On the shortest trips, it offers cart delivery of drinks and light snacks directly to your seat. On most trips, however, there will be a dedicated café or cabin wagon with a slightly larger selection of hot and cold drinks, beer, wine and spirits, and soft drinks, although all snacks will be pre-packaged and all hot snacks will be microwavable. Expect to find a very simple selection of overpriced sandwiches and snacks, although a few trains may surprise you with other options (for example, the cafe cars on many trains sell local wines and craft beer). Cafes and lounge cars offer an open seating area around tables that will be open for most of your trip, so even if you don’t buy something from the café, you can sit in the car, enjoy the view and maybe meet someone. other passengers and on-board staff.
Almost all long-distance trains offer a special dining car that will be open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Meals are usually prepared outside the train before departure and then heated and served on plates on board. For example, during lunch and dinner, customers are offered a pre-printed menu with a choice of a couple of appetizers, about six main courses and several desserts.
Amtrak’s Lead Service Staff (LSA), which runs the dining car, seats passengers together to fill a table, rather than assigning individuals or couples to a table on their own (but the LSA does seat the family together). This practice usually surprises those unfamiliar with it. In many cases, the traveler finds that an interesting conversation is taking place that otherwise would never have taken place.
Trains offer meals and refreshments for passengers with disabilities who cannot get to the dining car and café.
Except for sleeping passengers who consume them in their cabins, passengers are not allowed to bring their alcohol aboard any Amtrak train.
Many short- and medium-range trains and some of the busiest stations offer free Wi-Fi, although the service can be quite unreliable and blocks some high-bandwidth uses, such as streaming video sites.
Some short- and medium-range lines, namely those in the Northeast Corridor, also offer a quiet car, where cell phone conversations are strictly prohibited and any device that creates noise must be turned off (and you will be looked around and asked to move if you are breaking the rules). This is a relatively new service, which is gradually expanding to other short-distance routes.