And just to continue the theme, is there room for a kitchen on an airplane? Is there room for a kitchen on an intercity bus? No, that happens to be one of Amtrak's few and desperately-needed "unique business propositions." That's their moat, if they have one. It's not like they can be fast like a plane, or cheap like a bus. All that's left is "good." They can serve you a steak cooked to order. Some sense of luxury, of which hot meals are a part, is one of the few things that makes the passenger feel like Okay I'm not a total loser or hopeless aviophobe[0] for choosing this way of traveling. I can tell my incredulous friends and they'll see my point. I can brag that I woke up with Glacier National Park rolling by the windows and went down to the dining car and had French toast and met a guy who runs a tractor shop in a farming town thousands of miles removed from my life.

It's so counter-intuitive to cut that service out, I just can't help but suspect that it isn't meant as a business move at all, but rather as just another cynical salvo in the longstanding (since Reagan I guess) political effort to choke Amtrak out.

[0] There is also 'aviatophobe' but that sounds too much like 'the fear of Erlich Bachmann.'