VIA's Renaissance Cars

What was the original British intent with the design of this equipment? The sleeping and dining car seem adequate for the use in North America, but the coaches feel most unsuited, from my travels, for the time and distances required to journey in comfort overnight.







XC Tower

The intention was to have overnight service from cities in Scotland and England to cities in continental Europe, under the brand name "Nightstar".

Routes proposed were:
London - Amsterdam & Cologne
London - Dortmund & Frankfurt
Glasgow - Paris & Brussels
Manchester - Paris & Brussels
Plymouth - Brussels
Swansea - Paris

For more details, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightstar_train

Hope this helps.

Addition/correction to my previous post - I should have said "Scotland, England and Wales"!

I agree about the coaches being inadequate for overnight use. VIA made modifications to the front part of each coach. Originally there were four rows of rear-facing seats. These proved unpopular and VIA re-arranged them into two sets of facing doubles and two sets of facing singles. The latter are my preferred seats when travelling with one other person - for day trips, of course. (When the LRCs were new, all coaches and VIA 1 cars had one half with forward-facing seats and the other half were rear-facing. The seats were not reversible, but it wasn't long before VIA corrected this silly design.) Although the seats are not comfortable for overnight use, many people travelling alone like the option of a single seat rather than sharing a double with a stranger. The dining cars were created by VIA out of sleeping car shells.

The original trains were supposed to just be sleeper, service car, and coach. But the trains were designed so that they would leave late at night and arrive at destination early morning. Thus no "long" duration in coach as some endure on the Renaissance coach cars from Montreal/Quebec City to Halifax. And as mentioned, the Diners were completely a VIA innovation as the route to from Montreal/Quebec City to the Maritimes necessitated such.