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Comment by FuriouslyAdrift | Hacker News Reader

There are dining cars on Amtrack. Not the hight of luxury but not bad on a long trip...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTGywoIytSw

I actually love the Amtrak dining cars and being forced to make new friends. The food sure beats the snack car.

Seconded. As an introvert who took a cross-country trip on Amtrak for fun in 2023 (BOS - LAX), I thought I’d hate having to share a small booth with total strangers.

Turns out it gave me confidence in defending my positions to strangers, improved my small talk game, and exposed me to viewpoints I’d never consider otherwise.

And the food was amazing, too. Way better than anything I’ve had on a plane or in an airport.

I find it odd that they force you to sit with other people. I walked into a nearly empty Empire Builder dining car and was still forced to sit with people. Why not ask for people's preferences?

During that trip, the company at breakfast was a nightmare. I sat across from two very drunk young men who were traveling on there father's money. At one point they started a fight with our waiter. Thankfully, our dinner companions made up for it by being delightful.

I completely agree about the quality of the food. For dinner I ate the steak, and it was quite good.

If you make reservations in advance you can get seated alone (if it works out) - they usually sit smaller parties together so as to not have to breakup the parties of four, etc.

My favorite Amtrak dining car "meet your neighbor" experience: taking the Southwest Chief between Chicago and (in our case) Santa Fe/Lamy, and having dinner with a couple of guys from LA, one a fashion designer, the other a rapper/beat producer.

So there I was, a late 50s anglo-american white programmer having a polite disagreement with a mid-30s african-american rapper about why Kanye West was either shit or a genius. For the record, I was in the shit camp.

Amtrak - bring America together, slowly.

The rail bar car beats the airplane cart service anyday.

I'd occasionally take the train from Vancouver, BC to Seattle when visiting a girlfriend, and I was far less messed up after I got there.

Amtrak's dining car prices (for coach passengers) have gone up, and the food hasn't been spectacular, but the experience of eating while watching the world go by is hard to beat. Breakfast might be the best meal.

Meeting random passengers can be an added bonus.

I just got back from a short vacation on Amtrack. It was my first sleeper car experience -- I slept poorly, but the dining was not too bad. Much better than airplane food and with an excellent view of the fall foliage.

It might beat airplane food but just barely. I rather eat McDonald's.

Food tastes terrible at 30,000 feet. Pancakes taste great on the train.

I took the Lake Shore Limited between Boston and Chicago and got a sleeper car and the full-service dining car was the most depressing dining experience I had in years.

Amtrak seems to be very run down and barely alive. It's horribly slow and they wait for freight trains even when passenger rail supposedly has the right of way. People on the train by definition aren't going anywhere fast.

But I still like the dining car and observation car.

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