Amtrak blames millennials as dining cars ditched for pre-made food

Amtrak’s traditional dining cars are screeching to a halt on these routes through Penn Station — and millennials are partly to blame.

Starting Oct. 1, the financially strapped rail carrier will eliminate freshly made hot meals on three routes as it does away with the trains’ kitchens and revamps their classic table-sharing dining cars to cut costs — and because young people want more personal space, Amtrak officials say.

“Some people, especially our new millennial customers, don’t like it so much,” said Peter Wilander, Amtrak’s head of customer experience, to the Washington Post of the dining cars’ current cozy layout.

“They want more privacy. They don’t want to feel uncomfortable sitting next to people.”

Among the routes trading their on-board kitchens and white-linen table cloths for a more “contemporary” experience will be the Cardinal (New York-Chicago), Crescent (New York-New Orleans) and Silver Meteor (New York-Miami).

The change will also impact the Silver Star, another New York-to-Miami service, starting next year, officials said.

Meanwhile, sleeping-car customers will receive a “flexible dining service” where pre-made options can be delivered to their room.

Instead of a juicy steak dinner or savory French toast, they will now choose from pre-packaged meals such as an Asian noodle bowl, chicken fettuccine or a buffet-style breakfast with hard-boiled eggs and muffins.

“We continue to evolve our onboard accommodations and dining experience to meet the needs of today’s customers,” Amtrak CEO Richard Anderson said in a statement.

The changes are expected to save about $2 million a year, officials said.

Josh Ingram, 54, who was headed for a Miami-bound train at Penn Station on Sunday, acknowledged to The Post that “people just don’t like talking to each other the way they used to” — but bemoaned the end of the current dining-car tradition.

“It’s the nostalgia that people care about, not the food,” Ingram said. “The food on these trains hasn’t been good for years.”

But 25-year-old Nathan Sieminski, who commutes once a month on Amtrak from New York to Charlottesville, Va., said he’s not upset to see the dining cars go.

“The dining car is only open for a few hours, and when it is open, the lines are long and the food is questionable,” Sieminski said. “I was basically given a microwave pizza last time. It’s not something people will miss.”

Additional reporting by Daniel Cassady

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