Viewliner II Delivery/Production

Mr. Johnson, while this is an 'IIRC' category, Three Rivers was assigned Heritage sleepers until Sleeping Car service was withdrawn from The Federal. 2300-01 were withdrawn when the Silver Palm ran its last after the Bush/Mineta 'pruning'

A lot of things were run differently up until recent years. I think I remember seeing absurd LSL consists in the winter because Viewliners were bad-ordered in Chicago with freezing pipes. In a lot of cases, sleeper passengers ended up getting Horizon coaches, or whatever else was available.

I agree, after all of the Heritage sleepers had been retired from public service, it was discovered that the Three Rivers was an overnight train, so 2 or 3 Heritage sleepers were put back in service for that train, without any retention or chemical toilets. I can't remember if they got a shower where one of the Roomettes used to be, like VIA Rail Canada did to some of theirs.

lirr415 wrote:A lot of things were run differently up until recent years. I think I remember seeing absurd LSL consists in the winter because Viewliners were bad-ordered in Chicago with freezing pipes. In a lot of cases, sleeper passengers ended up getting Horizon coaches, or whatever else was available.

Even Superliners on a couple of occasions!

With a shortage of sleepers and an abundance of stored Amfleet coaches, I'm kind of surprised that Amtrak wasn't resourceful enough to come up with some makeshift Amfleet sleepers. Didn't they try something like that in the 70's for one of the Virginia trains (Hilltopper, perhaps)?

I don't know of any "abundance" of Amfleets. There USED to be an abundance of Amfleets in storage, but if any weren't rebuilt there was probably a good reason why they weren't rebuilt.

Matt Johnson wrote:With a shortage of sleepers and an abundance of stored Amfleet coaches, I'm kind of surprised that Amtrak wasn't resourceful enough to come up with some makeshift Amfleet sleepers. Didn't they try something like that in the 70's for one of the Virginia trains (Hilltopper, perhaps)?

Yes, I do remember an Amfleet coach with a couple of roomettes installed.

bostontrainguy wrote:

Matt Johnson wrote:With a shortage of sleepers and an abundance of stored Amfleet coaches, I'm kind of surprised that Amtrak wasn't resourceful enough to come up with some makeshift Amfleet sleepers. Didn't they try something like that in the 70's for one of the Virginia trains (Hilltopper, perhaps)?

Yes, I do remember an Amfleet coach with a couple of roomettes installed.

Yes, I believe one or two Amfleet coaches had 2 "rooms" added back around 1978-79. The Amfleet with sleepers ran for a while on the long gone Shenondoah overnight run Cinncinati to Wash DC via ex-B&O. Could have been a prototype testing for the Superliner economy (now roomette) rooms? Not sure.

Amtk30

AMTK1007 wrote:I would suspect that as the sleepers come off the CAF line, the will be rotated in in a 1-1 basis with the View I's to allow for refurbishment, and as those come back, they you may see extra sleeping car lines on various trains.

Assuming we are talking about refurbishment at Beech Grove I think that is a very realistic scenario. I suspect Amtrak will look very carefully at exercising their additional order option as well. If the cash is there I think it will happen. The contract option is the "moment" when Amtrak will be able to cross the threshold and begin restoring capacity to the Florida service and building a flexible fleet pool of single level cars.

For those who speak of empty sleepers in the middle of the winter I'm sure they won't be empty when they're switched over to the Atlantic Coast Service. We could see some very large consists in just a few years in February and March. I can barely begin to imagine what Amtrak would do with the cash from these operations. If I were in their shoes I would empty the Superliner boneyard and put every single piece of equipment there back in service, starting with extra sleepers to pool into the Empire Builder consists for the summertime.

But all of that is O/T.

Most fundamental to everything discussed here is that it appears that we are at the beginning of the end for the era of stagnation on the Atlantic Coast Service.

I'm kind of excited about that. For a long time I've advocated that amtrak and Via pool a trainset that runs on either Canadian or Ocean in the summer and Silver Service in the winter. It would be a really efficient use of rolling stock. So far, the bosses in Ottawa and Washington haven't called me to discuss...

gokeefe wrote:Most fundamental to everything discussed here is that it appears that we are at the beginning of the end for the era of stagnation on the Atlantic Coast Service.

Let the congregation say "Amen."

gokeefe wrote:

Matt Johnson wrote:Not being super familiar with the history of southeast Virginia, what I find surprising is that nobody ever connected the peninsula to Norfolk via a railroad bridge!

The "history" you refer to would in particular be that of the United States Navy. Hence the plethora of tunnels at water crossings in that area.

Don't look now, but train 66 is making a run for Norfolk!

Tadman wrote:I'm kind of excited about that. For a long time I've advocated that amtrak and Via pool a trainset that runs on either Canadian or Ocean in the summer and Silver Service in the winter. It would be a really efficient use of rolling stock. So far, the bosses in Ottawa and Washington haven't called me to discuss...

Tadman,

I can't remember if there are compatibility issues between Amtrak and VIA rolling stock. I think there are and as I recall the problem was with the HEP. Is your working assumption that the trainset would run with only Amtrak rolling stock?

D.Carleton wrote:

gokeefe wrote:Most fundamental to everything discussed here is that it appears that we are at the beginning of the end for the era of stagnation on the Atlantic Coast Service.

Let the congregation say "Amen."

Thank You Brother Carleton!

So what do we think the implications of this are? Will this have a major effect on Amtrak's bottom line?

gokeefe wrote:

Tadman wrote:I'm kind of excited about that. For a long time I've advocated that amtrak and Via pool a trainset that runs on either Canadian or Ocean in the summer and Silver Service in the winter. It would be a really efficient use of rolling stock. So far, the bosses in Ottawa and Washington haven't called me to discuss...

Tadman,

I can't remember if there are compatibility issues between Amtrak and VIA rolling stock. I think there are and as I recall the problem was with the HEP. Is your working assumption that the trainset would run with only Amtrak rolling stock?

I have never heard of such incompatibility but I can't confirm either way. However, two operations tell me there isn't one - the Adirondack recently operated with Via rolling stock and Amtrak power, and the old International Limited once operated with Via power, Amtrak cars, and had more Via cars added east of Sarnia.