Replying to The "Missing" Pacific Parlour Car in Illinois

You may be referring to the double unit dining cars. These were originally built for high volume trains like the Broadway Limited, Panama Limited and other trains. These were two full cars of that always ran as a pair with one car being the traditional dining car with kitchen and tables and the other car with tables only. The cars were connected by automatic doors so wait staff could move in between. Amtrak last used them on the Silver Service offering Buffet Style meals. One car had the buffet line and the other car had tables. Passengers helped themselves on the buffet line and then were seated. This was the only meal service offered on the Silver Trains in the late 1980s/early 1990s in one of the previous cost cutting attempts. The idea for this type of service came from the original pre-Amtrak Autotrain which offered buffet meals to customers. The buffet service did not go over that well on the Silver trains and the food offering was not that great. It was a far cry from the excellent meals served on the prior New York-Florida trains such as the Florida Special, Champions, Sliver Meteor and Silver Star and that service continued the first 10 years on Amtrak until Congress decided to "fix" the dining car deficit.

Ok, that's what I heard about from Mr. Haldeman when we talked...he mentioned that service was great in the early days (when they were still using a lot of the SAL/ACL/SCL equipment, I believe) and then it nosedived in the 80s with what you mentioned. He mentioned that, as a sleeper passenger, your one "big perk" at the time was that you got your buffet tray brought to you. As to the buffet/table cars...that feels extremely tragic, having those old twin units used for such substandard service.

You may be referring to the double unit dining cars. These were originally built for high volume trains like the Broadway Limited, Panama Limited and other trains. These were two full cars of that always ran as a pair with one car being the traditional dining car with kitchen and tables and the other car with tables only. The cars were connected by automatic doors so wait staff could move in between. Amtrak last used them on the Silver Service offering Buffet Style meals. One car had the buffet line and the other car had tables. Passengers helped themselves on the buffet line and then were seated. This was the only meal service offered on the Silver Trains in the late 1980s/early 1990s in one of the previous cost cutting attempts. The idea for this type of service came from the original pre-Amtrak Autotrain which offered buffet meals to customers. The buffet service did not go over that well on the Silver trains and the food offering was not that great. It was a far cry from the excellent meals served on the prior New York-Florida trains such as the Florida Special, Champions, Sliver Meteor and Silver Star and that service continued the first 10 years on Amtrak until Congress decided to "fix" the dining car deficit.

Alright, they're all coaches. I figured they were, but I did want to ask to be sure. Now, since we're talking about them, did "buffet" cars actually feature a buffet of some kind or another? Also...I do remember hearing about such service from one long-time rider, and I didn't hear too much good about it (at least when they used it as a substitute for a diner rather than to augment it). I wouldn't be opposed to seeing something in that vein attempted on some LD services (I speak of "improved cafe" services...I'm not sure if you could make a good bridge with something like this, but if you want to beef up one or more LD trains (say, doing a larger CHI-DEN consist), you could do something along these lines as an option for coach passengers and offer a bit more variety/quality than is currently available in the cafe.

Illinois could have had these running on their routes for under a million a piece. That would have been a bargain. Now the money is for new bilevels, so these cars will probably never run again, unless some other state see's it as a cheap way to start up/enhance a corridor service (Georgia? North Carolina? Colorado?)

I would not scrap them just yet but they do need to "shop around" for another customer, I also would not limit this to the states, there may well be other countries that would be interested in this, Canada is an easy option, but I would not rule out any nation that uses a standard gauge system.

-- also I find it kind of silly that Amtrak would not want the bi-level sleepers, I get they are a pain to maintain, but 1. It is extra revenue and 2 it would show congress they need a new order.

There aren't any bi-level sleepers (unless they're Superliner wrecks). The Santa Fe hi-levels included only coaches, lounges and diners.

One of the cars was half coach/half sleeper... but I think the sleeper was for crew only

Serviceable condition? They look pretty rough to me. I'll bet that you can buy a new trainset for what it would take to buy these and get them into running condition.

Amtrak's fleet strategy is pretty emphatic about the fact that they're tired of dealing with 50+ year old mismatched equipment and are trying to get away from it as fast as they can.

Thanks for sharing the pictures, they were pretty incredible.

I cant really speak for the running condition of the cars, but from the inside... most looked in pretty good shape. A couple of coaches look like they could still be in service if you didnt know any better (or see the April 1997 Amtrak magazines sticking out of them). Before the trip down there last month, I had no idea that Amtrak had buffet-style dining cars... I sorta like that concept because you could choose what you wanted to have. Then again, I'm a sucker for Ponderosa and those Buffet places... haha.

But yes, that was the point, the owner(s) were planning on IL buying them for return to service.

It was sad to see the PPC just sitting there...

When the Auto Train was single level it ran for a time with a buffet car with an adjoining table car. I also recall seeing them on the Silver trains as well. The link below has some information.


http://www.railroad....=t&sd=a&start=0

Seems I remember hearing that Amtrak added some sleeping rooms for OBS to some of the hi level transition cars.

I would not scrap them just yet but they do need to "shop around" for another customer, I also would not limit this to the states, there may well be other countries that would be interested in this, Canada is an easy option, but I would not rule out any nation that uses a standard gauge system.

There are not too many countries in the world that have 16.5' height clearance on their railroads.

-- also I find it kind of silly that Amtrak would not want the bi-level sleepers, I get they are a pain to maintain, but 1. It is extra revenue and 2 it would show congress they need a new order.

Santa Fe never had even a single bi-level sleeper. So none of the Heritage bi-level cars are sleepers. The bi-levels were exclusively for use in El Capitan and other Coach trains. Even when the Super Chief and the El Capitan ran as a single train the Sleeper passengers and Coach passengers were apparently kept separated so no access to Hi-level cars for Sleeper passengers. That probably changed after Amtrak day.

Folks need to remember that bi-level sleepers is an exclusively Amtrak invention. No private railroad ever ran such service.

Thanks so much for sharing those wonderful photos of those wonderful old cars. I remember riding in several of them thru the years....
Would love to see them fully restored back to their original ATSF/CB&Q/PRR et al. condition, but as the song says "Only in my dreams"...

Too bad Amtrak had replaced the wonderful Karpen seats in the Hi-Level's with those newer (and less comfortable) ASI seats.

That facility has a collection that would be the envy of many museums. Because of the various cost issue's discussed in this thread, I seriously doubt any of that equipment will ever be used again, and will eventually be scrapped. Hopefully, I will be proven wrong.

Some of the cars are for sale. The blunt end CB&Q dome/obs is going for $250,000.00

http://www.gatewayra...y.php?detail=10

If you do a search and you will find that old RR cars are still in good supply. Train restoration places, RR brokers, private collectors and even some salvage yards have them.

Illinois could have had these running on their routes for under a million a piece. That would have been a bargain. Now the money is for new bilevels, so these cars will probably never run again, unless some other state see's it as a cheap way to start up/enhance a corridor service (Georgia? North Carolina? Colorado?)

I would not scrap them just yet but they do need to "shop around" for another customer, I also would not limit this to the states, there may well be other countries that would be interested in this, Canada is an easy option, but I would not rule out any nation that uses a standard gauge system.

-- also I find it kind of silly that Amtrak would not want the bi-level sleepers, I get they are a pain to maintain, but 1. It is extra revenue and 2 it would show congress they need a new order.

There aren't any bi-level sleepers (unless they're Superliner wrecks). The Santa Fe hi-levels included only coaches, lounges and diners.