I will give them 3 stars only because I think it's great that Amtrak is managing to improve their website. Any business worth 2 cents these days has some kind of web presence and it is always wise to keep it fresh, dynamic and user friendly. I've been to their site so I have no doubt they are managing to do this very well these days. HOWEVER, to me the big mystery with them has nothing to do with technology but rather why they can't seem to apply this very simple "fresh, dynamic and user friendly" philosophy to their service as well? As little as one year ago, I would have still described myself as one of the last of a dying breed of people still enamored by train travel. And, I always had a lot of really nice things to say whenever the subject would happen to come up. But, I am sad to say, my last trip to Chicago in December ended this very long love affair. Not long ago (5 years or so) there were at least two trains per day going to and from Chicago from my town. When I tried to make reservations for this trip, I was told that the only train now going to Chicago at the time would be leaving at the ungodly hour of 4:48 a.m. Actually, I think that was a "special" holiday schedule since before that the departure time was about an hour earlier. Reviewing all my fond memories of train travel that go from fairly recent all the way back to some great coast-to-coast trips of my childhood, I decided not to let the odd time factor stop me. On the day of the trip I was there bleary-eyed, but bright and early. Unfortunately, the train was not. In fact, it arrived at least an hour late. This, I found out, was not unusual, but now apparently the norm. The attitude of the Amtrak personnel about this was pretty ho hum to say the least. Then, I get on the train expecting once I'm settled in, to be able to go to the dining car and buy a cup of coffee and breakfast sandwich as I always had on these early morning trips. I soon found out there was not only no dinning car or snack bar, but actually no other car (that we could enter) at all. The only thing available now was a sorry little collection of vending machines - in which several of the selections were not even available! I also found the car was completely different than the ones they once had. Now, a big factor in my on-going good opinion of train travel was the fact that the seats and legroom was on the level of the first class section of an airplane. On top of that, you also had plenty of room to keep your luggage just above or near your seat - which made detraining quicker and more convenient. Well, I guess the tradeoff for newer and smaller seats was a much more cramped and stuffy space. In addition, luggage had to be stored in the compartment on the level below the passengers - another new, idiotic design feature is that the car is now double-decker making it much less accessible to the handicapped passengers - talk about a giant step backward. Even the conductor - who answered my questions in a dull monotone - seemed to have no personality, in contrast to the friendly guys who once worked this route. I don't expect a floorshow, but you would think he might have put up some pretense that he was not just there waiting for the dead lice to fall off him. It was just so weird that in such a short period of time between my last trip and this it had gone from a well packed two or three cars of people heading off to Chicago to do their holiday shopping, etc. to less than ¼ the amount of passengers. If anyone out there has had a better experience with train travel lately, I would love to hear about it. This is one of those times I really hope I'm wrong, but, the way I see it now, at the rate Amtrak appears to be sinking coupled with their obvious death wish, it's going to take much more than an up to date website to keep them going much longer.