How nice, a thread about new Superliners when Amtrak is not building any.
So the conversation is about everything else, from Europe to Australia, great!
Getting this thread back onto the title of the thread, the fact being ignored is there is a lack of Superliner equipment presently for the existing services. Two long distance trains are operating daily, or soon will be, without Sightseer Lounge cars. Which means no cafeteria for coach passengers to buy food, no cafeteria for every passenger to buy drinks between meals nor buy Amtrak branded souvenirs on these trains. Instead, Amtrak dumps the Cross Country Club cars on them and try to provide all these services to everyone on the train with just one employee in the car. Needless to say, the service being provided is terrible. Need a blanket because the train is too cold for you, pack one in your own bag.
Amtrak, if you do not have enough Sightseer Lounge cars in your fleet to have one on every train, it is time to start building some more!
Likewise for all the other Superliner car types. I'm tired of reading that you do not have enough Superliners to expand long distance services on new routes, or for the reinstatement of old routes. How could Amtrak extend the Heartland Flyer to Newton or to Houston or both without new Superliners in the pipeline?
Alstom has the ability to build more of them.