The invention of the word "heritage" seems to make people think that there is one specific kind of car called Heritage. That is not. It is an arbitrary name Amtrak coined to designate those old cars it wanted to keep and to have Head End Power.
It is just that Amtrak whittled down its inherited sleeping cars to use the type which had 10 roomettes and 6 double bedrooms. This makes people think that all cars before Amtrak were of this configuration.
Not so. There were eight or nine different kinds of rooms in the old cars with many different floor plans. Keep in mind that there were many railroads operating many passenger trains in the past. So do not expect the kind of uniformity on a national scale that we have today on Amtrak. The whole world of sleepers, diners, lounges,etc was quite different from today. Much diversity.
The old cars which VIA kept had, when built in 1954, four sections, four roomettes, five double bedrooms and one compartment. They have been reworked to have three sections, four roomettes and six double bedrooms, though they call them by other names. There is another floor plan on the Canadian but not sure from memory what it is, and cannot look it up because I am on my way out to dinner.
Comfort is a different thing to different people but I, old enough to remember the old days, do not think there was much difference.
All the major builders participated. Budd, American Car and Foundry and Pullman Standard. The VIA equipment is all or most Budd. Budd was the best.
One biggie that Amtrak has over the past is the use of showers. The old trains had very few showers. It was mostly just one room in one car of one train that had a shower, and that room was normally known as a Master Room.
Another is the coffee, orange juice, etc the old trains did not have that in the sleepers.
Bill is right on the money as far as "heritage" is concerned. I think VIA has completely retired all their ex-CN "Blue Fleet" which was mostly CCF (Canadian sister of ACF) CorTen steel cars, and VIA's sleeper fleet, aside from the Renaissance cars, is all Budd, from the huge 1955 CP "Canadian" order.
There were many configurations of sleeping cars, as Bill pointed out. The dominant room types in order of size were Roomettes, Double Bedrooms, Compartments, and Drawing Rooms, although there were others, such as the Master Room and Single Bedrooms. There were also open sections. VIA's Budd sleeper fleet contains all four of these room types, BTW, although they now call them by different names. Roomettes are "Cabins for 1" both Double Bedrooms and Compartments are "Cabins for 2" with the larger Compartments being a good deal for the price of a Double Bedroom. I think as far as VIA is concerned, only Chateau cars carry compartments, but am not sure about that. Drawing Rooms are "Cabins for 3" and Bedroom Suite (2 Double Bedrooms with the partition opened) is "Cabins for 4".
The traditional roomette is a different accomodation than the Amtrak Economy Bedroom, now called a "roomette". It was for one person, the bed folded down from the wall and was SIGNIFICANTLY wider and with a regular mattress, and there was a sink and toilet, although the toilet was under the bed when it was down. In terms of bed quality, the only bed on Amtrak Superliners that is equivalent to the beds in the older cars is the lower in the Delux Bedroom and Family Room. All beds in rooms on the old equipment were wider and had full mattresses and were much more comfortable. Even the open section's lower, which was created from the two facing seats similar to Amtrak roomette was a great wide bed. Some considered the lower section berth to be the best bed on the train. The Superliner roomette's lower and all Superliner uppers are much narrower and less cushioned than their predecessors. They are more equivalent to some Slumbercoaches.
The Superliner Delux Bedroom is kind of somewhere between a Double Bedroom and a Compartment. A bit bigger than a Double Bedroom, but a bit smaller than a Compartment.
With regard to showers, that is Amtrak's big improvement over the past, as Bill pointed out. The in-car coffee service also, although some railroads has complimentary wake-up coffee service for Pullman passengers with the porter delivering coffee to you in your room. Santa Fe for sure had that.
There were no "handicapped" rooms. The construction of those cars, the last in the mid 1950s, long predated the ADA.
BTW-Eva Marie Saint occupied a Drawing Room on the 20th Century Limited in North by Northwest. And open sections were the accomodations in Some Like It Hot. I don't know of any cinematic capture of a Roomette or Double Bedroom.
hboy:
