(The following story by Megan Tate appeared on the Southern Illinoisan website on January 6.)
CARBONDAL, Ill. — Every year the Christy family journeys from their home in Rockford to spend Christmas with their family in New Orleans. Daniel, Diane, Sam and Josh have made the trip on Amtrak’s City of New Orleans train five times in recent years.
“A lot of the faces are the same,” Diane said. But this year, something was different.
For one thing, they had a lot more company on the train, which was sold out. Ridership on the City of New Orleans is up 3 percent for the 12 months ending in September, totaling 180,473 passengers for the Amtrak fiscal year. Ticket revenue is up 6.6 percent. This increase in ridership is true of Amtrak overall, said Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari.
“Every train in the system in November was up over the previous November,” Magliari said. Amtrak also posted an all-time record for ridership during the last fiscal year.
In response to this overall increase, Amtrak is experimenting with a new food service car on the City of New Orleans train that offers a taste of its namesake city. The Cross Country Café opened at the end of October and includes menu items such as jambalaya, red beans and rice and bread pudding pie.
“We want to make each train experience a little unique instead of being generic,” Magliari explained.
Diane welcomes the change in the dining facilities on the train that her family has grown to know so well. “I think it’s a great idea,” she said.
“It’s been a real success,” said Angela Simms, an Amtrak customer service manager. “There’s something for everybody in this car. You can have dinner, you can have appetizers, you can have wine, you can have cocktails, all in one area.”
In addition to the New Orleans specialty items, the Cross Country Café menu offers everything from quesadillas to lasagna, salad, seafood and more.
The food was a surprise to Jane Bean from Michigan, who expected everything to come out of a microwave. Instead she enjoyed an eight-ounce flatiron steak while her husband, Mitch, tried the jambalaya.
“The food and beverage service is the heart of the train,” Magliari said. “That’s where people gather. It’s the only place I can think of in America where you can wind up having dinner sitting at the same table with people you’ve never met before.”
Michelle Hall, who was headed to Memphis to spend the holidays with her mom, also was surprised by the cuisine. “I wasn’t expecting that type of food on the train,” she said. “I think it’s a good idea.”
The Cross Country Café is an experiment, Magliari said, one that if successful might be introduced on other trains. Someday soon the Texas Eagle, for example, could be serving Texas barbecue.
It’s all part of the effort to keep ridership levels high. Amtrak brings in about $1.5 billion a year running passenger trains and the public cost of running those trains is something like $500 million per year, Magliari said.
“Overwhelmingly, this service is paid for by the users,” he explained. “So the mythology that trains are empty and we’re hugely underwritten with public dollars is false.”
Resources are tight, however, and that’s why Magliari hopes the Cross Country Café becomes both an attractive feature to passengers and a better financial performer for Amtrak.
Amtrak provides intercity passenger rail services to more than 400 destinations in 46 states on a 21,000-mile route system.
“There’s something about it, the conversation, the break from the routine, you get to meet new people,” said Jane Bean. “I think people ought to be encouraged to take the train.”