Union Passenger Terminal — Local services in New Orleans

In late July, 2021, my husband and I traveled from New Orleans to Memphis and back via the City of New Orleans (train.) I brought antibacterial wipes and used them on all surfaces we would touch in our roomettes. I was shocked by the amount of actual black grime picked up by the wipes. Amtrak's claim to be "utilizing EPA-registered cleaning products and enhancing cleaning on commonly used surfaces" is a whole lie.

Aside from this, the staff was amazing and our trip was enjoyable.

I have two observations:

If we choose to eat in the dining car instead of our roomette, we have to stagger and stumble our way through a turbulent train, gripping and touching all surfaces to steady ourselves from car to car. Given that we are still in a pandemic, it would be prudent to include single-use antibacterial hand wipes.

By design and name, it is expected that passengers in the sightseer lounges are watching the scenery. I understand staffing and resources are constant issues across all industries. However, all of the windows on our observation car were visibly filthy, hindering our enjoyment...

This was my first train experience. I’ll start out by saying my train was delayed 4 hours. That I get has nothing to do with the station HOWEVER it was very hard to understand what was being said. We were in Grand Hall and everything just echoed. I relied on bits and pieces of information from others. There is not much information posted around about train status. It’s not like the airport where there’s digital screens with update information everywhere. Which meant we had to keep checking our phones which was okay TILL 1 hour turned into 2 then 3 then 4. By this time my phone was dead (started at 75) so I grabbed my charger but couldn’t not find an outlet. I was told we could use a kiosk to rent charging time but I declined. Maybe it’s my fault for expecting a better experience seeing as I’ve never ridden a train but overall I give it a 3 . I’ll prob just stick to flying.

Side note: like most places some of the staff was really nice and some...

The trip down and back on the train was great. While in the station in New Orleans my wallet was stolen. I reported it to both New Orleans PD and Amtrak PD. New Orleans PD treated me like it was a pain for them to take the time to do a report and give me a case number. Amtrak PD was much better to deal with and seemed to take me more seriously. The officer who took the report told me that since I was able to give good see eruption of the person's I suspected the detective would review their video and get back to me in a couple of days to update me. That was 10 days ago and I still haven't heard anything else from either department. As a veteran of over 40 years in Law Enforcement this is not a satisfactory result. At least give me a phone call telling me you don't have anything. Send me a copy of the video and ask me if I see the suspects,...