I should be in Taiwan within 72 hours, I’ve booked 2 train tickets with my buddy and noticed Taiwan Railway Admin has added dining car for certain PP trains, just check their new schedule (old schedule doesn’t work anymore)
Has anyone been on the dining car? I heard Xing Dong Yang won contract bid and will provide catering for TRA, it must be better than what they had before.
yeh, dining car is great. good is so so, coffee uberdelicious and picture windows large and clean. just stand up and watch the scenery go by. Waitstaff is cute and friendly too!
Well you can forget about the dining cars now, within 3 months after introduction, HTY pulled out of the dining car venture in PP trains, apparently TRA charged too much royalty (1.78 millions a month) and HTY can’t handle the expenses, for the news, click here
groups.google.com/groups?q=%E6%9 … org&rnum=3
Good thing I was on it while it lasted.
vincewy: you mean, just like that, those dining cars have been taken out of service. please explain. i cant read chinoise. who is HTY. What happened to those dining cars? just sitting in storage now? really?
Formosa:
I’ll translate the article briefly, if you check the train schedule again, the dining car no longer exists, I’ve actually heard this first from the train conductor and it became true. FYI, HTY is the food retail chain that won the bid of providing catering services for TRA, they also have a few places at Taiwan’s Hwy #3 rest stops like Guanxi and Nantou.
The dining cars are still at every PP train’s #6 car, but you can no longer buy hot foods and drinks there.
"Although not announced officially, HTY has expressed intention of dining cart catering at every PP trains. 13 years after TRA’s dining car services ended, TRA has been trying very hard to keep HTY in contract, it’s also possible that TRA will end up providing the catering themselves.
Started around Xmas of 2002, HTY has been providing hot meals like Turkey Rice Box and other goodies, but within 3 months, HTY is looking at ending the services, according to Mr Chen, the manager of TRA catering, HTY’s original contract is 4 years and TRA has not ruled out taking legal action against HTY for breach of contract.
There’re more than 80 PP trains dispatched every day and each requires 2 full-time staff from HTY to provide hot foods, thus requiring substantial manpower, this is exactly the same reason TRA pulled out of dining car services back in 1988, the revenue is also eroded by royalties THY pays TRA each month, 1.78 mil NT, totalling 20.58 mil NT a yr."
wow, sad day when dining cars can’t even make it. according to vince, the dining cars are still attached to the trains, and you can stand up in them and drink your own thermos coffee, but nothing is for sale anymore and there are no cute waitresses making small talk.
too bad. the one ride i had was great in one of them cars. too bad
Damn! Formosa’s first reference to those cute waitresses had me all perked up and thinking about where I might head for on one of those trains – but those latter posts have dashed my excitement to smithereens.
The sooner they privatize TRC, the better – then, perhaps, we’ll get those dining cars back again and start to see something like a real train service in Taiwan.
omni, keep on trackin’ … yes!
by the way, question for you. couples who do it the air, are called members of the MILE HIGH club, right? So what does one call couples who do it in trains?
Ever do it there?
I did it once with my gf long time ago in Mexico private train compartment. But we had no name for it. Figured u might know…
I wouldnt dare try it here…
[quote]So what does one call couples who do it in trains?
[/quote]
Metre-high club.
Wasn’t there some chat on this subject in another thread? I seem to remember that Two Navels confessed to having indulged in such a pleasure, and referred to it as something like the “metre high club”. I can’t recall having ever given it a try myself, though I’d certainly love to, and it would be perfectly private and suitable to do so in a proper sleeper compartment – like the ones on the Trans-Siberian Express. (Which makes me think of the lovely Russian guide with semi-Asian features who accompanied me and my group – we had to be part of a group with an Intourist guide in those old Commie days – when I made that delightful journey. She would have been a perfect candidate for the position, and I confess to having entertained such designs, but alas another guy in our group, who was a great deal hunkier than I, elbowed me aside in gaining her favour, and very likely got what I was hungering after.)
But I wouldn’t want to do it in a train toilet!
sandman, love ya! Yeh, great name: The Meter High Club! You are funny!
By the way, i have a question for posters here: when a train changes tracks, from one track to another, what are the devices called that allow the train to change tracks? and what are the men called who have this job of changing the track lanes? Brakemen? Who invented these devices and when? Curious.
Because my gf surprised me the other day by asking me who STEERS the train and where is the steering wheel and how does a train move from one track to another track at some stations. She THOUGHT that someone steers the train the way we drive cars, and that the wheels turn into a new track that way. Yes, she went to college!
The AF interlocking got its name back in the 1800
Pointsmen or switchmen, perhaps?
Curious… Is the dining car still around?