Coast Starlight Discussion

I am riding the "COAST STARLIGHT" from Los Angeles to Seattle on April 21-22, in a roomette, and plan to take most of my meals in the "Pacific Parlour Car." I will report on the china and flatware, plus the quality of the food I am served, when I return.

Great news......please start a thread, I will add to it with my report at the end of may.

Pleased to report that the meal service in both the regular dining car and "Pacific Parlour Car" now includes real china and tableware. However, the food cannot compare with that served on VIA RAIL's "CANADIAN" between Vancouver and Toronto. Avoid the mediocre steak and its hyped description on the dining car menu. Well-stuffed armchairs in the "PACIFIC PARLOUR CAR", which take up the other half of the car for viewing, are a vast improvement over the seating in the Sightseer Lounge car.

Thanks for the report. Sounds like what I expected, that they are putting simplified dinning on china, not doing any cooking.

I wouldn't say that the steak was "over hyped", I had it and enjoyed it last week on 11. Wifi is operational but not all that fast, I stuck with my tethered iPhone for internet service on the trip.

So I am back with some highlights:

Dinning car: Staff down OK, Staff up great. Steak and omelette fantastic (cooked onboard). Salads much better than 2.5 years ago. Burger much better. Simplified dining stuff about the same, but on real plates is nice. Food came out fast.

Parlour Car: Down: Staff great. Wine tasting great. WIFI did not work. Had lattes
Up: Staff ok, Wine tasting had good cheese but otherwise was poor. WIFI worked pretty well. Latte machine not working

Sleeper: Down: Great attendant
UP: Poor attendant

My 15 year old says the arcade games are beyond bad, very old and were never that good to start with. Movie on the big tv looked good, last trip TV was not operating.

Notes: Conductor on the way down refused to sell me a sleeper upgrade. Told me to see the Portland station agents. Station agent fixed me up, great service, but I dont figure he should have been put into that position. Sleeper rooms now have towels, very nice, but the blankets are now so thin that they don't deserve to be called that....we get two thin and rather small sheets. Amtrak is now putting in new modules for the sleepers which create some room by sacrificing sound proofing, the bathrooms in particular are bigger. What I have heard so far is that this is not a good trade, you get to hear nearly everything your neighbors say and do. The way I understand it only a few of these are currently un service

Was interested in the 2012 pull date for the parlours. The people I talked to said that this assumes that the new trains are ready for service by then, which seems like a stretch considering that not much or anything has been done to start the purchase process. The Parlours could stick around, and the bet is that they will, until the new equipment is ready.

I noted that two kitchen staff were pulled off of the 14 at Salem, presumably to hop on the 11 about an hour later.

I had been lead to believe that the Parlours and the sleepers had gotten a good working over for the relaunch during the slide outage....turns out that not much of anything was done, a tiny bit of spit and polish was all they got....it was all PR BS.

Continual bitch of mine....when I get on at 930-1000pm in Oakland and Emeryville the beds are already down. I HATE this, as I am no where near ready to hop into bed. I always need to put them up again. I understand the attendants want to knock off work at 10:00, but it takes 2 minutes...maybe three. They should ask when we board.

Overall this was a great experience. I have not traveled a lot in recent years but this was the best work I have seen out of Amtrak employees in a long time.

No complaining about timekeeping so I'll presume that both trips were on-time. I've noticed that the arrivals board in Seattle now lists the arrival time for the Starlight as "8" and the arrival time for the Empire Builder as "10", even though the official timetables show 845pm and 1020am.

Well ya know, the card has so much slack in it that the train darn well better be ontime. We sat in Portland for over an hour on the way back. Maybe because of the holiday week-end but I saw very little freight traffic to slow us down.

Steve, you live out there, but I think we both know owing to the housing bust, lumber and other Products of Forests traffic is "waaaay down". While Container traffic is "starting to rebound", such is predominately East-West, lest we note.

Between Sacramento and Portland has always been slim, but lumber being down takes away a lot of what was there. At one point because of port over crowding ships did sometimes use a port with fast turn times and then ship North-South, while port traffic is up these last months it is not up enough to need to do that. However, I did not see much Emeryville-Sacramento nor Portland-Olympia either.

I took this train from LA to Tacoma on 4/28/10. Never did get the lunch which was supposed to be spinach salad according to the menu provided to us in LA. Attendant brought me the menu from the dining car and it was not on here. Went to parlor car for dinner which was tererible. The only 2 choices were lamb or duck. Come. on!!! How about some normal food. They coulda substitured one of those for something like beef or chicken. I do not eat lamb nor ever tried duck (which sounds like something I would never eat) Waiter says they are out of lamb and my only choice was duck. He says I will like it as it is cooked in a sherry soy sauce. Took 2 bites. TERRIBLE!!!! I was sick the rest of the night. I hate train food anywway but this took the cake. Wine tasting was quite good. They had my favorite wine which is a Reisling. I didn't taste the others as I do not drink most red wines. Instead I had a large amount of the Reisling. Well worth the $5. Last time I took this train in 2007 the wine tasting was free but you didn't get enough to really get to enjoy the taste. Like the $5 deal much better.

I've never seen a Spinach Salad on the dining car menu or parlor car meny - only on the menu offered in the cafe car. The dining car on the Coast Starlight should have more of your traditional "normal food" - typically offering a beef, chicken, fish, vegeterian and perhaps another entree. The Parlor Car has been carrying food that may be a little more out of the ordinary or more "gourmet" type. Duck may be a little out there to find on an Amtrak meny, but lamb has even popped up on the Acela First Class menu. Typically it's just two entrees for lunch and dinner in the Parlor Car, while your more traditional and variety of food is found in the diner.

If the $5 fee for wine and cheese is going to keep these Parlor Cars in service, I'm all for it. It's a nominal charge in the scheme of things. More importantly, the Parlor Car on teh Coast Starlight has been needed for "overflow" meal service and to provide more "lounge" space for people on the Coast Starlight - with three sleepers, three to four coaches (train should be marketed to have four coaches full at minimum) and even roomettes sold in the Superliner Trans Dorm/Sleeper. I know Amtrak has stated that it may put a Superliner Cross Country Cafe Car on the Empire Builder (in addition to the Superliner Diner and Sightseer Lounge) to serve as a "Pacific Parlor Car" of sorts. Such is often needed on the Empire Builder and the California Zephyr as the Superliner Sightseer Lounge and Superliner Diner often get overcrowded or backed up in reservations during peak season, especially with the Empire Builder running with three sleepers and a descent amount of coach cars.

jp1822 wrote: If the $5 fee for wine and cheese is going to keep these Parlor Cars in service, I'm all for it. It's a nominal charge in the scheme of things. More importantly, the Parlor Car on the Coast Starlight has been needed for "overflow" meal service and to provide more "lounge" space for people on the Coast Starlight - with three sleepers, three to four coaches (train should be marketed to have four coaches full at minimum) and even roomettes sold in the Superliner Trans Dorm/Sleeper. I know Amtrak has stated that it may put a Superliner Cross Country Cafe Car on the Empire Builder (in addition to the Superliner Diner and Sightseer Lounge) to serve as a "Pacific Parlor Car" of sorts. Such is often needed on the Empire Builder and the California Zephyr as the Superliner Sightseer Lounge and Superliner Diner often get overcrowded or backed up in reservations during peak season, especially with the Empire Builder running with three sleepers and a descent amount of coach cars.

There was WAYYY too much variation in the quality of the wine tasting...one way the guy was funny, knew a lot about wine, poured a nice huge pour if you wanted it, and was good at getting the group to have fun....the other way the gal poured a little, said about nothing, and rushed through as fast as possible. You can also buy a bottle from the Parlour and take it into the diner, so you get a much better wine at a better price.

Serving in the parlour takes the pressure off the diner, it is a great idea. The menus for both are in your sleeper, they come through and ask which one you want and which time...I don't see the problem.

what the heck have they done this for ??? late arrivals in all major cities , not departing till nearly midday , broken connection to the empire builder . i am trying to see the advantage of the current schedule , but it has me baffled .

David, Three words. UNION PACIFIC TRACKWORK.

The schedule will revert to the normal when the trackwork is done come mid April. there will also be several periods where 11 will Detour through the central valley

UP is replacing ties and rail on several subdivisions in Oregon and California and specificly 80,870 ties between Paso Robles and San Jose