expressed their regrets and things are
settled. Here is a citation of their letter: "We value your past patronage
and hope you will understand the constraints under which we must operate".
Here is our story:

My wife and I are great friends of trains and railways. We try to arrange
as much as is possible and reasonable of our travelling by train because
we think it the best way to get a good picture of foreign countries - get
close to different people and landscapes. Until now we have travelled by
train in Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy,
Spain, France, former Soviet Union and Egypt. We have been pleased with our
choice. The trains have been comfortable, well equipped and they have run in
time.

We visited USA 21.Jun.-11.July 1992 because of my congress in Arlington,
Virginia. We planned to spend one week in New York, Washington and New
Orleans. Because we like trains and out travel agency showed us your
advertisement about rail passes we decided to make our travelling in USA by
train. We liked to see "the Crescent, Amtrak's delightful 1,380 mile route
between New York and New Orleans, through the foothills of the Blue Ridge
Mountains and the Heart of Dixie...".

The reason we present here our experiences is only our great love to
railways. We hope that our experiences could help Amtrak to improve their
service.

1. First problem
When we arrived in USA we noticed that Amtrak was going to strike just
that morning we should go from New York to Washington (Palmetto 26.Jun.
7.17-10.49). When we bought our rail passes in Finland 3.Jun. we got no
information about this possibility, so this was a shock for us. We arranged
a bus trip and delayed acquiring reservations for trains until the situation
would resolve. Early friday morning (26.Jun) we could see in our TV that the
strike was postponed so I hurried across the street from Ramada Hotel to
Pennsylvania station to get us tickets for our train. I had photocopies of
our passports with me but they were not good for tickets. So I returned to
my hotel to get our passports. Now the person selling the ticket told that
they needed my wife too so I returned to my hotel for second time, collected
our luggage and we both presented our passports and got tickets. There was
not checked baggage service so we had to carry our baggage on train. The
train was excellent, not crowded and in time.

Lesson 1.
If there is a threat of a strike, let your representatives around the world
to know about it so they can help their customers to make alternative plans.

Lesson 2.
Persons at ticket counter could tell all their demands when they see their
customer for the first time, not one by one. I was happy to stay across the
street. Everybody is not.


Second problem
When we arrived in Washington we went to Union Station on 27.Jun. to make
reservations for the Crescent train on 2.July. The train was, however, full
with no vacant places and Amtrak could not add extra coaches in the train.
Situation we have never experienced before! All the trains from 1. to 5.
July were full with no extra coaches. We could, however, make our
reservations for Crescent New Orleans-New York on 9.July. We had made and
paid our hotel reservations in New Orleans from 3. July, but now we had to
get a flight from Washington DC to New Orleans and because of the 4th of July
celebration only reasonable priced tickets were for 4. July. This caused us
on extra expense. We had planned to spend one night on train, now we had to
extend our stay in The Carlyle Suites hotel in Washington for two nights.

Lesson 3.
If your trains are full and you have no extra coaches, inform your customers
already when they buy their rail passes, so they can make their reservations
in time.


Third problem

We stepped on board the Crescent in New Orleans early thursday morning 9.July.
We had a timetable that stated that this train would be in New York Friday at
2.20 pm. Our flight back to Europe would leave at the Kennedy airport at 5.35
so we would have over three ours to catch our plane. That we estimated to be
enough, because everywhere around the world we had learned to trust
timetables.

When we had travelled 37 miles, we were 7 minutes behind. After 148 miles we
were 35 minutes behind! Not a good start. We were a little worried because
we had heard, that the Crescent of 8. July was already nearly 2 hours behind
when our Crescent left New Orleans. In Birmingham we were still 35 minutes
behind and could catch only one minute when we changed engine etc. Here we
met the Crescent that was coming from New York, nor 3 hours late. We asked
the conductor, if it were still possible to get in New York in time. He
calmed us and told that we would be no more than 20 minutes late in New
York and that other Crescent had broken its air condition and was in late for
that reason. At Gainesville we were 1 hour and 25 minutes late and the
conductor said nothing any more.

Our train had difficulties with air condition and after Atlanta we had to
change one coach. After we left Atlanta we lost electricity in train three
times and had to stop for reparation.

Next morning we had new conductor, who was more realistic. Now we were
already 1 hour and 40 minutes late and it was sure that we could not catch
our plane in New York. We left the train in Washington DC at 11 am. The
train was still 1 hour and 40 minutes late and had not been able to catch
a single minute for the last 4 hours. We took a cab to national airport
and took first flight to New York Kennedy airport. We were at Kennedy airport
at 2 pm and had good time to get our KLM flight to Amsterdam.

Your crew on board did their best. Especially our female officer was very
helpful and she was sorry that we had to leave our train. But the crew
could do nothing for the basic problems of your line. The Crescent travels
1380 miles and spends 28 hours and 20 minutes for its journey. Two hours and
10 minutes it stand on stations, that leaves 26 hours and 10 minutes for
actual running time. This means a mean velocity of 52.7 miles/hour. It is not
realistic and you must know it because all Crescents are late.

Minimum time was 30 minutes and maximum was 3 hours 30 minutes when we talked
with other passengers about their experiences.

Lesson 4.
Do not publish fairy tales as timetables!

Lesson 5.
The condition of tracks in the southern end of the Crescent route is awful.  

Lesson 6.
Amtrak trains are old and not reliable any more.

Amtrak promised us a rail pass, that would give us unlimited mileage in the
eastern part of USA for 199 $ per person. However, our total cost for our
three week journey was 1101$. This means an extra cost of 703 $ that was
caused by the problems of Amtrak. If we had known this in advance, we had
planned our trip other way and made our travelling by flight. This had
been cheaper than our unhappy U.S. Rail Pass trip! I hope that this long
letter would give Amtrak some ideas, what to do to rise their standards, and
help travellers to be prepared for some unhappy events.  Now the future of
Amtrak does not look good, because their customers can't trust the company.
You have a beautiful country and a good instrument to display it to
travellers. Be worth of it!

Yours sincerely,
Mikko Nenonen, Jaala, Finland, 100024,1511