Home › Forums › General Discussions › The End of the Amtrak Dining Car
Mike Nolan.It's been a long time since I ate in a dining car, and I'm sorry that I won't have the chance to do so again:
The last time I ate on an Amtrak dining car was about 18 years ago.I had a steak, baked potato, apple pie with ice cream.
When I was in high school I took the (pre-Amtrak) City of New Orleans from Chicago to New Orleans and back. I was probably too young to appreciate the dining experience then.
I don't know if I've ever even been on an Amtrak train with a dining car. The only over night trips I took were to Boston and back in 1980 for college. After the one time I started taking the Hopscotch flights on Piedmont Airlines! Four stops between Logan and O'Hare but one way was under $100.
The article says that millennials do not like big communal tables but it's the way many of the hipper restaurants in Boston and New York are going. Maybe it's become passe and is on its way out.
Growing up in NW Illinois we would sometimes take the train (Burlington Northern or Rock Island Line, both went through Savanna with separate stations) from Savanna to Chicago with my mother's folks. The BN Zephyrs would usually have a dining car and my grandfather loved eating in it. It was a 2 to 2 1/2 hour train trip, so there was time for the dining car. (The Illinois Central went through Galena, not Savanna.)
It was a sad day for train travel when Amtrak took over passenger rail service.
