Plan calls for daily service in Staunton
(The following story by David Fritz appeared on the News Leader website on September 30, 2010.)
STAUNTON, W.Va. — Amtrak’s Cardinal long-distance train would step up to daily service in Staunton under a performance improvement plan released by the passenger railroad Wednesday.
Other improvements would include better food service and checked baggage service at staffed stations, which Staunton is not.
There’s even a tantalizing footnote indicating Amtrak might be able to purchase existing domed observation cars for use on the Cardinal, which traverses what’s considered the railroad’s most scenic eastern route, including West Virginia’s New River Gorge. That development apparently came to light late in the plan drafting process and didn’t receive full consideration.
In 2008, Congress required Amtrak to come up with plans to improve poorly performing trains as part of a funding authorization, said Amtrak spokesman Mark Magliari. When the documents are complete, they will become a blueprint for future improvements. Any move to daily service wouldn’t be immediate, he added.
Other trains recently studied include the Capitol Limited and California Zephyr.
Customer satisfaction is the main item the plan writers want to measure.
The plans cover factors within Amtrak’s control — equipment, schedules, crew and marketing — and items where it has limited influence — on-time performance, for example, which in most of the country puts Amtrak at the mercy of host railroads.
This summer, the Cardinal’s on-time percentage swooned. The Buckingham Branch Railroad, which operates the CSX tracks through the Staunton area, was specifically addressed because of the high number of delays it contributed to the Cardinal’s performance. The delays, Amtrak pointed out, were because of tie replacements and thus not a permanent problem.
As he waited for Wednesday’s westbound train, Walter Hojka of Staunton, who teaches part-time at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago, said he likes the idea of daily service.
“The thing about it being three days a week is it’s hard enough to find a day to come out, but then you have to work with your schedule to come back,” said Hojka. “The biggest improvement to this route would be an everyday train. Sometimes I have to take the train out of Martinsburg (W.Va.) because of the schedule.”
Currently, the Cardinal operates three days a week in each direction between New York City and Chicago. East and westbound trains stop in Staunton on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays.
The train’s ridership has held steady, and at times grown, for much of the past decade even while amenities deteriorated.
A search of Amtrak’s reservation system for October finds only two days when a rider getting on in Staunton could book first-class accommodations to Chicago.
During the last two reporting years, about 109,000 riders have taken the Cardinal, many of them traveling to cities that don’t have any other rail service.
Until the early 2000s, the train ran with more spacious bi-level Superliner equipment, much of it built in the 1980s. That went by the wayside when the train’s route was extended beyond Washington to New York City, an area with tunnels that won’t accommodate high-level equipment.
At the time, bi-level equipment was scarce and single-level cars were easier to find. Today, that has changed as specialty single-level cars have become the oldest and toughest to maintain in the fleet.
Until the mid-2000s, the Cardinal offered checked baggage at station stops, separate dining and lounge cars and a separate sleeping car for onboard staff.
Today, the thrice-weekly Cardinal lacks a separate dining car where fresh food can be prepared. On board crew members must sleep in first-class bedrooms that then are unavailable to the public. Aging crew dorm and baggage cars had to be pulled out of service.
While the new plan calls for the Cardinal continuing to use low-level equipment, the picture is no longer quite as bleak. Amtrak has invested in repairs to get some equipment back on the rails and placed a large order for new single-level equipment that should start coming online during 2013-2014.
Key in the order will be baggage-dormitory combo cars and diners, both of which could eventually relieve pressure on the Cardinal. In the short term, equipment would have to be reassigned to create an extra trainset required for daily operations.
The hinted-at idea of purchasing existing dome cars has been long talked about by Amtrak boosters, many of whom were dismayed to watch the railroad sell off many of its inherited, aging dome cars to a separate company that operated the Autotrain linking Virginia and Florida and then again selling off those same cars once it acquired the Autotrain operation.
Today, Amtrak has just one operational dome car. It’s based on the West Coast but makes fall color season appearances in the east.
The report also hints at, but doesn’t detail, a new marketing relationship with the Greenbrier Resort near White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. The hotel has a long railroad heritage, having been built by and along the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad. It is refurbishing luxury rail cars to bring customers to the landmark resort from Washington, D.C., much in the tradition of historic passenger trains that passed through Staunton.