It does. Worth noting that the Carolinian, while funded by NCDOT, is fully operated by Amtrak. Meanwhile, NCDOT owns and operates rolling stock for the Piedmont.
So, to answer your question @Brandonq, I’m pretty sure this is an NCDOT policy, not an Amtrak policy. The Piedmont is the only Amtrak train I’ve ridden so far that doesn’t serve alcohol.
The new Siemens trainsets on the San Joaquins also have vending machines rather than staffed cafe cars, as a labor-saving move. Liquor laws in the US usually require human ID checks; was recently at a baseball game where they had self-check-out beer stands, but still have someone there to scan IDs. Even in Japan, alcohol vending machines are getting scarce.
Amtrak has really improved its selections lately, but the finest beers I’ve had aboard trains have been brown-bagged – a train station is an excellent spot for a beer store.
Man. Was hoping we’d get a proper cafe car on the new Piedmont trainsets (which I can only assume will be Siemens equipment)
I suspect if there’s precedent for more vending machines, it will likely be more vending machines 
The Piedmont vending machines are okay when they take cards for payment. I’d say 7 out of 10 times they are down and you need to make sure you bring cash.
Cafe cars are money losers - expensive to operate and maintain compared to the revenue they bring in. The vending machines are fine. The Piedmont is a 3 hour ride, so full meals really aren’t a necessity. Yeah, not needed. Put the money toward track and station improvements and more service instead.
Thanks for the pointer to this thread.
If we could get the Piedmont up to a clockface schedule of one train every 2 hours (= 8 trips per day), that would be a very meaningful, incremental improvement.
Can do this with 4 trainsets (and presumably at least one spare.)
CLT 6-9 RGH 10-13 CLT 14-17 RGH 18-21 CLT
CLT 8-11 RGH 12-3 CLT 16-19 RGH 20-23 CLT
RGH 6-9 CLT 10-13 RGH 14-17 CLT 18-21 RGH
RGH 8-11 CLT 12-3 RGH 16-19 CLT 20-23 RGH
Each round trip is a shift for one train crew, so everybody sleeps in their own bed at night. This schedule would need 12 crews in order to make it work. 6 based in Charlotte, 6 in Raleigh. 6 work mornings, 6 work evenings. 8 crews get 5 shifts per week, 4 crews get 4. Probably the crews with 4 shifts would work Friday-Monday because I believe there is extra pay due to shift differential for work on the weekends. The 5-shift crews could be grouped into working Sunday-Thursday or Tuesday-Saturday.
As an aside, I think the Carolinian, with its unreliable southbound schedule, needs to be its “own thing” and overlayed on top of the Piedmont, rather than counting as basically another run of the Piedmont while on the Piedmont corridor. Go ahead and slot it in the schedule where it makes sense and provides some value to in-state travelers, for example: leave Charlotte at 7am northbound and Raleigh at 5pm southbound) but don’t count on it to provide any of the regular 2 hour clockface departures.
I took the NE Regional between DC and NYC weekly for about two years. While it’s only 3.5 hours, I used that cafe car basically every single week I was returning home on a Thursday. It was an absolute life saver for me and folks I work with that also made the commute.
Nothing like a microwaved burger and a beer as you happily head home from a long week staying in hotels.
I suppose it’s not as necessary if business commuters don’t use the Charlotte to Raleigh route the way folks in the NE do.
Edit to note: It may not be a major revenue driver, but having a cafe car that sells food and drinks is the sort of experience differentiator that drives people towards trains instead of planes.
Upgrading to electric will probably happen last, I’d guess. Double-tracking the whole line, cutting some curves, fixing grade crossings will likely happen first. These things are happening at a glacial pace. There are hundreds if not thousands of grade crossings that have to be eliminated and hundreds of miles of double track that need to be laid.
It’s frustrating because NC will be a speed bottleneck for the foreseeable future. Amtrak plans to get everywhere else up to at least Tier II but the Piedmont corridor itself will be stuck at Tier I. I’m not sure why speed improvements here aren’t a higher priority.
These challenges just keep bringing me back to the idea of a greenfield corridor between RUS and Charlotte for truely high speed. I appreciate the excellent arguments others have presented as to why upgrading the current line needs to be the focus, but emotionally I just want to cut through all the problems and build a new line.
Ideologically, I’m with you on this and want them to get working on it now.
Politically, we’re not gonna get there anytime soon. Decision-makers are going to want to see a well-established demand for rail before they opt for any sort of parallel greenfield development. It’s dumb, but that’s how we do rail and transit in this country: while we preempt suburban sprawl by building one beltway after another, we wait for established demand before even considering paying for a study to maybe one day build a route that could potentially take thousands of cars off the road.
If NCDOT Rail wants to get projects funded on both the state and federal level, then they need to avoid ROW acquisition whenever possible. It’s stupid, but it’s just the way things are right now.
I have known people do to do this type of thing. Their family is in Charlotte but they work in Raleigh or vice versa. Not implausible, but, in my opinion, the gravity of either city is much too small for that to be a feasible business plan for NCDOT Rail.
However, given the latest ridership records, the corridor could easily support more frequency TODAY with the right marketing. Same goes for Wilmington or Asheville. People in the Triangle would love to be able to take the day trip without having to drive there.
I think an express service that only stops in Raleigh, Durham, Greensboro, Charlotte on the Piedmont alignment is worth something.
Things can definitely be done to improve the speed of this line, though I don’t know what the ceiling would be if we eliminated all at grade crossings, upgraded the track+ties, double tracked all of it, elevated station platforms, and electrified. I assume it’s too curvy to do 200 mph but idk about 125?
The Hiawatha between Chicago and Milwaukee doesn’t even have vending machines, but has an empty cafe car for wifi reasons.
Noticed this image sourced from NC by Train.
Seems like someone, at some point, has contemplated @orulz’s idea? 
Or is this an officially documented aspiration of SEHSR, a more direct route from RGH-CLT?
I think there’s a lot of additional benefit to having a passenger route here too beyond HSR. A frequent commuter line that runs from Asheboro->Siler->Pittsboro->Apex->Raleigh could be popular. The traffic situation on 64 is not good, and getting worse.
That image showed up in NCDOT’s official Comprehensive State Rail Plan in 2009. Attached here:
2009_railplanexecsum.pdf (1.7 MB)
It was gone for the next (and still current) update in 2015, replaced with this one:
I have no idea what was behind its appearance and subsequent disappearance. The 2009 plan did not say much about it, and the 2015 plan says nothing about its removal.
My best guess is that they are still not thinking of doing this, based on the fact that they are studying a bunch of corridors across the state, and submitted an even larger list of corridors for the FRA Corridor ID program, but this isn’t on the list:
Not sure if this is the ideal thread for this, but saw this posted on Reddit. NC by Train had its highest ridership ever in October:
"NC By Train’s Carolinian and Piedmont passenger rail services continue to experience record-breaking ridership.
In October, the two services garnered the highest ridership ever for one month, carrying 65,980 travelers.
“We’re pleased that more people are riding the NC By Train service,” said Jason Orthner, the Rail Division director at the N.C. Department of Transportation. “This trend shows just how important train travel is in North Carolina and supports DOT’s vision of a multimodal transportation network that works for everyone.”
NC By Train has served a total of 449,898 passengers during the first three quarters of 2023, which is 23% higher than the total of 366,685 passengers for the same time during 2022, which was the previous record year for the state’s intercity passenger rail service. On its own, the third quarter of 2023, NC By Train served 163,623 customers making it the best quarter in its 33-year history."
23% growth in one year is huge! Hopefully putting up these kinds of numbers will prove to the decision-makers the potential of rail in NC (and in the mid-atlantic and southeast more generally), and maybe fast-track the S-Line/SEHSR project(s).
I believe it! The train has been sold out every Friday when I ride back to Raleigh.
Is simply adding more train-cars to each train an option?
They already do this as needed. I believe they add extra cars during the state fair, Panthers game days, around Thanksgiving, etc, or whenever the train is getting close to sold out. But this won’t really impact ridership much - they try to manage the service so it basically never sells out.
Adding more frequency is what really boosts ridership because it makes the service more convenient.
Naysayers will tell you it’s a waste to add frequency, they believe that ridership is essentially “fixed” and that more frequency will just cannibalize ridership from the services that are already running. They couldn’t be more wrong!
So far whenever a new round trip has been added, there has been a near-instant proportional increase in ridership. (Eg: increase service by 50%, ridership increases by 50%.) Over the long run, ridership has increased by ~9x since the Piedmont was introduced 20 years ago, with a 4x increase in frequency over that time. So doubling frequency, triples ridership.
From my point of view it seems like they are not adding frequency nearly fast enough. How long will these trends continue? Can’t say for sure but I don’t think they should stop until we are measuring service in terms of trains per hour instead of trains per day!
