Changing Rail Culture Won’t be Quick or Easy

Much has been written in the past several months about the lives of railroad locomotive engineers and conductors.

Much of that has come from railroaders themselves and is part of a larger strategy by their unions to gain leverage in the negotiations to amend the contract that governs wages, benefits and work rules of unionized railroad workers.

A common theme has been improving the work-life balance of railroad workers.

One of the most thoughtful commentaries I’ve read was published on the website of Railway Age by Doug Riddel, a retired Amtrak locomotive engineer.

Riddel comes from a railroad family and his essay places the current railroad labor dispute in a historical context. You can read the essay at https://www.railwayage.com/news/not-my-grandfathers-railroad/

I highly recommend this piece because it generally avoids inflammatory rhetoric that brings more heat than light to a contentious matter.

Yet it is significant for what Riddel doesn’t say. First, let’s hear from Doug himself.

“Today’s railroad is not [emphasize in original] my grandfather’s railroad, nor is it the one I once worked for. Today’s railroaders are not the old heads. Quality of life is now front and center in contract negotiations. Like it or not, it is [emphasis in original] the driving issue, and will continue to be. It must be dealt with.”

The work-life balance conundrum has been written about at length by Trains magazine correspondent Bill Stephens and Railway Age Washington correspondent Frank Wilner.

Speakers at transportation conferences have called for changes in the relationship between railroads and their operating employees. Retired CSX CEO James Foote said as much earlier this year.

But one key component is missing from those writings and speeches.

No one has laid out a realistic blueprint for how to create that change nor have they defined what its scope should be or could be.

Instead, they have intimated that workplace changes could be or should be addressed in the current round of negotiations between unions and railroad management over amending their contract.

Maybe it will be addressed in the contract “settlement” but that probably won’t be the case.

It remains to be seen how committed everyone is toward changing what they see as undesirable yet is all they know and have experienced.

Saying that something needs to change is not the same thing as making change.

Maybe those speakers and writers haven’t laid out a blueprint because they don’t have one. I can’t criticize them for that because I don’t have one either.

What I do have is the knowledge that organizational change never comes easy or quickly.

Organizational culture and behavior don’t just happen. They are a response to years of experience, the environment in which the organization operates, and what an organization does for its livelihood.

Railroading by nature is a 24/7/365 endeavor. Freight and passengers move 24 hours a day, seven days a week every day of the year.

If you work as a locomotive engineer or conductor you are guaranteed to being called into work on weekends, holidays and nights with few exceptions.

You are guaranteed that your workplace is largely outdoors and subject to extreme cold, heat, moisture and whatever else Mother Nature has in store on any given day.

You are guaranteed to miss milestone events in the lives of your children, to be away from home a lot, and to spend long hours on the job amid some uncertainty about when or even where your shift will end.

You are not even guaranteed to make it home without having suffered a major injury at work or even to make it home alive.

I’ve heard enough stories from railroaders to also know railroaders are guaranteed to have to contend with prickly middle managers who want you to do something that might cost you your job if things go haywire.

Most if not all organizations like to talk about culture changes, but more often than not those efforts are little more than talk.

Foote talked about achieving a situation in which those who want to earn more money by working would come to work during times when those who would rather be home would be able to do that.

On the surface this sounds like a win-win outcome. But is it realistic?

I won’t say that change in railroad working culture is impossible. I will say it is unlikely to play out on the scale that some are hinting needs to happen.

There is a value to essays and speeches that hammer home the message that there needs to be a better work-life balance for railroaders. The more railroad management hears that message the less it is a foreign idea and, perhaps, the less management will resist change because “this is the way we’ve always done things around here.”

Nonetheless, some of these speeches and essays are raising unrealistic expectations of what might be accomplished whether through negotiations, Congressional action, or management fiat.

Railroaders may win the coveted sick pay they are seeking, but that will only improve their work-life balance so much.

I don’t doubt railroaders have legitimate grievances or that management is exploiting workers to please Wall Street investors which in turn boosts the compensation that CEOs and top railroad executives earn.

Yeah, working on the railroad can be a tough way to make a living. Always has been, always will be. There is only so much that can be changed even if the will or desire to do so is there.

Much of what complicates the lives of railroaders is inherent in the work they do.

A Primmer on What Lies Ahead in the Coming Weeks in the Rail Labor Contract Dispute

Writing on the website of Railway Age, Frank Wilner said predicting what will happen in the next phase of the contract talks between railroad labor unions and management is akin to trying to find a black cat in a dark room.

It’s an apt description because neither side is going to reveal what it is willing to give up and what it absolutely must have in the negotiations to amend the contract that governs wages, benefits and work rules at most Class 1 railroads and many smaller ones. Tipping your hand is not a good negotiating strategy even if bluffing and posturing might be.

The major talking point of most stories to date is that a national railroad work stoppage looms as early as Dec. 4, the date one of the unions rejecting the contract has said is the earliest it might strike. Other stories have given Dec. 9 as the most likely date a work stoppage could begin.

At this point the railroad contract negotiations have become a contest of wills with each side seeking to assess the strengths and weaknesses of their adversary and how best to exploit those.

Under the federal Railway Labor Act contracts in the railroad industry never expire but can be amended, which is what is going on now.

Talks to amend the contract began in early 2020. It is typical for contract talks to drag out for years before reaching an agreement.

What we know at this point is that members of four of the 12 railroad labor unions involved in the negotiations have rejected the proposed amended contract.

Those unions and the percentage they represent of the approximately 115,000 railroad workers they represent include the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees (19 percent), Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen (6 percent), International Association of Boilermakers and Blacksmiths (1 percent) and SMART-TD, excluding yardmasters (30 percent).

The eight unions that have ratified the tentative agreement and the percentage of the total their members represent are the American Train Dispatchers Association (1 percent), Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (20 percent), Brotherhood of Railway Carmen (7 percent), International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (5 percent), International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (5 percent), Mechanical Division of SMART (1 percent), National Conference of Firemen and Oilers (2 percent), and the Transportation Communications Union (3 percent). 

Although it remains to be seen how the contract dispute will eventually be resolved, there are a number of directions it could go.

The four unions that rejected the contract could reach a different – and presumably from their standpoint better – agreement than the one they turned down. If so, those provisions would be applied to the contracts already ratified.

There is widespread agreement on both sides that this is the best option. But is it the most realistic one?

The carriers have issued public statements saying they will not offer any more concessions and that any changes in the proposed contract amendments must be in alignment with the recommendations of a presidential emergency board tissues its findings for a new contract back in August.

That statement was posturing even if it probably reflects generally how the carriers view the negotiations.

That is bad news for the unions who through their own public statements have said the sticking point is not how much money their members will make in wages – the two sides have agreed on that – but a demand for paid sick time off from work.

Another avenue is the leaders of the unions rejecting the contract could override the will of their members and agree to submit the contract dispute to binding arbitration.

This doesn’t happen often, but it has occurred, most recently in 1996 when officers of the United Transportation Union overrode member rejection of a tentative agreement in favor of binding arbitration.

If negotiations fail, there are several ways the dispute can go but all of them lead back to Congress imposing a settlement.

It would be a matter of how lawmakers choose to do that. Congress has stepped in before, most recently 1992, the last time a national railroad work stoppage occurred.

Congress could impose terms of a settlement, it could order the appointment of a new presidential emergency board or it could direct the parties to submit to binding arbitration.

Lawmakers could also order workers to go back to work and the two sides to return to the bargaining table. In such an event there will be a long “cooling off” period imposed in which a strike or lockout would be prohibited.

All of those courses of action carry risks which is why both sides would prefer to reach a negotiated settlement.

The risk is getting stuck with an “settlement” that contains one or more provisions you consider unpalatable.

For unions that could mean having imposed on them a contract that is less generous than the one some of them voted to reject.

As for what happens in early December if no negotiated agreement has been reached and Congress has not acted, that remains to be seen.

That deadline only means that by law union members are legally able to strike and railroads are legally able to lock out their employees.

It doesn’t necessarily mean there will be a work stoppage on that day even if that seems likely given the heated rhetoric being tossed about. The timing of when to strike or when to lock out your workers is critical and involves a calculation of when is the most advantageous time to actually go to war.

That might be sooner, it might be later. What might you be better positioned to gain now that you might be less likely to gain later and vice versa?

The unions and carriers have signaled that no work stoppage will occur if Congress is not in session. That suggests no one wants a work stoppage to last any longer than “necessary,” whatever that might ,mean.

In the past unions have sought to conduct limited strikes by targeting one carrier while still working at others.

The carriers have foiled this strategy by locking out workers in the belief that a strike again one railroad is strike against all of them. Likewise, if one union strikes, the remaining unions will honor picket lines.

In the past, railroad strikes and lockouts have been of short duration, usually a few days with the longest since World War having been four days.

The conventional wisdom is that the adverse effect of a railroad work stoppage is something the nation’s economy can’t tolerate.

That is still true and is, in fact, something the unions are counting on to force the carriers to give in on the sick days issue.

But there are other considerations that come into play, including political calculus.

The most recent mid-term elections have preserved the Democrats paper-thin margin of control of the Senate. The House will be in control of Republicans starting in January.

No one may want an economy-disrupting railroad work stoppage, but there are still gains to be had if one were to occur.

Republicans in Congress will see a work stoppage as an opportunity to inflict political damage on President Joseph Biden – at least for a time.

Democrats will see an opportunity to burnish their reputations or perceived reputations of being pro-labor — at least for a time.

It would take at least 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a potential filibuster of any proposed contract settlement. That could get dicey because it will put members of Congress into a position to have to vote on something they would rather avoid.

But at some point Congress faces the prospect of having to act lest the economy continue to suffer intolerable damage.

Another reality is that a strike would affect millions of Americans and they are not going to remain passive as they suffer economic harm and inconvenience.

The involvement of other audiences in the dispute is going to play a major role in dictating how the fight will be resolved.

Each side will be taking its best shot at influencing how those audiences view the dispute. In fact that process has been going on for several months now.

If a work stoppage occurs and if Congress does not immediately act to end it, the calculations change yet again.

Striking railroad workers will immediately see their health care insurance benefits cut off and although they will receive strike pay and, eventually, unemployment benefits, those would be just a portion of what they normally earn in wages. That will plunge some railroad workers into an economic purgatory and bring financial hardships to all of them.

Railroads will lose revenue and that will hurt them financially. Yet today’s Class 1 railroads are well positioned to weather a long work stoppage. They are not Penn Central, Erie Lackawanna, the Rock Island or the Milwaukee Road, all of which in the 1970s were strapped for cash and ended up in bankruptcy court.

Class 1 railroads today may be having customer service issues, experiencing work shortages, and losing market share to trucks, but they are not losing money. Today’s Class 1 railroads have never been financially stronger.

It is noteworthy that the margin of SMART-TD members rejecting the contract was barely over 50 percent. The percentage of BLET members voting in favor of the contract was just over 53 percent.

This is significant because it shows a split in thinking among unionized railroaders that could potentially come into play in the current dispute.

The unions are not as united as the front they are seeking to put up. Internal strife could become a factor in the dispute as those missed paychecks begin to take their toll on the household budgets of railroaders.

It also could hold longer-term implications. The railroads have not sought to hide their desire to reduce the number of conductors assigned to trains. The unions have managed to thwart those efforts for now, but the conductor issue is not going to go away.

Fissures within unions that break open during a strike and/or work stoppage could weaken unions longer term and that is something railroad management will look to exploit and union leadership fears.

For that matter the continuous relationship between railroad labor and management will continue to linger beyond whatever “settlement” is reached in the current round of contract talks because the working conditions issue that railroadrts talk a lot about these days isn’t going away either. But that is a discussion for another day.

In the meantime, railroads are likely to begin curtailing as soon as Nov. 28 shipments of certain commodities as the early December work stoppage date approaches if no new settlement is reached.

Trains magazine reported that a work stoppage would complicate the shipping of agricultural commodities due to record low water levels that have halted Mississippi River barge traffic.

There is only only so much that trucking companies can do to pick up the slack due to a shortage of trucks.

Still, shippers are likely to divert freight to highways in advance of the strike deadline. They took similar action in September when another strike/ockout deadline loomed.

However this current dispute is “resolved,” a lot of folks are going to come away displeased if not angry. Some of them are going to get a harsh lesson in the realities of labor-management relations. It will be but one chapter in an ongoing novel and a nice, tidy ending.

Rail Labor Strife Far From Settled

A week ago railroad labor peace seemed to be at hand. After an all-night bargaining session in which Labor Secretary Marty Walsh leaned on the parties to make concessions, a tentative agreement was announced around dawn, less than 24 hours before unions under federal railroad labor law were free to strike and their employers were free to lock them out.

Leaders of unions representing locomotive engineers and conductors touted the gains they achieved in modifying work rule pertaining to attendance policies, a 24 percent compounded wage increase over the life of the five-year contract, and heading off railroad management’s determination – for now at least – to restructure the jobs of conductors.

But those tentative agreements came with an important caveat. They are subject to ratification by union members.

Even before the last three unions agreed to a tentative contract, members of one union had rejected the tentative pact their leaders had negotiated earlier and members of two other unions had approved their tentative agreements.

The ratification process won’t be completed among remaining unions for another couple of weeks.

But there is a realistic prospect that the nation could be back to where it was last week with a strike and/or lockout looming again.

Some union workers have taken to social media to blast the agreements, saying they don’t go far enough.

It remains unclear if that is the view of a majority of union rail workers or merely griping by a loud minority.

In a commentary posted Wednesday on the website of Railway Age, Frank Wilner suggested that even if the rank and file union members vote to reject the agreements reached between their unions and the National Carriers Conference Committee, which represents railroad management, there is precedent for union leadership “overriding” the contract rejections.

Wilner, who has written extensively about railroad labor issues for Railway Age and published a book about the federal Railway Labor Act, said there are two scenarios in which that could happen.

Union leaders could cite clauses in the union’s constitution for imposing the contract despite the vote of the rank and file to reject it, or union leadership could reach an agreement with railroad management to submit the contract issue to binding arbitration.

Wilner cited two instances in which union leaders did those things. One instance involved the then-named United Transportation Union in 1996 and the Teamsters in 2018.

You can read Wilner’s column at https://www.railwayage.com/freight/class-i/might-union-chiefs-override-member-vote/

Pay particular attention to the political calculus that might drive union leaders to ignore the will of their members if they vote to reject the tentative agreements.

Even if railroad workers vote to ratify the tentative agreements, that doesn’t mean the restlessness in the ranks that has boiled over in recent months will go away despite the gains that union leaders said they made regarding work rules.

Trains magazine write Bill Stephens offered a thoughtful analysis of the turbulent times that might lie ahead in the wake of the current round of tentative contract agreements.

One scenario he offered is that some workers might stay in their jobs long enough to collect their back pay and then leave.

If large numbers of workers do that, it would set back the efforts of Class 1 railroads to recruit enough workers to alleviate the crew shortages they’ve been experiencing of late and which they claim is the root cause of their service issues.

You can read Stephen’s column at https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/rail-strike-averted-for-now-but-the-industrys-not-out-of-the-woods-yet-analysis/

The analysis ends with the observation that the railroad industry needs stability and less uncertainty. “The best way to go about it would be for labor and management to iron out their differences,” Stephens wrote.

Few would disagree with that. Retiring CSX CEO James Foote suggested as much in remarks made a few months ago.

Yet what if some differences between labor and management are irreconcilable?

Labor-management conflict is inevitable in every workplace because the self-interests of the two don’t always align.

Some of what railroad workers seem to want railroad management is never going to agree to give them.

Managers believe it is their place to set workplace rules. They call it management prerogative. Management might be willing to negotiate on some of those rules, but not all of them.

It is noteworthy that the tentative agreements may have eased some of the rules regarding attendance policies, but the pacts left untouched management’s right to set those policies, including policies that penalize workers for unauthorized absences.

In the meantime, everyone is waiting to see how the union members vote on ratification.

I would expect union leaders to lean hard on them to vote “yes.”

And if they don’t? A strike or lockout is not out of the question. How will it end? Probably not the way that many workers think that it will or hope that it will.

Its Labor Day and the Railroaders are Restless

As Americans today conduct their annual celebration of working men and women there is restlessness in the railroad labor force.

Over the past several months railroaders have flooded the U.S. Surface Transportation Board with letters describing how difficult their jobs have become. They’ve taken to social media and given interviews to news media reporters to say how angry they are about what they describe as draconian attendance policies, having gone more than two years without an increase in wages, and increasingly harsh working conditions.

For a taste of how angry some railroaders are, read the open letter written by 17-year Union Pacific locomotive engineer Michael Paul Lindsey II that he addressed to the National Carriers Conference Committee, which negotiates on behalf of major railroads, and the Association of American Railroads, which represents the interests of U.S. Class 1 railroads.

It can be found at https://www.railwayage.com/freight/class-i/dear-national-carriers-conference-committee-and-aar/

Lindsey’s letter is a rant but also provides some insight into how some railroaders feel about their job and their employer.

A more measured analysis of how railroaders view their work was written by Trains magazine correspondent Bill Stephens and can be found at https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/railroads-ignore-train-crew-complaints-at-their-own-peril-analysis/

This is not to say that railroaders don’t have some legitimate grievances.

The discontent of railroaders is playing out as railroad management and labor unions struggle to agree on a new contract covering wages, benefits, and work rules.

As early as Sept. 16, railroad unions will be free under federal law to strike, and management will be free to lock out workers.

Although a strike or lockout seems unlikely to occur that soon, it still could occur sometime this fall.

Five railroad labor unions have reached a tentative contract agreement and the other seven unions will be in Washington on Wednesday for National Mediation Board supervised negotiations.

If there is a strike and/or lockout, many expect Congress to step in and impose a settlement because the economy could not bear to sustain the disruption of a railroad stoppage.

Congress “settled” strikes and lockouts in 1991 and 1992 but labor wasn’t happy with those outcomes.

Much of the back and forth over working conditions and a new contract is posturing, political theater and brinksmanship.

There are firebrands who want to strike, believing that doing so would bring the railroad industry to its knees.

Railroad labor union leaders and their members have complained bitterly about such things as railroad company profits, stock buybacks, executive compensation, and the precision scheduled railroading operating model.

But those are outside the scope of contract negotiations. A strike is not going to result in Class 1 railroad management dispensing with PSR or undoing the operational changes carriers have made in the past five years, including running fewer and longer trains.

When the current contract dispute is “resolved,” railroaders will see an increase in wages and, perhaps, some incremental improvement in working conditions.

But railroading will continue to be pretty much the same as it is now.

Railroading has always been and always will be a tough job. Freight and passengers move 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and on every day of the year.

There will always be railroaders working in the middle of the night, on weekends and on holidays, even those devoted to celebrating labor.

The railroading lifestyle can be hard on marriages, hard on family life, hard on social life, and hard on mental and physical health. That is not going to change.

The railroad can be a dangerous place to work, and every railroader knows that his or her next run could be their last through no fault of their own. That is not going to change, either.

Nor will railroad managers abandon the use of technology to closely monitor the behavior of their workers and to cut costs.

Railroad management is not going to back down on its desire to take most conductors out locomotive cabs and transform the job into a ground-based position responsible for multiple trains operating in a fixed geographic territory.

Labor accounts for 20 percent of railroad operating costs and management will always be seeking ways to trim that.

It is just a matter of time before management “wins” the crew size battle. Remember when trains used to have as many as five workers onboard? Those days are gone.

I am skeptical about some of the Sabre rattling going on about mass resignations if union workers don’t get a fantastic pay increase, additional paid days off, and more predictable and flexible work schedules.

It may have its downsides, but railroad work at the Class 1 level still pays better than many other jobs. Walking away from railroad work makes a good talking point and rallying cry but it remains to be seen just how many railroaders actually will do it if they don’t get the contract they desire.

In some places where railroaders are based there are few, if any, jobs offering comparable wages to railroad work. It might seem these days as though it’s a worker’s market, but all it would take to change that is an economic downturn in which jobs of any kind could be hard to come by.

Many of the issues surrounding railroad work that railroaders are grumbling about are not unique to the railroad industry. Every workplace has seen technology changes that have enabled managers to keep a closer eye on worker productivity.

It is common in virtually every industry for management to try to squeeze ever more productivity out of workers and to try to do more with less.

It may be, as Stephens wrote in Trains that railroad managers who ignore the discontent of their workers do so their own peril. It is equally true, though, that railroaders who underestimate the legal muscle and political power that railroad management can bring to bear in a labor dispute do so at their own peril, too.

Yes, railroad work can be tough, but so are many other jobs. That will never change, either. When it comes to setting the terms of the workplace, the advantage will almost always go to management and ownership.

Is an Outing to Bellevue Worth $80?

What is a day of railfanning in Bellevue worth? As Marty Surdyk sees it could cost almost $80.

Using the current average price of a gallon of gasoline, Surdyk, calculated that driving from the Cleveland area to Bellevue and back would cost between $30 and $40, assuming your vehicle averages 20 miles per gallon.

If you buy lunch and/or dinner on the way or in Bellevue, that runs the cost up to about $80.

Bellevue is a nice place to railfan, but is it worth paying that much?

Writing in The Mainline, the newsletter of the Forest City Division of the Railroad Enthusiasts, Marty added this kicker: “Just for a day of railfanning NS in a familiar location.”

Those in the RRE who are active railfans probably have been to Bellevue numerous times.

If they make the trip there this Saturday for the RRE’s annual Bellevue outing they are unlikely to see much, if anything, they haven’t seen or photographed before.

Nor will they likely see anything they couldn’t see in Berea or Olmsted Falls, both popular Cleveland area railfan spots on the Chicago Line of Norfolk Southern.

After all, an NS locomotive looks the same in Bellevue as it does in Berea. Most of the NS trains that pass through Berea don’t pass through Bellevue but an NS train is an NS train.

From a strictly train watching perspective, it would be more economical to stay closer to home to railfan.

Sure, Belleveue is a change of scenery, but is it worth $80?

There are other factors that enter the cost-benefit analysis other than raw economics.

An intangible benefit to making the trip to Bellevue is the socializing that will occur among club members. Sure, RRE meets every month so there are ample opportunities to socialize with people you know.

Yet most of RRE’s monthly meetings don’t involve standing trackside to watch live trains. Maybe that’s worth something. But $80?

Still, keep in mind that if you don’t buy meals during the outing but instead bring your lunch and wait to eat dinner when you get home, the Bellevue outing will cost less than half of $80.

This summer some Northeast Ohio railfans will make much longer drives to see, photograph and, perhaps ride behind, the former Reading 2102 on the Reading & Northern in eastern Pennsylvania, or the former Chesapeake & Ohio No. 1309 on the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad in Cumberland, Maryland.

It will cost far more than $80 to make those trips. Yet the cost of gasoline won’t stop those railfans from making those trips or enjoying them.

They may grumble every time they stop to refuel but they’ll make the trip anyway because the allure of seeing a newly-restored steam locomotive in action is an experience they want to have.

Had Union Pacific not paused its plans to run its Big Boy steam locomotive this summer in the West some Northeast Ohio railfans would have paid whatever it costs to go catch it.

Seeing the Big Boy in action is an experience that make the cost worth paying even as those travelers gripe about higher air fares, higher rental car costs and higher prices of gasoline.

It is like any endeavor in life. How much does it mean to you and can you afford the cost?

More than likely, many, if not most, of the RRE members interested in this week’s Bellevue outing will make the trip despite the cost because they can afford it and they want to enjoy the experience.

Marty went on to write in his column, “It’s a tough pill to swallow. If you’re like me and love to explore the countryside for new and different photo locations, you need to tow a Brink’s truck behind you to have enough cash available for food and fuel.”

The Brinks truck reference is an exaggeration, but it makes a point.

The price of railfanning can’t be ignored – not that it ever could be – and with gasoline prices at elevated levels and likely to stay that way for the rest of the summer it means many railfans won’t be getting out as often or roaming as far as they might have if the price of gasoline was still what it was early this year.

Marty didn’t say he wouldn’t be making the Bellevue trip because of its cost. But he and others will think about that more than they might have otherwise.

Commentary by Craig Sanders

Amtrak Expects to Need $1B in Annual Federal Funding for the Next Decade

Back in 2019 when the much reviled Richard Anderson was president of Amtrak, the nation’s passenger railroad talked a lot about how it was on the cusp of breaking even.

A budget estimate that Amtrak sent to Congress in March 2020 even predicted operating profits by 2025. Those profits were expected to grow over the next decade.

But that same month the COVID-19 pandemic took hold and the bottom fell out for Amtrak and other transportation providers.

America’s Railroad, as Amtrak likes to call itself, lost 97 percent of its ridership and Congress responded by providing Amtrak $3.7 billion in emergency funding in federal fiscal years 2020 and 2021 to stave off bankruptcy.

Although COVID-19 and its variants is still around, the pandemic fears have been waning and passengers are returning to the rails.

Amtrak now projects that it will reach pre-COVID ridership and revenue by FY2024, which begins Oct. 1, 2023.

Yet the passenger carrier’s most recent budget estimates submitted to Congress show a shift in the thinking of Amtrak management about its finances.

Gone are the rosy projections of operating profits. Those have been replaced with an acknowledgement that Amtrak will need federal funding of $1 billion a year over the next decade.

The Eno Center for Transportation has published an analysis of Amtrak’s latest budget estimates that provides an overview of how Amtrak sees its finances playing out in the next several years.

That analysis can be read at https://www.enotrans.org/article/amtrak-concedes-perpetual-1-billion-year-operating-losses/

From my perspective, the most interesting and important points in the analysis written by Jeff Davis are made toward the end because they hint at a coming battle in Congress that some rail passenger advocates may not see coming.

In the past several months Amtrak supporters have been talking up the benefits to intercity rail passenger service of the infusion of money from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

The Rail Passengers Association has touted IIJA as an unprecedented if not a once in a lifetime $36 billion investment in passenger rail.

In talking about how transformative this funding will be, RPA has oversold what IIJA is likely to produce. That could be setting up some of its members for future shock.

There is, of course, some truth to the rhetoric being espoused by RPA and other rail passenger advocates. And to his credit RPA head Jim Mathews has hinted that the gains of IIJA could be more fragile than many of his members want to believe.

IIJA has created the potential for expansion of the nation’s rail passenger network. That in turn has led to expectations that have been fed by Amtrak itself proposing an expansive plan known as Amtrak ConnectsUS that would create more than 30 new corridor services.

But expectations are not reality nor do they always become reality.

It is true that the IIJA contains funding that could help launch some of those new services envisioned in Amtrak ConnectsUS.

But what some may not recognize unless they have paid close attention is that IIJA is a capital funding program. It provides not a dime for operating expenses of a single Amtrak train.

Those expenses will be paid for by ticket revenue, public money or both.

Now Amtrak has said that it will not make enough in ticket revenue to pay the expenses of its trains.

For most rail passenger advocates that is no big deal. They have long acknowledged that passenger trains need public funding and have sought to explain that away by saying that all forms of transportation are funded at some level with public funding.

There is some truth to that if you consider that the infrastructure used by airlines and bus companies is paid for in part with public money.

Airlines and bus companies will counter that they pay their “fair share” through user fees and taxes of the cost of that infrastructure, but that’s a debatable proposition that is at best a half truth.

The public funding of airline and bus operations does not stand out as a line item in a budget as does funding of Amtrak operations.

In his analysis, Davis makes a valid point in writing, “Amtrak can claim with some credibility that Congress, through the IIJA, chose to de-emphasize the issue of operating losses.”

He then makes a side-by-side comparison of what the federal code says about Amtrak operations before and after passage of the IIJA.

At first glance, those changes appear to put to rest the notion that Amtrak is expected to be profitable.

But read the language again. Whereas before passage of the IIJA Section  C of 49 U.S.C. §24101 said “Amtrak shall . . . use its best business judgment in acting to minimize United States Government subsidies . . .” the IIJA changed the phrasing to Amtrak shall “maximize the benefits of Federal investments.”

Nothing in the federal code requires Congress to spend money on intercity rail passenger service at all. Likewise, the federal code does not require Congress to spend whatever it takes to maintain the existing Amtrak network forever let alone spend money to expand that network.

That is a significant point because the debate in Congress is not so much about whether Amtrak trains lose money – even if some members try to frame it that way – as it is how much to spend to underwrite those losses.

Since Amtrak’s inception in 1971, some members of Congress have sought to end federal funding of intercity rail passenger service if not put Amtrak out of business.

Those efforts have uniformly failed although at times Congress has reduced its financial support of Amtrak, which in turn led to the discontinuance of some routes and trains.

The last significant shrinkage of routes and services occurred in the early 2000s, the service suspensions that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic notwithstanding.

It is also noteworthy that those early 2000s service reductions came as a coda to the last time Amtrak proposed major service expansions, many of which never occurred.

In the Eno analysis, Davis notes that when the IIJA was adopted deficit spending was not considered by a majority of members of Congress to be a problem because the nation was still recovering from the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But now the nation is facing large scale inflation and budget deficits are one factor that drives inflation.

If as many political pundits predict Republicans gain control of one or both chambers of Congress in the November elections Amtrak funding requests may face a more hostile environment.

It may be that federal law doesn’t require Amtrak trains to make a profit, but that means nothing to deficit hawks. It never has and it never will. They have beliefs about what is a legitimate purpose on which to spend public money and what is not. Intercity rail passenger service is among the latter.

And some Republicans have already signaled what they hope to do about Amtrak.

Rep. Rick Crawford (R-Arkansas) introduced the Returning Amtrak to Economic Sustainability Act, which calls for changing the language of 49 USC 24101 to replace  the word “modern in the phrase “intercity passenger and commuter rail passenger transportation” with “economically sustainable.”

The RATES act would also add the phrase “while ensuring route profitability proportional to the Federal share of investment” as well.

It is uncertain if the RATES Act would make it through a GOP-controlled Congress although it likely would receive a more favorable reception than it has in the current Congress controlled by Democrats.

But even if Democrats maintain control of Congress, lawmakers must still deal with the prospect of having to, as Davis put it, “either write the checks for the billion-per-year operating losses over the coming decade, or else use their annual platform to encourage (or require) Amtrak to pay attention to operating losses if they want to avoid writing those checks.”

That could easily lead to environments such as existed in the late 1970s, in the early 1980s and in the late 1990s when Amtrak budget cuts resulted in service reductions.

Rather than enjoying the fruits of a second passenger rail renaissance in which the nation’s passenger train network expands, passenger train advocates will be faced with fighting to save as much existing service as they can if not having to save Amtrak itself.

Amtrak’s budget projections are filled with figures that show how much money long-distance passenger trains lose per passenger.

Those numbers have been used in the past to argue in favor of reducing if not ending federal spending on passenger trains. Don’t be surprised if those arguments surface again.

Richard Anderson is unlikely to return as Amtrak’s president but the political climate could lead to another Amtrak CEO who thinks as Anderson did and behaves as Anderson did in taking aim at long-distance trains for reduction.

Rail Passenger Funding, Running Amtrak on Time, New NS President Didn’t Impress Some Workers

Bit and pieces of insights into the workings of railroad world . . .

I recently received in my email inbox a message quoting Evan Stair of the Friends of the Southwest Chief group in which he suggested that the promise of new and expanded service contained in the Amtrak Connects US plan is largely a mirage.

Stair, whose group has been promoting additional Amtrak service along Colorado’s Front Range and extending the Heartland Flyer north of Oklahoma City to connect with the Chief in Kansas, was commenting on a Bloomberg News story in which Amtrak President Stephen Gardner said the plan to add 39 new routes will require state financial support.

Amtrak has estimated the plan will cost $75 billion to implement.

In his interview, Gardner characterized the federal government as the capital partner but the ongoing operating expenses are the responsibility of the states and Amtrak.

And Amtrak has made clear that it’s responsibility to pay operating expenses will only last at best for five years. After that states will be on the hook to pay operating expenses as is the case now with state-supported corridors on the West Coast, in the Midwest and along the East Coast.

“I frankly believe the Amtrak Connects US program will result in few, if any new routes,” Stair wrote. “States are unlikely to commit to long-term operational dollars without some federal operational matches.”

Stair is probably right about that but could have gone even farther. It may not be realistic to think that states that are not now and/or have never paid Amtrak for corridor service will do so in the future even with a short-term Amtrak funding match for operational expenses.

Yes, I’m talking about you, Ohio.

Speaking of Amtrak, Canadian Pacific CEO Keith Creel told a Midwest shippers conference in Chicago last week that he was “proud” of having reached an agreement with the passenger carrier to allow for the prospect of additional passenger service on routes operated by CP and it merger partner Kansas City Southern.

As reported by Trains magazine, Creel also talked about how CP has become one of Amtrak’s best host railroads in dispatching its trains on time. It wasn’t always that way.

“Five years ago, six years ago, we didn’t lead the industry in Amtrak service,” Creel said.

He went on to say that his 30 years as an operating officer taught him that it’s not easy for a freight railroad to coexist with passenger service.

“I understand the conflicts sometimes and the tradeoffs sometimes when you mix high speed passenger rail with what is, in comparative terms, low-speed freight rail,” Creel said. “I understand the track geometry challenges, I understand the speed challenges. But I also understand that if you prioritize right, and there’s tradeoffs, and balance in a partnership, you can succeed. And that’s the approach we’ve taken at CP.”

Creel’s comments suggest that having the right attitude is key to running passenger trains on time and if CP can do it so could the other Class 1 Amtrak host railroads.

Yet CP doesn’t host as many Amtrak trains as its Class 1 brethren and doesn’t host any long-distance trains over thousands of miles.

Perhaps the best that can be expected is that the host railroads could do better than they do, but dispatching is a balancing act and there will be times when a host railroad puts its own interests ahead of avoiding delaying Amtrak for what the host sees as a relatively short period of time.

Speaking at the same shipper’s conference, new Norfolk Southern President Alan Shaw told a story of how on his first day in his new post he decided to go out into the field and meet and greet NS operating employees in Toledo, which is the largest NS crew change point on the system.

 “I wanted to thank [the employees] for their dedication to Norfolk Southern and our customers, and I wanted to get their input into how we fix service and how we continue to improve our productivity,” Shaw said.

As reported by Trains magazine on its website, Shaw said he approached some workers sitting outside the crew room.

He was wearing khakis, boots and a collared shirt and the workers thought he was an operations supervisor.

 “So I walk up and introduce myself. They told me their names, and one of the guys said, ‘Well, what do you do?’ I said, ‘Well, I’m the president’. And he looks at me, and I’m like, ‘Not Joe Biden president, but president of Norfolk Southern.’ And the other dude pulls out his phone, and he’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I see the announcement. Congratulations!

“So that made me feel good. And then the one guy looks at me and says, ‘What craft did you come from?  . . . Were you mechanical, or engineering, or a conductor, or an engineer?’

“And I was like, ‘No, I started in finance.’ He was really not impressed with that. He goes, ‘Man, at some point, we’re going to have a craft employee running the railroad.’

“It is somewhat humbling when you go out there and talk to them, because they’ve got their own expectations.”

Shaw is right about that, but expectations are not reality. It’s possible that a future railroad president might have worked as a craft employee at an early point in his or her railroad career, but it is not realistic to think that C suite executives will be pulled from the ranks of operating or maintenance employees.

If you want to be a railroad president you need to have spent extensive time in such areas as finance, law or marketing and moved up the ranks in those departments.

Operating employees are not the only railroad stakeholders who have expectations and the expectations of some stakeholders carry more weight than those of others.

Shaw told another story about his first conversation with members of the railroad’s board of directors.

 “Their primary message to me was, ‘Don’t mess up,’” Shaw said. “Now, it was a little more forceful than that. I’ll let you use your imagination what the real verb was that they used.”

I think we can easily figure that one out.

Charting the Obstacles to Passenger Rail Expansion

Last in a three-part series

During the week that leaders in the House of Representatives were struggling to push approval of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act over the finish line, CSX and Norfolk Southern fired another shot across Amtrak’s bow.

The two Class 1 passenger carriers asked the U.S. Surface Transportation Board to dismiss a case brought by Amtrak last spring seeking to have regulators compel the freight carriers to host a new rail passenger service between New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama.

The Gulf Coast corridor proposal is a harbinger of what lies ahead for other proposed new Amtrak services that could be funded by the IIJA. It is a sobering cautionary tale.

Funding for operating and capital expenses is already in place for the 150-mile New Orleans-Mobile route that until August 2005 hosted Amtrak’s tri-weekly Sunset Limited between Los Angeles and Orlando, Florida.

CSX, which owns most of the route, has been dragging its feet on the proposed New Orleans-Mobile service for more than five years. At one point it demanded $2 billion in route infrastructure work.

In their STB filing, CSX and NS said they would withdraw their opposition to the new service if Amtrak pays for 14 capacity improvement projects the carriers say are needed.

In a fit of hyperbole, the Class 1 carriers said Amtrak service without these improvements would cause “systematic failure” to their freight service, most notably adversely affecting first mile, last mile freight service to shippers. These assertions would be comical were they not so serious.

For years Amtrak’s host railroads have demanded expensive infrastructure improvements as the price of agreeing to service expansion, including daily service for the Sunset Limited and Cardinal, or new service on a now freight-only route.

Many a service expansion has been stymied due to these demands for capital improvements, which Amtrak usually cannot afford.

The underlying conflict before the STB is about more than whether passenger trains are going to operate between New Orleans and Mobile and how much Amtrak and its state partners will have to pony up for infrastructure improvement projects.

Ultimately, it is about rules and whose interests those rules favor.

Amtrak and rail passenger advocates want rules that provide an easier path to service expansion in the face of host railroad resistance.

The host railroads want to maintain the status quo of being able to dictate the terms of access. They dislike having to deal with political pressure seeking to force them to accept passenger trains that they view as having the potential to interfere with their freight operations. They dislike having foisted upon them something they view as contributing nothing to their primary reason for being, namely providing transportation of freight.

I’ve written about this issue before and you can follow this link to read more: https://wordpress.com/post/akronrrclub.wordpress.com/61853

If Amtrak loses the STB Gulf case or gets a mixed decision that could curtail how much service expansion it is able to achieve.

But even a favorable decision for Amtrak may not be enough. NS and CSX and/or the Association of American Railroads are likely to go to court to seek to overturn that ruling or get it modified. They have the resources to litigate for as long as it takes to get the rules that they want.

From a rail passenger advocate perspective, the STB case is about serving the public interest. Rail passenger advocates make the assumption that additional intercity rail passenger service by definition does that.

From a host railroad perspective, the STB case is about maintaining control of its own property and protecting its competitive position in the transportation industry.

This is not to say host railroad resistance can’t be overcome. It is matter of on whose terms these disputes will be settled and how much that will cost. It is why the STB case could be critical to the success of the Amtrak ConnectsUS plan.

There are other potential obstacles standing in the way of passenger rail expansion.

The Amtrak ConnectsUS plan is predicated on state and/or local governments taking over the operating expenses of the new corridors described in the plan.

Amtrak has proposed paying up to 90 percent of those costs initially and fronting money for capital projects to establish stations and do host railroad-demanded infrastructure work.

The Amtrak share of operating costs will eventually reach zero over a six-year period.

A key question is whether Amtrak or the FRA will move ahead on projects in which the state(s) to be served by a new route fail to commit to picking up their share of a route’s operating costs.

The Amtrak ConnectsUS plan seems built on the belief that once the new services are up and running the states served will recognize their value and provide funding. Amtrak seems to be hoping that public pressure will lead to continued state funding of the service by the states served.

But what if they don’t? Many of the proposed new corridors are in states that have never funded Amtrak service. Why would they want to do so now?

The American Recovery and Investment Act of 2009 contained $8 billion in grants for high-speed rail projects that did not require a state match.

In January 2010 Ohio received a $400 million grant to launch the 3-C Quick Start project.

In that year’s gubernatorial election, Republican John Kasich actively campaigned against the 3C project and Republicans who controlled the Ohio General Assembly expressed concerns about Ohio having to pay $17 million for operating costs.

After defeating incumbent Ted Strickland, a Democrat, Kasich killed the 3-C project. Ohio Republican legislative leaders in a move that was not well publicized at the time created rules that made it highly unlikely that Ohio would be able to use the federal grant to establish the 3-C Quick Start project.

The U.S. Department of Transportation took back the grant minus the $2 million Ohio had already spent. That money was disbursed elsewhere, primarily to California.

Ohio was not alone in spurning ARIA funding for rail passenger service. Projects in Florida and Wisconsin also were killed by incoming Republican governors.

The rules for grants the FRA will be awarding from IIJA funds have yet to be written although the IIJA enabling legislation establishes some criteria as described earlier in this series.

It is not difficult, though, to image that what happened in Ohio in 2010 could happen again when it comes to developing new passenger service envisioned by the Amtrak ConnectsUS plan.

Some new passenger services may result from IIJA funding, but the scope of expansion might be more modest than what rail advocates are envisioning.

Another obstacle could arise in 2023 when the 118^th Congress is seated.

Just as what happened in Ohio in 2010, the 2022 election season is likely to feature candidates pledging to repeal or restrict how funds from the IIJA are used. Passenger rail could find itself in the cross hairs of those attacks.

Historically, the party that holds the White House in a president’s first term loses seats in Congress in the next mid-term election.

With Democrats holding paper-thin margins in the House and Senate, it would not take much for Republicans to gain control of one or both chambers in the 2022 elections.

If that happens, the environment for passenger rail in the 118^th Congress likely will be quite different than it has been in the 117^th Congress.

As pointed out in the first installment of this series, realizing the full potential of the IIJA on passenger rail service expansion will require appropriation of funds by Congress.

It is difficult to imagine a GOP-Controlled Congress being receptive to spending billions on new rail passenger service.

Republicans tend not to favor expansive and expensive government programs. Many GOP members of Congress identify as fiscal conservatives and they often oppose government-funded passenger rail of any kind.

Some of Amtrak’s fiercest and most persistent critics are conservative think tanks and many GOP members of Congress align with their views when it comes to transportation policy.

President Joseph R. Biden will still be sending appropriation proposals to Congress in January 2023 and 2024 and his administration probably can be counted on to recommend friendly budgets for passenger rail.

Yet Congress will have the final say on how much money passenger rail receives. A Republican-controlled Congress will not be inclined to give Biden any victories he can point to if he seeks re-election in 2024.

It’s not that all Republicans are opposed to intercity passenger rail. Amtrak’s national network has survived as long as it has because enough GOP representatives and senators have voted in favor of continued funding for it. Some of them have advocated for maintaining the existing Amtrak service in their states.

Republicans and Democrats have philosophical differences when it comes to how to spend public money and what to spend it on. There is nothing sinister about that. It is just a divergence of viewpoints about the role of government at the federal, state and local levels.

This includes differing views on the role government has to play in transportation policy and what modes of transportation should benefit the most from government investment.

But even putting that aside, there are limitations as to how much either party is willing to spend on rail passenger service.

In the 50 years of Amtrak’s existence, many Democratic administrations and Democratic-controlled chambers of Congress have failed to provide the type of reliable dedicated funding of rail passenger service that advocates and Amtrak have sought.

It is one thing to marshal political support to maintain the status quo of the existing intercity rail network and quite another to build support for the type of expansive additions to the network that rail passenger advocates favor.

There just seems to be too many forces that have kept intercity rail passenger service from developing into something more than a boutique form of transportation. The IIJA has not vanquished those forces.

The passage of the IIJA and its historic levels of passenger rail funding may thus turn out to be an aberration rather than a transformation to a new world order in which the nation’s rail passenger network undergoes a substantial expansion to resemble something from the 1950s.

There is too much entrenched opposition from interests who fear passenger rail’s gains will come at their expense.

This dynamic be can be seen at the state level where lawmakers must approve a balanced budget every year and passenger rail funding is weighed against the importance of other needs.

Those competing interests were on vivid display in Ohio in 2010 in the controversy over the 3-C Quick Start project.

Aside from a potentially hostile political environment and host railroad intransigence, the success of passenger rail programs funded by IIJA are linked to how well or how poorly the law is implemented.

The potential of the IIJA to influence rail passenger service is a long game and over the course of it there are bound to be changes in priorities among Amtrak managers, members of key congressional committees, and state and local transportation agencies.

Those changes will affect what does and doesn’t get done.

At this point there is much anticipation and expectation among rail passenger advocates about what could happen now that the IIJA is in place.

But expectations are not reality. It is a lesson passenger advocates know all too well. For once there is reason to be optimistic that good things are going to happen. From a passenger rail perspective, some good things will happen with IIJA funding.

It is just that what IIJA is able to achieve may not be as far-reaching as many passenger rail advocates want to believe.

It is far from a sure thing that we are on the cusp of a new era or a second rail revolution.

How IIJA’s Rail Funding is Being Allocated

Second in a three-part series

If you’ve ridden an Amtrak long-distance train lately, you know why the passenger carrier could use some new equipment.

As you sit in your Superliner sleeper room you’ll hear squeaks and rattles. Savvy travelers have learned to bring duct tape with them to help muffle the noise.

It will take awhile but new equipment to replace the Superliners, the first of which entered revenue service in 1979, may be on the way thanks to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

IIJA is a way for Amtrak to capture capital funding it has coveted for years but been unable to get approved by Congress.

Much of the $66 billion for rail in the IIJA will be used to rebuild existing infrastructure and buy new equipment to replace passenger cars and locomotives that are long in the tooth.

As for how the money in the IIJA for rail will be divided, the Northeast Corridor gets $30 billion with $6 billion going directly to Amtrak and $24 billion being funneled through the Federal Railroad Administration for federal-state partnership grants.

Amtrak’s priorities for this funding include replacement of the Portal Bridge over the Hackensack River in New Jersey; construction of new tunnels under the Hudson River between New Jersey and New York City; rehabilitating a tunnel under the East River in New York City; replacing the B&P Tunnel in Baltimore; and planning to rebuild or replace bridges over the Susquehanna and Connecticut rivers.

The national network gets $28 billion of which $16 billion goes directly to Amtrak and $12 billion to FRA federal-state partnership grants.

Aside from buying new equipment, this funding will be used for infrastructure work on select national network routes, including Amtrak maintenance facilities and passenger stations.

Much of the latter involves bringing stations up to date in meeting standards of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

The federal Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements grant program gets $5 billion but this money is not restricted solely to passenger rail projects.

The FRA’s grade crossing elimination program gets $3 billion, which can be used for Amtrak-owned lines, such as the one in Michigan, or for freight and commuter rail lines.

The bill reserves $50 million for an FRA Restoration and Enhancement Grants program, which is the funding mechanism for new service on routes Amtrak does not now serve.

There is also $15 million set aside for the FRA to conduct a study of routes operated “less often” – think the Cardinal and Sunset Limited – as well as restoration of previously discontinued long-distance routes or new long-distance routes.

All that is guaranteed to happen is the FRA will conduct a study that might recommend changing tri-weekly trains to daily operation,

The FRA study might recommend adding new long-distance routes or restoring trains that vanished decades ago such as the North Coast Hiawatha, Lone Star or Broadway Limited.

It will be up to Congress to appropriate the money to pay for those trains and Amtrak would need to negotiate operating agreements with the host railroads.

It will be years before the potential of the IIJA is fully realized.

Amtrak is in the very early stages of designing new cars to replace the Superliner fleet.

Even when new cars and locomotives roll off the factory floor it can be months before they begin revenue service.

The new Siemens Venture cars to be used in Midwest corridor services have yet to begin revenue service despite having been on the property for months.

The first new Siemens ALC-42 Charger locomotives are still undergoing testing. For that matter Amtrak has yet to put into revenue service all of the Viewliner II equipment it has.

Many of the improvements the money from the IIJA is expected to pay for will occur behind the scenes, such as modernizing the reservation system.

As has been demonstrated many times during Amtrak’s 50-year history, the wheels of change turn slowly and sometimes they don’t turn at all.

A host of obstacles lie in the path of new and improved rail service over which Amtrak and the Biden administration little to no control.

These have the potential to thwart new services and even reduce the effectiveness of the IIJA.

Next: The challenges facing passenger rail will dictate how transformative the IIJA turns out to be.

Analyzing Amtrak’s Revamped Dining Service

Amtrak returned full-service dining to five long-distance trains a month ago, all of them operating in the West and parts of the Midwest.

I haven’t had an opportunity to sample the revived full-service dining, but a two-part report written by Bob Johnston, the passenger correspondent for  Trains magazine was published last week on the magazine’s website and offers some insight into the service.

Johnston generally gave Amtrak high marks for its revamped dining car menus and service.

One key take away from his report is the food has improved in quality over that served in dining cars before full-service dining was removed in late spring 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic that sent Amtrak ridership plummeting.

A chef working the Chicago-Los Angeles Southwest Chief gave as an example the flat iron steak which he said is “the same cut, but these (served now) have more marbling and are a lot more dense.”

Other changes have included the addition of colorful garnishes, more seasoning and multiple sauces. Vegetables served with entrees were described as fresher.

The steak still comes with a baked potato but patrons can request a creamy polenta, which the chef said compliments the Bordelaise sauce served with the steak.

Before the pandemic, dinners came with a lettuce salad but that has been replaced with a choice among three appetizers: A tossed-to-order salad of baby greens and tomatoes topped with a brie cheese; a lobster cake, or a green cheese tamale.

As before, dinners come with a desert. Unlike before, dinners now come with one complimentary alcoholic beverage.

Yet in some ways full-service dining is little changed from what it was before the pandemic. Entrée staples still include the flat iron steak, chicken breast, and salmon. There is also a tri-color cheese tortellini pasta dish.

Not everything is prepared fresh on board. The lobster cake comes precooked and frozen so the kitchen staff merely heats it onboard.

The Trains analysis, which was based on sampling meals aboard the Southwest Chief, said the changes to breakfast and lunch have been a little more subtle.

Back is French toast, which can be ordered with whipped cream. There are made-to-order omelets.

However, passengers still can’t order eggs over easy or get toast at breakfast. Both were eliminated in the 1990s.

Full-service dining is available only to sleeping class passengers. Coach passengers are confined to the snack-heavy café car.

At the time that Amtrak announced the return of full-service dining to the western trains it also said it planned to add fresh selections to café cars. Those additions have yet to be made.

And it remains unclear when or if full-service dining will return to eastern long-distance trains or the Texas Eagle.

The Trains analysis aptly noted that some passengers aboard those trains are onboard for more than four meal periods.

Amtrak has hinted that full-service dining might return to eastern long distance trains late this year or in 2022. Officials said the carrier wanted to gauge passenger response to the new menus on the western trains before looking to implement them elsewhere.

As for when or even if coach passengers will be able to dine in the diner, Amtrak has been noncommittal. Officials said they were studying that but suggested it might take the form of allowing coach passengers to buy meals on a take-out basis and/or have them delivered to their coach seat.

The Trains analysis offered a glimpse of two conundrums posing a challenge to allowing coach passengers back in the dining car. It would require additional staff in the kitchen and dining room in order to create faster table turnover.

Another factor is pricing. Before Amtrak instituted flexible dining in June 2018 on the Lake Shore Limited and Capitol Limited, dining car menus had prices. The current dining car menus on the western trains do not show prices because the clientele already paid for their meals in their sleeping car fare.

As I’ve written in previous posts, most of those dining car prices were quite high with some entrees costing more than $20. Even breakfast was quite pricey for what you got.

The Trains analysis suggested some less labor intensive food selections would have to be added to the menu that could be sold at lower cost.

Many, if not most, coach passengers are unwilling to pay or unable to afford the prices Amtrak charged in dining cars in the past.

There will always be coach passengers willing to pay those prices to have the dining car experience. But they are not necessarily a majority of the coach clientele.

Amtrak’s food and beverage service is an evolving process that isn’t moving as fast or necessarily toward the destination that many rail passenger advocates want it to see.

The dining car experience is still not the same as it was before the pandemic or, in the case of eastern long-distance trains, since the onset of flexible dining with its limited choices.

Amtrak management has not talked about the prospect of doing what the passenger carrier did in the 1990s when dining car menus featured regional offerings associated with a region of the country the train served.

That lasted a few years then fell by the wayside as Amtrak management went to a standard dining car menu for all trains with diners.

For now, the dining car experience is available only in the West and only to those with the means to afford sleeping car fares.

Dining service is an emotional subject for some passengers and passenger train advocates, particularly those above a certain age, who wax nostalgic about all of the people they enjoyed conversing with over a meal and lament having lost that.

Some remember a time when railroads used their dining service as a marketing tool and offered meals that rivaled in quality what was served in the better hotel restaurants.

They tend to believe as an article of faith that full-service dining is critical to drawing more people aboard the train and boosting Amtrak’s revenue.

Johnston, the Trains passenger correspondent, falls into that camp. In his piece he argued that reviving full-service dining on such trains as the Lake Shore Limited, Capitol Limited, Cardinal, and City of New Orleans would give “travelers in some of the country’s top population centers more incentive to ride.”

That in turn would generate more cash for Amtrak, Johnston asserted. How much more? He didn’t say because he doesn’t know.

There is much Amtrak knows about its finances and passengers that it doesn’t share with the public, arguing that that information is proprietary.

It probably is true that the upgraded dining service has boosted the morale of Amtrak food and beverage workers as the article suggested and resulted in happier passengers.

Yet as the pandemic and the politically-motivated attacks on Amtrak food and beverage service of past years have shown, all of that can change virtually overnight and probably will.