Lake Shore Limited
Bag-dorm [NYP]
Sleeper [NYP]
Sleeper [NYP]
Sleeper [NYP]
Diner [NYP]
Cafe [NYP]
Coach [NYP]
Coach [NYP]
Coach [NYP]
Coach [NYP] -Seasonal
Coach [bOS]
Coach [bOS]
Cafe [bOS]
Sleeper [bOS]
You added a sleeper but took out a coach. If you had kept the coach, which Amtrak will probably do, then that would be fifteen cars. Suppose Amtrak did four seatings a meal for a 48-seat diner. That's 192 in total, so that could accomodate up to six sleepers. If there's a lot of coaches, Amtrak could still assign fiver sleepers to the LSL.
In the end, it is important to know how much demand there is for NYP/BOS-CHI. Does BOS warrant an additional sleeper? Is the current one sold out a lot?
You can't do 4 seatings in the diner, 3 is the max unless you want some really odd times. But normal would be 5:00 PM, 6:30 PM, & 8:00 PM. You really can't tighten things more than that. To get to 4 seatings you'd have to start serving dinner at 4:00 or 4:30 PM and even then you're looking at the last seating at around 9 PM. Way too late!
When I'm doing the math, I usually assume somewhere between 1.5 and 2 people per roomette and 2 per bedroom (I've run the math with both 2/2 and with 1.5/2, and this gives a
little more flexibility).
Mea culpa on dropping an LSL coach.
As to the sleepers...that's actually my bad. I'd assumed it was one in 25 (that's about what I tend to come up with, numbers-wise, in other discussions) that was to be out for inspections, plus the protect cars.
On the FEC: What has just come to mind is the pain that ticketing the Silver Star will be: You'll probably have a
very odd booking situation if you add cars...how do you handle the LD coaches? Ticket as a separate coach bucket set (or apply an accommodation charge) or lock to high bucket JAX-MIA? Run as D-only JAX-MIA and force folks to corridor seats? And if you've got some sort of BC on the train...that
would be four classes of service (Sleeper, LD coach, corridor BC, corridor coach) on one train. Specific to the Florida service, I would be inclined to expect the Horizons to end up here per some earlier discussions about what they wear well in terms of climate and so forth.*
On the LD coaches: I'm at least mentally pulling a few cars off of Midwest or California service and replacing them with bilevels, or off of Hiawatha service when those Talgos come out. Implicit in this assumption is that a few corridor coaches are going to get redone and added to LD service at some point (even if the move is something as simple as moving 2-2 BC cars to the Adirondack in lieu of the "real" LD coaches).*
*On both of these points, depending on demand patterns and so forth it might be possible to assign a single "short distance" coach to one or more of the LD trains.
Anybody want to make a computer animation of such a consist?
