Passenger rail build specs?

So with a recent visit to NYC and The Jane Hotel, which was inspired by the later model Pullman sleeper berths featured in North by Northwest, I thought I could try my hand at a similar berth. I was able to find the PRIIA Section 305 specs for single and bi-level passenger cars... but I have a few dimension questions.

Namely:

• Looking at a car from the side, how thick is the transition curtain between one car to another? Do both ends have said curtain, or only one end?
• Also looking from the side, how long is the distance between the car end (assuming square end) and the vestuble door?
• How thick are the outer walls? Right now, I'm guessing 4 inches, but I bet they're thicker.

Answering some of my own questions, now that I got a copy of "Amtrak Car Diagrams from the 1970's":

• The "curtain" is 15" in Amtrak cars but can be 16".
• The vestibule door varies with design but 30" seems to be a good fit. The vestibule itself can be 3' wide.
• The outer walls look to be 6" thick.

This is getting into me working on a fantasy rail car, the "Canmephian River." The design is to be sort of an apartment on the rail, inspired by the 20th Century Limited.

Out of curiosity, are you talking about a real berth or a rendering? It’d be interesting to see pictures when you’re done regardless.

About eight hours of futzing about in LibreOffice Draw got me the attached PDF. The plans for a real-life rail coach car I call the "Canmephian River" -- something to get built if I ever hit the lottery. The scale of the drawings is 1 foot RL to 1 cm drawn.

Inspiration is drawn from cars built for the Milwaukie Road, New York Central, the Chesapeake and Ohio, and the New York/New Haven. I couldn't get enough of that curved rear car, and the MR "River" series were combo lounge/sleeper cars. To make it into a true "apartment" car, I fiddled around with various aspects. I wanted to have each bedroom have a shower and toilet combo, a "Twin XL" bed (6' long beds make me hang my feed off the edge, and I have enough bumps on my head already), a decent kitchen and dining area, as well as a work area in the lounge. I added a separate vestibule set back from the nose (although I do intend on a rear door exit) for a bit of safety (although it's not low platform -- that will be the opposite end).

The bedroom design is something I'd like to explore a bit later on with a "Train Hotel" concept, where the rooms are berths on sleepers.

Looks nice. I suppose you’d have to start from either an existing OBS, or spend megabucks gutting another car (the car itself would be the cheap part.) I searched “sleeper observation car” on the Google machine and found these GN Empire Builder car diagrams swiped from God knows which book - and reposted on Pinterest of all places - that might help:

You’d mentioned “apartment car” too, which made me wonder how a gallery (high-rise!) car would work in this role. You would lose the boattail and the PSNY clearance, but gain some very high ceilings.

mtuandrew wrote:Looks nice. I suppose you’d have to start from either an existing OBS, or spend megabucks gutting another car (the car itself would be the cheap part.) I searched “sleeper observation car” on the Google machine and found these GN Empire Builder car diagrams swiped from God knows which book - and reposted on Pinterest of all places - that might help:

They're similar to the "Amtrak Car Designs of the 1970's" book I procured this year while I was in San Jose, CA for a convention. I may have the last copy... I should scan it in, clean it up a bit, and put it up on the Internet Archive.

mtuandrew wrote:You’d mentioned “apartment car” too, which made me wonder how a gallery (high-rise!) car would work in this role. You would lose the boattail and the PSNY clearance, but gain some very high ceilings.

I was initially considering a double-decker (a la MARC IV) to keep under PSNY tolerances, but I may need to tweak the build (maybe kitchen/dining up top and bedrooms below?). I don't know how low I can go and keep headroom.

Most of the plans are in the library of the Illinois Railroad Museum.

Remember that on a low slung car, you have to allocate space for under carriage mechanical equipment.