While I'll admit that I haven't gone counting, I can't imagine how the Diner-Lite car has less tables than a Heritage dining car. In the Heritage dining car, fully half the car is given over to the kitchen. In a Diner-Lite car there are tables on both sides of the car, with the small food service/prep area in the center of the car.The only other single level "dining" car that Amtrak has is the Diner-Lite, so that is definately what you experienced, and has far less tables than a normal Heritage diner. And yes, that is exactly what has been steadily occuring for the past couple of years. As Heritage cars become too expensive to maintain and too unreliable to place on a revenue run, Amtrak simply retires them. This caused a huge deficit in the diner fleet, which prompted the refurbishment of Amfleet II lounge cars into "Diner-Lite" so that single level LD trains could still guarantee having a diner in the consist. To make it easier and predictable, the LSL permanently stripped of Heritage diners and replaced with the new cars. The Cardinal was also given a new lounge as an "upgrade" from its typical cafe car. There are two possible scenerios for your experience. 1: The Heritage diner was bad ordered and the diner-lite car was simply taken off from the LSL to fill in for it, or 2: The LSL consist from the previous day was used as that day's Silver Star/Meteor as a result of accident or hastiness.The last time I was on a Silver, they had to substitute a different than normal dining car.I was thinking through which trains were still running with Heritage dining cars. Let me know if I missed any...
Crescent, Silver Star, Silver Meteor.
So, why is it the dining car was taken from the LSL and not another train?
Sorry, I am not into ID'ing slight differences in cars. I do remember the dining staff mentioning that it had a different number of booths (either a couple more or a couple less). The staff also mentioned being a bit disorganized because some things were kept in a different place.
So, I wonder are the Heritage cars wearing out, and there aren't enough working to support all LD trains?
As for what prompted the Diner-Lite cars being created, that was the out growth of the Congressional mandate to Amtrak to cut its food service losses. Amtrak came up with the poor SDS plan as one part of the solution to meeting that mandate. Diner-Lite, CCC's, Diner-Lounges, Lounge-Diners were yet another component of the plan to meet the mandate, and were possible because of much of what SDS brought us.
I've not heard that the change in indeed permenant for the LSL, several people still claim that it is temporary until Amtrak fixes the Heritage diners or gets replacements.
And yes, for the Cardinal Diner-Lite was indeed an upgrade from the single Amfleet II cafe car it was running with. Of course at one time the Cardinal used to run with a full dining car too.