Gilbert B Norman wrote: In Europe, away from the UK, which hasn't got any HSR, the Sleeper is dying with the last remaining hurrah being Couchettes - did that once in this life during 1990 when I was 48. Now closing in on 75, "uh, not about to".
To expand on the point, EU sleeper service survives where governments are willing to finance or fund the specialized rolling stock. In most of Western Europe, governments are no longer interested, preferring to invest in new 200+mph high speed lines that put sleepers out of business.
This is unfortunate for a lot of successful sleeper markets like Amsterdam-Copenhagen or Zurich-Prague, where the majority of the line is in Germany, meaning DB is the operator, but the German government isn't paying to renew the CityNightLine fleet, so it's all going away shortly. Paris-Berlin already met that fate, although the route has been taken over by Russian Railways' Trans-European Express (Paris-Berlin-Warsaw-Moscow) three times a week; notably, Russian Railways is running almost brand-new sleepers on the route.
The UK example is instructive; Scotland cannot persuade England to build HS2 any faster than it already is, and even after all the upgrades to the ECML it's still 4:15 King's Cross-Edinburgh and 7:00 King's Cross-Aberdeen, well over the <3:00 sweet spot of the HSR day train. So the Scottish Government is investing heavily in the
Caledonian Sleeper fleet, to retain the commercial links to London, and the service is flourishing, even in the face of aggressive competition from both rail and air.
So, it is suggestive, but of course not conclusive, that if the US Federal Government (and also possibly state governments) agreed to buy an adequate supply of rolling stock, Amtrak ought to be able to run a financially stable National Network. It requires a sustained commitment from government that is there when needed, though, which is hardly what one can expect from the present political climate. As a comparison, many on this board might remember the story of the SOU-operated
Southern Crescent, which the company was happy to run on their own account until 1979, at which point the fleet aged out and they quickly joined Amtrak. Had the powers that be instead elected to overhaul or replace SOU's tiny passenger fleet, service WAS-NOLA might still be in private hands. I'm not saying that such a decision was ever likely, nor would it have been correct, but it is an alt-historical point of divergence.
On the converse side, I will be shocked if the Coast Starlight continues south of the Bay Area longer than one timetable change after the first CAHSR Bay-to-Basin service begins, if not before. Splitting the train into a Seattle-Bay Area sleeper, and a Bay Area-SLO-Santa Barbara-LA day train (or two), only makes sense once the endpoint traffic is going over a different route in only 3 hours. Traffic from the Central Coast to OR and WA is very, very light; worth maintaining the connection but not worth worrying about a one-seat ride. Nor is it wise of California to invest in a
Spirit of California revival, such a short time before CAHSR would doom the train.