Amtrak's been stripping meals out of the service to save money. The Silver Star [correction: not Silver Meteor also], which runs the length of the east coast from Maine to Florida and back, for example, has no meal car. You can buy the roomettes and the rooms, still for significantly more than a plane ticket, but they do not come with meals. There's a "snack" car for all passengers with a microwave where you can buy chips or a hot dog, and it's only open some of the time. The sleeper cars are also dirty and falling apart, and there is no observation car.

Quick correction to this comment as I just took the silver meteor recently from FL-NY. Meals are definitely included when booking a room. The dining car has been renovated so perhaps meals were unavailable at some point. The price is significantly more than a plane ticket and while the rooms are older I would not consider them dirty. Sleep is difficult IMO as you do stop, bump around and you’ll occasionally get some random rattling. There is no observation car but they do have a lounge car with tables and snacks. You could get microwave meals like pizza, burgers, etc. Definitely not gourmet fair. The dining car meal is a significant step up and while not winning any Michelin stars is surprisingly decent.

Silver Meteor still has one. Only Silver Star dropped it.

I'm not sure that is the right comparison. Let's take a New York to Los Angeles trip.

That would be 3 days on Amtrak, or about 6 hours by plane.

I'd guess that for most cases flying instead of taking the train doesn't mean we spend the 6 days that we would have spent on the train (round trip) in a Los Angeles hotel eating expensive restaurant meals. I think most people would simply leave home later and leave Los Angeles earlier if flying, so that the time difference is spent at home eating whatever they normally eat.

My base assumption is that one goes on Amtrak for the scenery. So it's not at all like being at home; it's more like being at a scenic resort.

Note that some people use Amtrak because they are afraid of flying. This way of looking at the prices does not apply to them.

The scenery, the experience, and (while I don't really like the term) the "bucket list" nature of it.

Personally, I sort of want to do at least a section of the Empire Builder or the California Zephyr at some point. And I'd also like to take a transatlantic liner (well, the Queen Mary 2) from NY to Southampton. But probably only once and I'm fully prepared for the idea to be more enticing than the reality.