Amtrak’s Silver Meteor returns with reduced capacity as Miami service resumes
MIAMI — With track damage caused by Hurricane Ian flooding in the Kissimmee, Fla., area repaired by CSX maintenance forces, Amtrak is restoring service beyond Jacksonville, Fla., to two New York-Florida trains this weekend.
However, the addition of the second “Silver Service” train will result in a net loss of sleeping-car capacity.
The Silver Meteor, which returns today, will carry two Viewliner sleeping cars, down from the three it carried before the COVID-19 pandemic and prior to its suspension in January. The Silver Star, operating on a more circuitous route through the Carolinas and Florida, will also operate with two sleepers. It had been expanded to five sleepers and four or five coaches during the Meteor’s hiatus. Both trains are assigned three coaches, Amtrak spokeswoman Kimberly Woods tells Trains News Wire.
The Silver Star’s first trip to Orlando and Miami via Raleigh, N.C., and Tampa, Fla. got off to a rocky start today (Friday, Oct. 14) from New York’s Moynihan Train Hall and Penn Station, departing 1 hour, 32 minutes late; it was more than two hours late out of Washington, D.C. The first northbound Star is set to leave South Florida on Saturday, Oct. 15.
Before Hurricane Ian intervened, Amtrak had planned to restore the Silver Meteor Oct. 3; reservations were later accepted for a return on Oct. 14 for the southbound train and Oct. 15 for the northbound Meteor, but departures were pushed back a day from both New York and Miami to Oct. 16 and 17, respectively.
Sleeper reduction leads to ticket cancellations
In a press release today, the company noted that the faster and more direct New York-Miami Meteor was, “suspended [in January] due to the impact of the COVID-19 Omicron variant that disrupted a number of Amtrak services because of limited available resources across the company.”
The train had consistently outperformed the Silver Star in revenue before and during the pandemic, in part because its scheduled later departures and earlier arrivals in the Northeast allowed connections with Amtrak trains serving western and northern destinations that were not possible with the Silver Star.
Another reason was that the Meteor’s three sleeping cars contributed to more revenue than the Star’s two. Three sleepers had been slated to operate when the Meteor returned, but now some travelers are being notified that space they had reserved is no longer available.
A passenger who booked a roomette in April 2022 on the southbound Meteor leaving New York for Palatka, Fla., on Dec. 21, 2022, told Trains News Wire that an automated voicemail recently told him to call Amtrak about a “service disruption.”
The trip had been cancelled, he was told by an agent, “because they have taken a sleeping car off the Meteor, and since that was our car, we lose, and no other space was available on any train on Dec. 20 or 22 either.”
Chicago trains continue to see capacity shortage
Outside of the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak has been plagued by insufficient resources to grow its workforce and return equipment to service throughout 2022, to the detriment of travelers attempting to purchase tickets.
A Trains News Wire online check discovered that beginning Oct. 8, no sleeping car space was available overnight for more than a week on Texas Eagle, Southwest Chief, California Zephyr and Empire Builder Chicago departures, or their arriving eastbound counterparts. The westbound Zephyr had no available coach seats out of Chicago for eight of the next 16 days because it had been assigned only two Superliner coaches. On three of the sold-out dates, some seats opened up west of Galesburg, Ill., to Denver, only to sell out again the next day between Denver and Glenwood Springs, Colo.
News Wire asked Amtrak to recap specific coach and sleeping car assignments for each of its long-distance trains, but the company only would say, “Capacity varies by departure, demand, and other market conditions.”
Amtrak’s Woods did say that beginning Nov. 1, Auto Train would run with nine Superliner sleeping cars. Though almost always sold out at departure from its Lorton, Va., and Sanford, Fla., terminals, and fattening the bottom line with passengers’ cars and motorcycles, that service generated more than $10 million of ticket revenue per month June through August in 2022, even with a reduced consist.
Elsewhere, however, the capacity decisions for the Meteor and the Chicago-based trains suggest management will continue to operate with reduced capacity and revenue on long-distance trains throughout fiscal 2023.
