I used to take the Wolverine back and forth while going to a college in Chicago like a 2 decades ago and have been thinking about doing a short trip for my birthday. But I remember coach and business class being very comfy. If that's changed maybe I'll just fly. BTW when I did I'd always pick it up from Dearborn, The parking lot is right behind the police station and I always felt safe. Downtown lot was reporting having their cars broken into overnight. But my driver's window was missing at the time, so I put a towel over it and left it there for a few days, never had an issue in Dearborn.
You are so right, Steve, the people of the Motor City are exceedingly kind but walking out during early morning pre-daylight hours to catch a train...well? Much love from Chicago and a great video. Thank!
You're absolutely right about the Venture Car seats. Intolerable! No Amtrak exec ever plunked his ass on one of those seats for more than 15 minutes. I'm in Springfield, Illinois with occasional trips to Chicago. I always try to take the Texas Eagle to avoid the Venture cars. And, THANK YOU for settling my curiosity about whether or not there was value in opting for Business Class. Ain't worth it on the Venture cars.
Michigan Central Station has recently been rehabbed and repurposed, thankfully saving a beautiful older building. Sorry you had to walk so far to the new train station.
@@ericresh3268 I have a hard time imparting to friends my sheer sense of 'what HAPPENED' I get every time I ride through Kalamazoo on the train. Also it's interesting on the scanner because they have procedures and check-ins with police on the platform to make sure nobody sneaks on.
In the early twentieth century Detroit was known as the Paris of the Midwest. And there are plenty of museums and historical places in and around the area. It's worth exploring.
Steve, in answer to your question about id's at ticket time, there are several regional routes (Michigan service may be one) that offer a 10 ride ticket option, just like commuting. As I recall, the tickets were 10 rides, good for 6 months (as I remember) and the secret was they were 15% below the LOWEST published fare for that segment. It was a helluva deal. I had a multi year project in an Illinois town, and made countless trips there. I bought the first ticket: when I presented it on the train I was asked for my ID to match the name on the ticket. After that, the trainmen knew me (I used to spend a lot of time with them!) and I probably had to present ID a couple of times. To give you an idea of the economies of this arrangement, the 10 ride was $14 and change/ride. The weekend fare was $42! I couldn't drive that for $14. There were times I ended up eating a couple trips at 6 months , but at those prices, who cares?
I live in Lafayette Park, which is just east of downtown Detroit. I've taken the Wolverine many times because it's a good link to the Chicago hub. There is good parking at the Dearborn station; I drive there, and I'll be able to drive away when I return. Ford did a great job restoring the old Detroit train station. That station is a 10 minute walk away from Mexican Village restaurant, which is the best restaurant in Detroit's Mexican Town.
Guess I get to find out next month, hooo boy they look as bad as the complainers have been saying. Also given the semi-permanent coupled pairs of the Midwest Venture sets, it might not be 'cafe car on the opposite end today' but forever. Between this and the Charger's snow problems (which impacted me on the Wolverine in January) I'm wondering if we'll get a fix or if the Charger/Venture combo is going to turn out to be a real big misstep. Already miss the Amfleets! Also not sure why they did a coach/cafe rather than keep up the coach/business idea like the previous cars. Seems like a natural pairing to make use of the limited space. Also the international extension's a mixed bag. The two trains a day that are supposed to serve it will then miss the dogleg up to Pontiac, missing a fair number of customers like me. Not a huge deal I guess, but I'm a little puzzled at the utility of an hour customs wait (per the proposal) to just go a mile or two over the border to the Windsor station. It's cool to have a Via connection but if I wanted to get on Via I'd just get a ride to Windsor. For Chicago thru traffic I guess.
Good points, all around. Like a lot of companies these days, all of these issues seem to follow people - crew/passenger relations and the distance between Amtrak's management & the on-board experience. Their capacity to make meaningful change to services based on guest feedback is sorely behind.
The Coach-Cafe is for several reasons. First, some Midwest routes wanted to operate a cafe service without business class, and some wanted business class without cafe service. Splitting the layouts allows this. Also, it means instead of a fifteen seat business class you can have 36 seats, and potentially adjust the ratio during a refit without weird sizing issues in a cafe/business combo. The Hiawatha service is the best example I can think of for "business yes, cafe no" and they haven't put business class in service there yet. As for the Michigain service across the border, it *ought* to have either customs on the US side with VIA crossing over from Windsor, or customs on the Canadian side with Amtrak terminating in Windsor. Either way, adding some double track and getting a 4th and 5th daily service running ought to come at the same time - keep Pontiac service at the current level, but add the Canadian connection.
@@daniellewis1789 I guess I can't argue with more seats on some routes. I'm sure that might work out well on Illinois Service, Hiawatha, etc. trains. The Wolverine... I dunno. We'll see. Business class didn't seem like a massive draw on those even with the better seats. The proposal for international service will be to, indeed, have all customs at the Windsor station and no VIA trains crossing to the US. Westbound you'd board 355 in Windsor after clearing customs. Eastbound 350 would go to Windsor and you'd get off, talk to the CBSA and connect with VIA. No additional service or more dual-tracking is part of the proposal. (Given much of the length of the Michigan segment has some good passign sidings and pretty much only Amtrak on it you'd need quite a few more trains to make that worth it) Cynically I suspect it's more about symbolically bringing service back to Michigan Central than actual utility. The end to end time of the service is quite long, and if you're in the Detroit area you can just catch the Windsor Transit bus to the station from downtown. Ann Arbor will love it though.
@@StevesWanderlust I'm back and well. Yikes. Okay so it's pretty bad. Business class works out for me except for the hard padding. It's not all that terrible, I'm too tall for the head bolsters but the way I sit it's fine. On the way back I wandered by a coach set and there is NO WAY I can sit in one of those as tall as I am, the bolsters are literally in my upper back. So much like an airline now I'm forced into business class. Thanks, Amtrak. Legroom still fine, etc. Also the sheer ADAification of these trainsets. I don't mind the ADA, it's great but... one bathroom? It seems constantly busy. And those bathroom alarms go off all trip - I suspect because they're floor level which makes sense but they're positioned just like the floor level kick buttons many other places on the train. But the ride's good I suppose.
Got to sit in business class once (for some reason we were instructed to go there when boarding in Chicago). The width of the seat made it much more comfortable for me but I wouldn’t pay extra for it.
I had my ID checked on an Acela between NYP and PHL about six weeks ago. Another passenger in the same car was also selected. The guard said I had been ‘randomly’ selected by the TSA. Luckily I had my passport. This was the first time in ages I’ve had a ID check on Amtrak - but it does happen.
I've ridden the Wolverine on about a dozen roundtrips within Michigan and have never been asked for ID. Even had my significant other take the trips instead of me a couple times and they only scan the ticket barcode, they don't look at names on their devices.
"Hefty Ridership" HUH? I'm just SO PLEASED to have ridden the GTW, MC, (i.e. "Michigan Central), the C&O / B&O through West-Bound to Chicago, and then on the Burlington / or the "City of Denver") on the U.P. and headed towards Denver, (AND BACK)!!!
My biggest gripe about the new venture business cars is that why can’t the seats be facing forward - or the direction the train is going? No one should be paying a premium and seated backwards
Yes indeed. All the forward facing seats on this run were blocked off by the crew for groups of pax. A reversible seat design would've gone far to remedy this.
Yeah, that was at least the case for how this trainset was coupled together. It takes me about ten minutes to get used to it. When I'm tired it takes longer.
Wow it really has changed i took the train from Detroit to Texas we had a overnight layover and they paid for it it was called the Texas Star don't think I'll be using Amtrak bad change's 🤔😩
It's okay not have cafe car seating. On Amfleet cafes the tables end up being used by crew and those with a laptop who both hog tables for the entire journey. Go to Europe they either have this kind of cafe or a trolley a full cafe car like Amtrak has is the exception not the rule. Plus, remember this is state owned equipment so ultimately it was the states collective decision to have no full cafe car, not Amtrak's.
We have similar cars in Canada, and the seats are too hard. And you have to pay extra for a forward-facing seat. The railways are imitating the airlines, sadly.
It's nice to see that "it" goes past the old Train station in Battle Creek, (which I thought the R.O.W. on the GTW was relocated miles away from this location. Who knows and/or cares right? The whole situation is an abomination of prior days when people gave a "flip" about passenger travel, especially on the GTW !!!
You're definitely right about that. If trains weren't considered novelty transportation but rather the useful and interesting way to spread folks in transit out & off the roads we'd have a good robust set of ways to get places.
Rode the Amtrak from the Albion stop and from the Battle Creek stop to Chicago to visit my ex-girlfriend who I knew from school and lived near Wrigley. This was YEARS AGO. Looks like the Amtrak Battle Creek stop did a lot of remodeling since I was last there. Looks way nicer.
90 minutes from Miami to West Palm is a lot less time to bring out the flaws in a seat vs ~6hr Detroit-Chicago. Guess I'll make my own mind up if it's on my run next month.
@@StevesWanderlust Yes, and no. Brightline has more frequent service than another IPR corridor in North America outside the Northeast Corridor. We are talking basically hourly service (sometimes better, sometimes worse). Their stations are just very nice, and they do security at the stations and lounges at some for business class passengers. Where you see the leanness is the cold food onboard even in business class (saves them galley space and having to maintain and install ovens). At the end of the day, they will make their money on real estate development around station. I doubt rail service will ever be profitable, especially when you consider depreciation of capital costs.
I was on the old business class seat on the 4th of July. 😢 This is crazy. I miss the old seats were so comfortable.
Many do!
I used to take the Wolverine back and forth while going to a college in Chicago like a 2 decades ago and have been thinking about doing a short trip for my birthday. But I remember coach and business class being very comfy. If that's changed maybe I'll just fly. BTW when I did I'd always pick it up from Dearborn, The parking lot is right behind the police station and I always felt safe. Downtown lot was reporting having their cars broken into overnight. But my driver's window was missing at the time, so I put a towel over it and left it there for a few days, never had an issue in Dearborn.
Dearborn looks very pretty with the sunrise in the morning.
There were a lot of great golden angles, especially nice with the fog rising over the streams & lakes west of there, too.
@@StevesWanderlust I saw
You are so right, Steve, the people of the Motor City are exceedingly kind but walking out during early morning pre-daylight hours to catch a train...well? Much love from Chicago and a great video. Thank!
Thanks! Hey, if there was a midmorning westbound run of the Wolverine I would've gladly stayed for brunch!
thanks, Steve for a very good videos ! It's the first time I have seen a complete train of these new venture cars . Sorry about the seats !
Thank you for saying so! I knew what I was in for. Still better than the middle seat on a full A321!
Very beautiful region 💞
Very much so! Some of the midwest's best casually classic landscapes.
You're absolutely right about the Venture Car seats. Intolerable! No Amtrak exec ever plunked his ass on one of those seats for more than 15 minutes.
I'm in Springfield, Illinois with occasional trips to Chicago. I always try to take the Texas Eagle to avoid the Venture cars.
And, THANK YOU for settling my curiosity about whether or not there was value in opting for Business Class. Ain't worth it on the Venture cars.
Cheers to that! Superliner coach beats Venture anyday!
I went from Springfield Illinois to Chicago on the 4th of July on Amtrak are was awesome and the building new station in downtown Springfield Illinois
I've been on the Pere Marquette and the trip was wonderful. The seat comfort was the weakest link. Nice video and definitely subscribed
Thanks for watching! Michigan has the beginnings of good regional rail, indeed.
The possibility of connections to Canada and Boston are very encouraging.
If you stopped at Dearborn, then you passed by an outdoor museum called Greenfield Village! They have 3 steam trains that run there
I heard about it. Dearborn is worth a longer look!
@@StevesWanderlust yeah!
@@StevesWanderlust I second that Motion, the Museum nextdoor to it is another days worth of exploring, I recommend a 2 day excursion, TBH!
Michigan Central Station has recently been rehabbed and repurposed, thankfully saving a beautiful older building. Sorry you had to walk so far to the new train station.
I almost got into it the day before, but I had arrived at closing time & a walk around the station was alright.
I was able to quickly locate Kalamazoo in your video by all the garbage and tents by the railroad tracks.
Yeah, it had the characteristics a lot of folks in the Twin Cities told me to expect from Detroit
Kalamazoo is extremely generous to its homeless community so unfortunately surrounding areas have started bussing theirs here.
@@ericresh3268 I have a hard time imparting to friends my sheer sense of 'what HAPPENED' I get every time I ride through Kalamazoo on the train. Also it's interesting on the scanner because they have procedures and check-ins with police on the platform to make sure nobody sneaks on.
In the early twentieth century Detroit was known as the Paris of the Midwest. And there are plenty of museums and historical places in and around the area. It's worth exploring.
Indeed, it's a surprisingly inviting city once one chooses to give it a go.
Steve, in answer to your question about id's at ticket time, there are several regional routes (Michigan service may be one) that offer a 10 ride ticket option, just like commuting. As I recall, the tickets were 10 rides, good for 6 months (as I remember) and the secret was they were 15% below the LOWEST published fare for that segment. It was a helluva deal. I had a multi year project in an Illinois town, and made countless trips there. I bought the first ticket: when I presented it on the train I was asked for my ID to match the name on the ticket. After that, the trainmen knew me (I used to spend a lot of time with them!) and I probably had to present ID a couple of times. To give you an idea of the economies of this arrangement, the 10 ride was $14 and change/ride. The weekend fare was $42! I couldn't drive that for $14. There were times I ended up eating a couple trips at 6 months , but at those prices, who cares?
That makes sense, I forget those passes are a thing.
I live in Lafayette Park, which is just east of downtown Detroit. I've taken the Wolverine many times because it's a good link to the Chicago hub. There is good parking at the Dearborn station; I drive there, and I'll be able to drive away when I return. Ford did a great job restoring the old Detroit train station. That station is a 10 minute walk away from Mexican Village restaurant, which is the best restaurant in Detroit's Mexican Town.
Guess I get to find out next month, hooo boy they look as bad as the complainers have been saying.
Also given the semi-permanent coupled pairs of the Midwest Venture sets, it might not be 'cafe car on the opposite end today' but forever. Between this and the Charger's snow problems (which impacted me on the Wolverine in January) I'm wondering if we'll get a fix or if the Charger/Venture combo is going to turn out to be a real big misstep. Already miss the Amfleets!
Also not sure why they did a coach/cafe rather than keep up the coach/business idea like the previous cars. Seems like a natural pairing to make use of the limited space.
Also the international extension's a mixed bag. The two trains a day that are supposed to serve it will then miss the dogleg up to Pontiac, missing a fair number of customers like me. Not a huge deal I guess, but I'm a little puzzled at the utility of an hour customs wait (per the proposal) to just go a mile or two over the border to the Windsor station. It's cool to have a Via connection but if I wanted to get on Via I'd just get a ride to Windsor. For Chicago thru traffic I guess.
Good points, all around. Like a lot of companies these days, all of these issues seem to follow people - crew/passenger relations and the distance between Amtrak's management & the on-board experience. Their capacity to make meaningful change to services based on guest feedback is sorely behind.
The Coach-Cafe is for several reasons. First, some Midwest routes wanted to operate a cafe service without business class, and some wanted business class without cafe service. Splitting the layouts allows this. Also, it means instead of a fifteen seat business class you can have 36 seats, and potentially adjust the ratio during a refit without weird sizing issues in a cafe/business combo.
The Hiawatha service is the best example I can think of for "business yes, cafe no" and they haven't put business class in service there yet.
As for the Michigain service across the border, it *ought* to have either customs on the US side with VIA crossing over from Windsor, or customs on the Canadian side with Amtrak terminating in Windsor. Either way, adding some double track and getting a 4th and 5th daily service running ought to come at the same time - keep Pontiac service at the current level, but add the Canadian connection.
@@daniellewis1789 I guess I can't argue with more seats on some routes. I'm sure that might work out well on Illinois Service, Hiawatha, etc. trains. The Wolverine... I dunno. We'll see. Business class didn't seem like a massive draw on those even with the better seats.
The proposal for international service will be to, indeed, have all customs at the Windsor station and no VIA trains crossing to the US. Westbound you'd board 355 in Windsor after clearing customs. Eastbound 350 would go to Windsor and you'd get off, talk to the CBSA and connect with VIA. No additional service or more dual-tracking is part of the proposal. (Given much of the length of the Michigan segment has some good passign sidings and pretty much only Amtrak on it you'd need quite a few more trains to make that worth it)
Cynically I suspect it's more about symbolically bringing service back to Michigan Central than actual utility. The end to end time of the service is quite long, and if you're in the Detroit area you can just catch the Windsor Transit bus to the station from downtown. Ann Arbor will love it though.
@@StevesWanderlust I'm back and well. Yikes. Okay so it's pretty bad. Business class works out for me except for the hard padding. It's not all that terrible, I'm too tall for the head bolsters but the way I sit it's fine. On the way back I wandered by a coach set and there is NO WAY I can sit in one of those as tall as I am, the bolsters are literally in my upper back. So much like an airline now I'm forced into business class. Thanks, Amtrak. Legroom still fine, etc.
Also the sheer ADAification of these trainsets. I don't mind the ADA, it's great but... one bathroom? It seems constantly busy. And those bathroom alarms go off all trip - I suspect because they're floor level which makes sense but they're positioned just like the floor level kick buttons many other places on the train.
But the ride's good I suppose.
Business Class used to have much nicer seats
Got to sit in business class once (for some reason we were instructed to go there when boarding in Chicago).
The width of the seat made it much more comfortable for me but I wouldn’t pay extra for it.
With my booking scenario on this one I essentially had the same feelings.
I had my ID checked on an Acela between NYP and PHL about six weeks ago. Another passenger in the same car was also selected. The guard said I had been ‘randomly’ selected by the TSA. Luckily I had my passport. This was the first time in ages I’ve had a ID check on Amtrak - but it does happen.
Wow, that's eye opening!
I’m gonna subscribe so I can be your 700th subscriber
Aw, nice! Thanks!
@@StevesWanderlust your welcome
@ congratulations on 800 well soon
Did your train have a full venture consist or was there an amfleet or horizon cafe car?
All Venture cars
How many hours was this trip.?
Just a bit over 5 hours
How long did it take? was it on time or earlier or later
The portion I rode took just over 5 hours. We arrived about ten minutes late, which was how late the train was at the start of the trip.
I've ridden the Wolverine on about a dozen roundtrips within Michigan and have never been asked for ID. Even had my significant other take the trips instead of me a couple times and they only scan the ticket barcode, they don't look at names on their devices.
That's been my experience, too. Just something else to confuse new riders, I suppose.
"Hefty Ridership" HUH? I'm just SO PLEASED to have ridden the GTW, MC, (i.e. "Michigan Central), the C&O / B&O through West-Bound to Chicago, and then on the Burlington / or the "City of Denver") on the U.P. and headed towards Denver, (AND BACK)!!!
My biggest gripe about the new venture business cars is that why can’t the seats be facing forward - or the direction the train is going? No one should be paying a premium and seated backwards
Yes indeed. All the forward facing seats on this run were blocked off by the crew for groups of pax. A reversible seat design would've gone far to remedy this.
Maybe a weird observation but I noticed the single seat row face backwards. I would have probably gotten dizzy lol
Yeah, that was at least the case for how this trainset was coupled together. It takes me about ten minutes to get used to it. When I'm tired it takes longer.
My favorite part about Amtrak 351 is that it speeds through dowigac niles new Buffalo and Hammond whiting stations
Wow it really has changed i took the train from Detroit to Texas we had a overnight layover and they paid for it it was called the Texas Star don't think I'll be using Amtrak bad change's 🤔😩
Took the 351 to Chicago on 8/30 and the 354 from Chicago to Detroit on 9/10. I agree, the seats are not as comfortable.
So much for trying to snooze on that train
Yeah, that would require a person be very adept at sleeping upright.
It's okay not have cafe car seating. On Amfleet cafes the tables end up being used by crew and those with a laptop who both hog tables for the entire journey. Go to Europe they either have this kind of cafe or a trolley a full cafe car like Amtrak has is the exception not the rule. Plus, remember this is state owned equipment so ultimately it was the states collective decision to have no full cafe car, not Amtrak's.
Indeed, true.
Crappy seats and no tables. 😢 They're doing all they can to drive away even the most ardent supporters.
It certainly feels that way.
You can thank Illinois DOT for those crappy seats. Bring back the Heywood-Wakefield Sleepy Hollow seats!
oh, if only..
Same here in Kalifornia, bring a stadium pillow.
We have similar cars in Canada, and the seats are too hard. And you have to pay extra for a forward-facing seat. The railways are imitating the airlines, sadly.
It's nice to see that "it" goes past the old Train station in Battle Creek, (which I thought the R.O.W. on the GTW was relocated miles away from this location. Who knows and/or cares right? The whole situation is an abomination of prior days when people gave a "flip" about passenger travel, especially on the GTW !!!
You're definitely right about that. If trains weren't considered novelty transportation but rather the useful and interesting way to spread folks in transit out & off the roads we'd have a good robust set of ways to get places.
Can you bring your own food on the train?
Yes indeed, though anything requiring heating beyond hot water isn't possible, you can bring any other food items.
Rode the Amtrak from the Albion stop and from the Battle Creek stop to Chicago to visit my ex-girlfriend who I knew from school and lived near Wrigley. This was YEARS AGO. Looks like the Amtrak Battle Creek stop did a lot of remodeling since I was last there. Looks way nicer.
Seems like the Venture cars still have some growing pains that need sorting out. Luckily, Amtrak refurbishes their rolling stock a lot.
That's a good point I'm very hopeful for.
So everyone loves the exact same seats on Brightline but you all magically hate them on Amtrak. Give me a freaking break.
Fake foamer controversy.
90 minutes from Miami to West Palm is a lot less time to bring out the flaws in a seat vs ~6hr Detroit-Chicago. Guess I'll make my own mind up if it's on my run next month.
@@warphammer except now the service goes all the way to Orlando Airport now.
Brightline seems to have a better level of brand image management, but barely deeper down they're still a railroad trying to run a lean service.
@@StevesWanderlust Yes, and no. Brightline has more frequent service than another IPR corridor in North America outside the Northeast Corridor. We are talking basically hourly service (sometimes better, sometimes worse). Their stations are just very nice, and they do security at the stations and lounges at some for business class passengers. Where you see the leanness is the cold food onboard even in business class (saves them galley space and having to maintain and install ovens). At the end of the day, they will make their money on real estate development around station. I doubt rail service will ever be profitable, especially when you consider depreciation of capital costs.