Railroad Forums 

  • Ocean View Question(s)

  • Discussion related to Amtrak also known as the National Railroad Passenger Corp.
Discussion related to Amtrak also known as the National Railroad Passenger Corp.

Moderators: GirlOnTheTrain, mtuandrew, Tadman

 #1519281  by Gilbert B Norman
 
Mr. Rohr, I ask you note I said "Wifi that works". I have yet to encounter such on any transportation conveyance where it does.

I can't believe I once paid for such on a flight - likely just for the novelty to say I did it. But it didn't work, and that was that (never charged; thank you United).

My last Feb '18 Auto-Train "voyage", they announced at the start of the trip there was no Wifi, and without too much explanation.

Overseas, traveling from Vienna to Salzburg, Mr. Google had the train, using OBB's Wifi, as somewhere in Russia. This year, Verizon has a new plan where for $10 a day, whatever you have over here, you have over there. So with some three gigs of data on hand, I never worried whether or not Wifi was available.
 #1519290  by Backshophoss
 
Hopefully,Ocean View gets a one way trip to the Minn RR museum,SOON,
Would be nice to ride this Great Dome behind Hustle Muscle!
 #1519293  by eolesen
 
rohr turbo wrote: Thu Sep 05, 2019 1:06 pm You realize of course that you are saying all National Parks be closed, all public museums closed. Should we further close airports to first class travelers? Close the highways to people going on a pleasure trip?
Hyperbole much?...

Amtrak exists to provide transportation from point A to B, sometimes via C and D, arguably for people who don't have easy access to other options.
 #1519302  by mtuandrew
 
Backshophoss wrote: Fri Sep 06, 2019 1:47 am Hopefully,Ocean View gets a one way trip to the Minn RR museum,SOON,
Would be nice to ride this Great Dome behind Hustle Muscle!
I’m not sure how aware MTM is of the Great Dome but I’ll keep on them about it; they might have to do a lot of fundraising and definitely would need to make space in their yard at Jackson Street Roundhouse. Lake Superior Railroad Museum is another fine option, though Ocean View would never have visited Duluth.
 #1520476  by XC Tower
 
I just read that Amtrak intends on replacing the Ocean View with cars that feature "larger windows" on the Adirondack....Any clue what that could mean?
Also, many passengers, as myself, made a special trip just to ride the Ocean View along Lake Champlain, which is even more superb in the Autumn. Would the possibility of New York State buying a special sightseeing car for year round use on the Adirondack sound unreasonable? Perhaps a conversion of an existing Viewliner diner as Andrew suggested?....Just thoughts.
I value and respect all viewpoints on here.
Thank you for them.


XC
 #1520481  by mtuandrew
 
At first I thought that would be unreasonable, XC, and that no state would invest on its own in a tiny orphan fleet of observation cars. But then again, why not? The Empire Service fleet is semi-captive, shuttling between NYP, ALB, and other points north and west. It doesn’t go south on the Corridor without first visiting Sunnyside Yard, and has no reason to go northeast to Boston. Same with the Adirondack, which is a New York-supported service. Other than Illinois and California, there aren’t any other dedicated regional fleets like theirs, and unlike those two states New York hasn’t purchased its own rolling stock yet.

In the Empire Service thread Mr. O’Keefe had pointed out some language suggesting that New York State might purchase its own cars for in-state use. I’m assuming Siemens will get any forthcoming order from New York, they’ve done extremely well so far, but Alstom and CAF are both based in New York and have competitive products. Any one of those three could provide a shell, frame, and equipment to a third party such as Stadler, who would then create a small fleet of single-level Sightseers. I’d imagine they would find homes on all Empire and Adirondack trains, so a fleet of 12 could probably manage.

It would have a hard time passing the smell test for Federal funding, and probably wouldn’t be extremely welcome in Albany. The idea might have to be asking for state and matching Federal funding for cafe cars, then kicking in tourism-budgeted money to finish building the cars from rolling shell to Sightseer flat “dome.”
 #1520484  by Arborwayfan
 
There's got to be a way to have a car with a good view without it being a whole extra car JUST for viewing. Long example with Superliners coming; I think the basic ideas would apply to new and existing single-level cars, too. I'm thinking about Superliner diners and the sightseer lounges. So we have summer-length CZ, something like 3 or 4 coaches, one or two with lower-level seating, two regular sleepers and a transition sleeper with some space available to passengers. Say 5.5 to 6.5 revenue cars in which passengers can buy seats. Then we have the diner and the lounge. Passengers can only use the diner when meals are being served, which is maybe 3 hours for each meal, with three or four hours in between and then the whole night. All passengers share the lounge; they mostly compete for the cool upper-level seats, and hardly anyone uses the lower level eating area. The last time I was on one the neat little compartment with a couple long tables and curved benches was empty two lunches in a row except for us and a bunch of extra drinks and other supplies. The conductor used the table closest to the stairs (a logical enough place for him or her to be available to pax without taking up sightseer space) and all the other pax just came in, bought food, and left. So that's half the lower level of the lounge riding empty most of the time, and the whole diner riding empty half the day and the whole night as well. I know that there are other economic problems with food service (cost of storing and serving food when everything is more expensive because you're moving, cost of well-paid workers who have to be well paid because it's fair and because they are away from home for days etc.) but hauling all the tons of railcar to move those square feet of space that no one pays to ride in is part of it, and turning around and not using that expensive non-revenue space so much of the time seems wrong somehow.

Solutions? Amtrak's only real attempt to change the picture was those funny diner-lounge things on the City of New Orleans (something Cafes?). Partly a good idea, to combine the sit-down and walk-up parts in one car. Partly a lousy idea, because now no one gets the special view from the lounge. Maybe not much loss in Illinois, where you hardly need a glass roof to see the landscape, but would be a great loss in the mountains.

Other possibilities to better use the space and/or to help the lounge and diner pay their way:

1. Let people sit in the diner between meals when lots of people want to play cards or do paperwork or, as I saw once, tie flies. That expands the lounge space, which is one way of making riding the train more tolerable to more people because they can move around. Even just use one end of the diner for this.

2. Put a dozen regular seats in the little-used back compartment of the lounge, and sell them. Basically free revenue once you've made the change, and no different from putting business class in one end of an Amfleet cafe car.

3. Just sell short-distance pax tickets to a spot in the lower level of the current lounge car, without changing the seats. Add "Lower-level table seat" to the list of seat choices. All the professors who get on the CONO at Champaign-Urbana would look twice at that option. Again, free revenue.

4. Or, for something more drastic, turn the sightseers into the main food-service cars by changing how downstairs is used and how the full-meal food is served. In detail, put a somewhat bigger kitchen and/or a bigger self-service food serving system, which much better food than current lounge car offerings, including more fresh fruit and veg and a better range of heatable entrees, into the lower level of sightseer lounges. Maybe have two or three cook-servers and have a kind of take-out grill down there. (US railroads did this, and Norwegian LD trains do it now: self service, but they'll give you hotdogs and mashed potato, various premade entrees, good pizza, etc.) Maybe have just one cashier but really set the place up for pleasant self service (sightseers are kind of set up with way now, at least some of them, but the food and the cabinets are both kind of unattractive and awkward for pax to use; go look at a Swedish cafe car and do that. If necessary, reduce the lower-level seating and expand the storage so that there is plenty of room for all the food currently served by dining car and lounge together. Maybe even install a dumbwaiter to that waiter station on the upper level, the one that hardly ever gets used, and put an electronic ordering-and-paying system up there so folks can order from upstairs if they don't want to walk down. Eliminate the diner; in this model, we lose the sit-down dinner with waiters, but we keep some of the same type of food (not "contemporary dining" :) ) and we keep the sightseer lounge.

[Ends long speech.]
 #1520510  by mtuandrew
 
Well, there’s the BBD MultiLevel platform as has been suggested, or a number of UIC-spec designs from other manufacturers. It does give lots of room for a cafe (really more of a convenience store), an observation lounge, and a full diner or business seating below. I’m not sure how easy it would be to convert one into a Sightseer or dome - they may have a stressed-skin design rather than a conventional frame? I don’t know the particulars of their design.

One problem with Ocean View beyond its orphan status and six-wheel trucks is that as far as I know, its cafe wasn’t consistently (ever?) used in recent years. It’s hard enough to justify dragging a lead sled with you, much harder to justify it when it isn’t even attempting to make money for the company. It seems to be more or less the same as a Superliner Sightseer, so it shouldn’t have been an issue to stock and utilize it the same way.
 #1520537  by Backshophoss
 
Ocean View's lounge was rarely used,it was used on Press Events for Amtrak at times and possibly on a few charter runs.
Otherwise that lounge was used as a seating area at best.

Again,at the "Stainless Steel Graveyard" in Granite City IL,there're regular Dome Cars that could be restored for service
then shared on the Adirondack,the Empire service trains into VT and the Downeaster.
Some of these cars were Coach-Domes!
 #1520552  by Gilbert B Norman
 
From Holiday Inn Express Clarion PA---

One more to think of when wondering why some agency does not have a small fleet of sightseeing cars - thst is training Mechanical forces.

I'm sure the Amtrak Technical Training at "Choo Cho U", or wherever else about the System its conducted will not be focused on maybe three cars in the fleet. It is simply a reality "you cant please all the people all the time".

Sure, when Amtrak started up with the oddball fleet a lot less standardized beyond the basics such as coupler height, there were railroad shop forces qualified on such. Now those "old heads" have left service, and Amtrak must "go to the street" to train and replace them.

I think we get the drill; for me, its 380 miles of the 80 and 95 to Greenwich CT.
 #1520714  by Tadman
 
Recently Stadler started building new-build bilevel cars for Rocky Mountaineer that had a panorama roof like the original Via/BC rail panorama car. If it's impossible to tow a dome into NYP and unfavorable to switch one out at ALB regarding time/money, a new single-level Stadler panorama car is probably your best bet. They run on four-wheel trucks, have an active support base of spares at a viable company, and are proving themselves already in the Canadian west.

Such concept would probably require NYS to buy the cars, but state-owned rolling stock is not new to NYS.
 #1520723  by Greg Moore
 
BTW, I think we're all reading too much into the original comment.

I highly suspect the expected "solution" is simply new, standard coach cars with larger windows, no special car.
 #1520727  by Arborwayfan
 
Big windows would be a great solution. I rode over Norway's two big mountain routes in trains where the windows were tall enough that from the window seats you could see all the way up the walls of valleys and canyons, and from the aisle you could get most of the view. It might have been fun to have some glass roof, but I wasn't wishing for a dome car. They bought those cars with sightseeing in mind, but the windows were the only special features for sightseeing. The only big non-revenue areas were the waiting area right by the cafe counters (which had lots of windows, too, so much nicer than Amfleet cafe caves) and two-level playgrounds in the family car on some trains (with padded climbing structures, in a car marked off as likely to have babies in it).

It is nice to walk up and down the train, but having everyone have a good view would be better than having a few early-birds be able to get an excellent view, especially if it didn't require non-revenue cars.