west point wrote: ↑Mon May 17, 2021 8:47 pm
We have too many persons who are ready to put the V-2sleepers out in the boonies too soon. Amtrak needs to keep them close to the major maintenance location of MIA. The institutional knowledge curve will be much higher keeping them close to one maintenance base. Since all have not even been delivered it is better that when they can be released east coast wise their reliability will be much higher than the V-1s.
That will also be important when the V-1s are cycled for refurbishment and the changes from V-2s are implemented. I expect that we may see 2 V-2s on each silver train set once enough are available for revenue service. That probably with 1 in reserve at SSY. Then maybe either 2 - 1 on each Cardinal train set or 3 = 1 on each LSL train set. Crescent unlikely for the CY as NOL too far away.
The Viewliner II sleepers need to be put into service - they’ve spent a lot of storage time in Hialeah already! All Viewliner sleepers are cycled into NYP, and then from NYP they can be put on a Florida train and taken down to Miami. Only the Silver Star and Silver Meteor serve Miami directly, and those trains are destined to get the Viewliner II Sleepers first (3 for each train set of the Meteor, and 2 for each train set of the Star). Instead of 39 Viewliners being required for service, with the RESTORATION of NEC sleeper service, it now means that 41 Viewliners are required for regular service. Amtrak has 50 Viewliner I’s and 25 VIewliner II’s (20 of the 25 have been delivered). The purpose of the VIewliner II sleepers was to augment the single level overnight LD fleet with more sleepers. But Amtrak has not defined how or where it plans to do this.
So the math favors that Amtrak is sitting on a surplus of Viewliner sleepers that need to start getting broken in. Moreover, Amtrak is still seeing an uptick in demand for private rooms. Even at tri-weekly, Amtrak’s restored train sets to pre-COVID sleeper quantity levels. So it’s time to get the Viewliner I and II sleepers assigned to service.
Again, all the Viewliners are “eastern based” and cycled in/out of NYP. Only Sunnyside Yard and Hialeah (in Miami) do any repairs or major servicing of the Viewliners. Chicago, Boston, and New Orleans do minor or basic repairs. Otherwise, they are sent back to NYP Sunnyside Yard for “help” and if Sunnyside can’t do it, they head to Hialeah.
THe current Amtrak regime, unlike the Boardman Amtrak regime have spoken NOTHING about converting or re-modeling the Viewliner I’s to be identical or similar to the Viewliner II layout/operation. Yes, all planned at one time, but not talked about since Boardman left office, several years ago now! I think at best, the Viewliner I’s will be rotated into getting some sort of overhaul, but nothing drastic...... Thus you are likely looking at 3 to 5 Viewliner Is being cycled for maintenance.
But again, out of a total of 75 Viewliner sleepers (5 yet to be delivered), there are only 41 assigned to regular service. That’s a lot that are still sidelined awaiting for duty! Put another way - that’s a lot of potential lost revenue that Amtrak is not obtaining due to the Viewliner sleepers idling and not put into service!
Again, hopefully the Silver Meteor and Silver Star get outfitted with Viewliner II’s:
- 3 sleepers per Meteor trainset, 4 train sets required for daily service = 12 Viewliner IIs assigned
- 2 sleepers per Star trainset, 4 train sets required for daily service = 8 Viewliner IIs assigned
That’s 20 Viewliner IIs being put into Florida based service, where either the remaining 5 Viewliner IIs can be rotated in for service, or they use the displaced VIewliner 1s.
Eventually, where do you put an additional 16 Viewliner sleepers, so as to have 57 in service, and 18 in reserve (or 25% in reserve as Amtrak has liked to have)?
I have to wonder if Amtrak will convert the Capitol Limited to a single level LD train set. That would likely take 6 to 9 of the remaining 16 sleepers. It would free up much needed Superliners. Also, originally it was discussed that the Pennsylvanian would carry Viewliners so they could be “through cars” and forwarded to the Capitol Limited at Pittsburgh. That discussion and idea too has gone by the wayside. It was hoped that each eastern LD train set would get an additional Viewliner in its consist when fully utilizing the available Viewliner fleet. Including the Cardinal, but excluding the NEC overnight sleeper service, there are 17 eastern LD train sets. So its still conceivable each train set gets 1 extra sleeper overall, again excluding the NEC overnight service.