Just returned on No. 4, departing LA March 2. Summary:
Smooth trip, 20 minutes early into CUS.
Superb sleeper attendant, the legendary Victor. He passed out hot wet towels three times on the trip.
Rotten dining car attendant, the infamous [name omitted, but it has four letters]. He was a bully. We overheard Victor complaining bitterly about him to the line service supervisor who was riding this run. The reply, delivered with a shrug: "****'s not so bad when you compare him to ****."
Food quite not up to the standard of that aboard No. 3 (23). It was all right, however. Made me wonder if the provender at the Los Angeles commissary is not quite as good as that at the Chicago commissary, assuming the diner is replenished at both L.A. and Chicago.
Superliner II sleeper Montana okay (everything worked) but it's beginning to get a bit tatty around the edges.
Very light load. Only two coaches. Sleepers about 3/4 full, on average, across the run. Two lone P42s on the point; several times last week, I was told, Amtrak borrowed a F59 from Amtrak California to send along as a third engine, protection power when a P42 wasn't quite right. Those engines are getting long in the tooth.
Bad luck with diner seatmates on No. 4. One was a woman who wouldn't shut up about her grandchildren, a couple were Wealthy, White and Middle-Aged and complained the whole time about the "rough trade" in the lounge car (who seemed to be perfectly well behaved minorities, except for the young white man who was told by a conductor that police would meet him at the next station if he tried to smoke a joint again) One man spent the whole time doing business on his iPhone. A stylish but brittle New Yorker wouldn't shut up about the clothes she bought in Los Angeles for her boutique in Manhattan.
So it goes. A good trip, but not the very best one.
Posted by smitty195 (Member # 5102) on :
Thanks for the report. It's so incredibly frustrating to see Amtrak having all of these P-42 mechanical woes. My dad is one of the original inventors of RCM (Reliability Centered Maintenance). He has written two books on it, and at 80 years old, is still in high demand all over the world. Boeing doesn't build an airplane without it. The Navy doesn't build a nuclear sub without it. NASA doesn't send a shuttle into space without it. And Amtrak started to implement RCM with one of my dad's co-workers, and it worked PERFECTLY in DC on the Acela Fleet. it worked so well that they were able to free up an entire trainset, and the reliability numbers went through the roof.
However.....when they made the move to implement RCM into the next step (the P-42 fleet), those in Chicago threw a fit. It's against union rules, we've always done it our way, why should we change, I'm not gonna do it because it's not in my contract, blah blah blah. All of the usual AmCrap. So the whole program fizzled. It's a shame, because the plan was to have RCM on the entire system, all locomotives, all rolling stock, all machinery at Beech Grove......It's really a shame, because it's a proven system and the RCM guys proved to Amtrak that it works. If they were a private business, RCM would be there right now. But because of the government attitude and union attitude, they'll NEVER have a better way of maintaining the fleet. They will continue to be 'eh' and do whatever allows them to just squeak by.
Henry, I'm curious: Since you are deaf, how do you carry on a conversation with someone at the table in the diner? Especially when it's someone like you mentioned who won't shut up and just goes on and on. Can you "pretend" not to understand her and just tune her out? Posted by TBlack (Member # 181) on :
Henry,
You deserve much, much better. I'm reading between the lines a certain agony. What can I say...it's Lent!
TB
Posted by Henry Kisor (Member # 4776) on :
Smitty, I speak and lipread well enough to carry on a conversation with most people.
I did get up at one point during dessert with the motormouth grandmother, excusing myself and saying I had to take care of a pressing business matter back in the sleeper room. My wife, who has better manners than I do, was a tad irritated that I left her in the lurch.
Posted by George Harris (Member # 2077) on :
Henry: Don't know why what you said make me think of it, but in my growing up years we had neighbors down the road who were both deaf. They were among the early buyers of a television because to them a radio was useless. One of the discussions about it was the differences there were between their ability to read the lips of the various commentators and such. Wish I could remember who it was and do not at this late date do not even remember if the guy was local or national, but for one of the newscasters of that time their statement was, "He should have been a ventriloquist." Apparently his mouth movements were such as to render him 90% plus unintelligible to them.
Posted by Henry Kisor (Member # 4776) on :
Lipreading news commentators is difficult for a number of reasons, one of which is that standard television projects an image in two dimensions. Another is that TV newscasters are trained to maintain poker faces when they deliver the news; expression aids greatly in understanding.
In general, women are generally easier to lipread than men are, mainly because American culture allows them to display a greater range of expression.
I wrote a whole book about this once!
Posted by mr williams (Member # 1928) on :
I had half an hour to wait for a train so called into a bar opposite the station. They had the sub-titles on the news channel, and some of the mistranslations were hilarious!!
Posted by Henry Kisor (Member # 4776) on :
Captioning on the fly is a difficult art. Homonyms are particularly tough. The benchmark: "Pulitzer Prize" rendered as "Pullet Surprise."
Posted by smitty195 (Member # 5102) on :
I'm curious---how do they do "live" captioning? Is the translator (or whatever their job title is) typing in shorthand, like a court reporter would do?
Posted by Henry Kisor (Member # 4776) on :
The live on-the-fly captioners have the same training as court reporters (in some cases ARE court reporters) and use the same equipment: computers that employ speech recognition software.
Speech recognition software has made great strides but still falls far short of perfection. Hence human beings have to "help "the SR software, and that is why you see the captions on news shows sometimes garbled and then quickly corrected.
One downside: For a long while I wished that sportscasting of live events could be captioned, and then when they finally were captioned, discovered that sportscasters just blathered on and on with empty and hackneyed trivialities, especially when interviewing players. When I watch a ball game now, I turn off the captions and watch the umpires and scoreboard instead.
Posted by Geoff Mayo (Member # 153) on :
quote:Originally posted by Henry Kisor: One downside: For a long while I wished that sportscasting of live events could be captioned, and then when they finally were captioned, discovered that sportscasters just blathered on and on with empty and hackneyed trivialities, especially when interviewing players. When I watch a ball game now, I turn off the captions and watch the umpires and scoreboard instead.
You probably have a better understanding of what's going on than anybody else if you're able to lipread the umpires and officials who aren't wearing microphones!
I have noticed that in TV programs where people swear, not only are they "bleeped out" in audio, but their mouth is also obscured - presumably to prevent offending their lipreading viewers. This seems to happen a lot more now than previously.
Posted by RRCHINA (Member # 1514) on :
Joined this late and wish to return to Henry's opening and description of the "rotten dining car attendant". The line service supervisors comment that "****'s not so bad when you compare him to ****" is indicative of why AMTRAK's long distance trains have a bad reputation with those who would perhaps choose the train but will not tolerate such treatment. If AMTRAK will not fire the person then assign him/her work where they will not interface with customers.
Posted by smitty195 (Member # 5102) on :
quote:Originally posted by Henry Kisor:
Speech recognition software has made great strides but still falls far short of perfection. Hence human beings have to "help "the SR software, and that is why you see the captions on news shows sometimes garbled and then quickly corrected.
Oh that's interesting! I didn't know that there is speech recognition software that could do that. It's on my iMac so I guess it makes sense to have it on closed-captioning. On a side note, I use closed-captioning when watching a British TV program or movie. I can't understand them---and the text really helps out!
Posted by Henry Kisor (Member # 4776) on :
Smitty, I used to be almost unable to lipread British English (those rolled r's, for one thing) until Masterpiece Theater was captioned. After several years of that and a few of Inspector Morse, I now understand the Brits quite well.
But for some reason I was never able to get interested in Downton Abbey.
Posted by Henry Kisor (Member # 4776) on :
RRChina, I agree! Seems that union power is why Amtrak management can't get rid of the bad eggs.
That said, there do seem to be fewer and fewer of them as time goes on. Retraining has helped, and presumably turnover as well. It's really rare for me to encounter an ******* like ****.
People like Victor who go the extra mile regularly get hefty tips. That can't be lost on the newer hires.
Posted by cubzo (Member # 4700) on :
I am hearing impaired. Nerve deafness along with environmental hearing loss. I do not read lips but I have a better understanding of what people are saying if I can see their lips.
Posted by Geoff Mayo (Member # 153) on :
quote:Originally posted by Henry Kisor: Smitty, I used to be almost unable to lipread British English (those rolled r's, for one thing) until Masterpiece Theater was captioned. After several years of that and a few of Inspector Morse, I now understand the Brits quite well.
But for some reason I was never able to get interested in Downton Abbey.
I've never been able to roll my Rs. As for Downton Abbey, you're not the only one. Yet another stereotypical costume drama where the higher household speak the Queen's English and the staff speak with a heavy West Country accent. Very hard to explain the latter but I guess a newreader compared to a redneck, country accent would be vaguely similar as a comparison. And that would mean most of the west country was spread across the land with no locals serving as household staff. Nonsense in other words.
Posted by Vincent206 (Member # 15447) on :
I've been travelling between the USA and UK for over 30 years now and it seems to me that the British are losing their accent. I know some of you might think I'm bloody arse for making such an asinine statement; but, particularly around London, the "British accent" (as heard by these American ears) seems less distinct and more Americanized than it was 30 years ago. Is it Hollywood's influence and globalization or is something else happening?
Posted by George Harris (Member # 2077) on :
We have two 60+ age Brits in our office, and they still have noticible accents, but from the recent arrivals it has Americanized somewhat. I recall quite a few years ago after working 6 years in DC I talked to one of my cousins, and she later told me her first thought was, "Whose that Yankee?" I told her opps, I better work on not losing my Southernisms. I have lost some since working overseas and having to have quite a bit of conversation with English as Second Language people.
Posted by palmland (Member # 4344) on :
One of the things that makes travel interesting is the regional customs (food, drink, architecture, religion) and dialects. As we become more homogenized, it is a shame this is slowly fading. For those on a business trip, it is very hard to tell where you are as you usually just frequent the business parks and chain hotels or restaurants with the same big box stores near by.
But, the differences can still be found where the residents haven't had the need or opportunity to go outside of the county. This is especially so in the more remote areas such as the bayous of Louisiana, coastal islands of Carolina, in appalachia, and small towns of the south, y'all. But I've moved too much now to be considered a real southerner.
Posted by Ocala Mike (Member # 4657) on :
Way off topic, but for Henry, cubzo, and others interested:
Not long ago I met a deaf lad about 18 years of age who gave me a ride to the airport in his specially tricked out car. It had enormous woofers and other speakers in the doors and the rear shelf. He put in a CD and fired up the system, which nearly blew me out of the car. (His preference was for acid rock.) Since then I've learned that many deaf people love music in this odd way.
Ever hear of Evelyn Glennie, perhaps the leading percussionist in the British Isles? She's profoundly deaf. Google her.
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