SouthernRailway wrote: ↑Sun Sep 22, 2019 1:10 pm
Great point.
I was looking (who knows why) at a Pennsylvania Railroad lounge car menu from the 1950s. It had a much wider drink lineup than Amtrak has, including Manhattans and martinis. Why can’t Amtrak have classier drinks?
Maybe it doesn’t have enough passengers paying high fares because the onboard experience (and the station experience) is not super-high class.
A Manhattan or martini in a nice lounge car would be very nice. A beer in an Amfleet 1970s high school cafeteria, which is what Amtrak’s cafe cars on Eastern LD trains, is not high class.
And the classier the drink, the more expensive. The more expensive, the fewer Amtrak will have to sell to break even. Also if it’s more expensive per drink, fewer drinks will be purchased (in theory), meaning fewer drunks to put off the train in West Bumblebutt, Iowa.
For the people who complain, “but the government is getting people drunk,” look at how many Army bases and government installations have banquet halls, lounges, and officers’ clubs run by the government rather than contractors.