Please turn off the heat on train 88 to Boston

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I feel for you.... if they turn the floor heat on in an amfleet it turns into an oven real fast. The thing was designed for
Arctic train travel I think!
 
I had to take a shower after a ride last week, it was a sauna (and the train was full). You can speak to the conductor, they sometimes will turn it down.
 
I feel for you.... if they turn the floor heat on in an amfleet it turns into an oven real fast. The thing was designed for
Arctic train travel I think!
I've mainly run into these issues on the Florida trains, where you can be looking at a difference of as much as 60 degrees at the outside in winter (80 in Miami and 20 in New York is not implausible if the jet stream lines up right/wrong) while it can be close to 0 in the summer. Those realities require very different handling of HVAC control over the course of the trip.
 
conductors do NOT have control over temperature, on Amfleet there is only 3 settings , off- layover (50 degrees) or on (
at or about 72 degrees).

That may be true but there is also floor heat which in my experience is the big problem.

The tourist railroad I worked for had budd cars and they had low and high heat, low and high ac, plus an independent blower, and floor heat. They weren’t amfleet of course but probably similar.
 
I've mainly run into these issues on the Florida trains, where you can be looking at a difference of as much as 60 degrees at the outside in winter (80 in Miami and 20 in New York is not implausible if the jet stream lines up right/wrong) while it can be close to 0 in the summer. Those realities require very different handling of HVAC control over the course of the trip.
Those realities require an invention from the 1880's called a thermostat. It's not a Florida or New York problem so much as an Amtrak problem. Even here in 2020 they still haven't figured this out. All the talk about older hardware limitations ignores the fact that nearly all conventional HVAC systems operate with a binary on/off switch at the core. It's the thermostat that does the temperature modulating. I don't doubt that Amtrak's unique hardware has odd requirements that would double or triple the cost of installing thermotsats, but that's no excuse for clumsy threads that continue to imply it simply can't be fixed.
 
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Those realities require an invention from the 1880's called a thermostat. It's not a Florida or New York problem so much as an Amtrak problem. Even 100+ years later they still haven't figured this out. All the talk about older hardware limitations ignores the fact that nearly all conventional HVAC systems operate with a binary on/off switch at their core. It's the thermostat that does the temperature modulating. I don't doubt that Amtrak's unique hardware has some odd requirements that would double or triple the cost of installing more common variants, but that's no excuse for clumsy threads that continue to imply it simply can't be fixed.

For what it’s worth... the budd cars that I mentioned from the tourist railroad that I worked for were the only cars that didn’t have a thermostat. We had cars much older, some were built as early as 1925, that the shop crews were able to put modern thermostats on. But the budd cars, for whatever reason, were different.
 
It is so hot in here!! Please turn off the heat.

I would be glad to do that! Please let me know what car you were sitting in and I'll gladly march over to Southampton yard to adjust the heat. LOL!!

I love how someone joined the forum to make a single post about how it's so hot instead of asking a crew member if something was able to be done. *facepalm*

I've honestly accepted the fact that some people don't think things fully through as far as common sense goes. Which is a sad thing to have to accept.
 
I love how someone joined the forum to make a single post about how it's so hot instead of asking a crew member if something was able to be done. *facepalm* I've honestly accepted the fact that some people don't think things fully through as far as common sense goes. Which is a sad thing to have to accept.
I've asked Amtrak staff dozens of times to turn down the heat. Nicely, strongly, softly, you name it. I've even begged and pleaded. None of it did me any good. Amtrak staff are so amazingly indifferent to temperature complaints that I no longer ride Amtrak in cold weather. Which is a sad thing to have to accept but there you go.
 
I've asked Amtrak staff dozens of times to turn down the heat. Nicely, strongly, softly, you name it. I've even begged and pleaded. None of it did me any good. Amtrak staff are so amazingly indifferent to temperature complaints that I no longer ride Amtrak in cold weather. Which is a sad thing to have to accept but there you go.

That would be awesome if you were the only person on the train. Unfortunately you're not.
 
That would be awesome if you were the only person on the train. Unfortunately you're not.
It would be even more awesome if every person on the train was a warm blooded mammal who had evolved enough to understand the concept of capturing body heat with thicker clothing. That’s how I manage to avoid freezing on Amtrak in the summer. To be fair, not everyone is clueless or indifferent to my plight, but the moment a kind SCA sets the temperature one degree below "Florida Summer" fossilized pensioners start crawling out of the woodwork to find out who dared to move the lever. On my last few winter trips I brought tape, a fan, and ice pack with me. Even that wasn't enough to counter the never ending heatwave.
 
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...but the moment a kind SCA sets the temperature one degree below "Florida Summer" fossilized pensioners start crawling out of the woodwork to find out who dared to move the lever.

Having worked in commercial HVAC for most of the past 30 years, I refer to it as the "Texas Reset". When the outside air temperature is ninety degrees (or higher), your tenants will be demanding that the temperature be set at 68...or lower. But when a cold front hits and outside temperatures drop into the low 30s, your tenants will be wanting the temperature set at 77 or 78. I've lived with this professionally for so long that I no longer shake my head in wonder at the stupidity of it all; I just go with it.
 
There are buildings like that too. In one I worked in, you had to bundle up in the summer and strip in the winter. Also, apparently in that building, once they turned the heat on or off for the season, they couldn't/wouldn't adjust it for warmer/cooler weather.
 
I find that if you are not the only one complaining, they'll adjust it if they can (sometimes it's not functioning correctly). So I say something and hope someone else says something too.
 
There are buildings like that too. In one I worked in, you had to bundle up in the summer and strip in the winter. Also, apparently in that building, once they turned the heat on or off for the season, they couldn't/wouldn't adjust it for warmer/cooler weather.
Sounds like most Landlords! LOL

Reminds me of Government Buildings during the Jimmy Carter "Sweater Days" in the '70s!!
 
Having worked in commercial HVAC for most of the past 30 years, I refer to it as the "Texas Reset". When the outside air temperature is ninety degrees (or higher), your tenants will be demanding that the temperature be set at 68...or lower. But when a cold front hits and outside temperatures drop into the low 30s, your tenants will be wanting the temperature set at 77 or 78. I've lived with this professionally for so long that I no longer shake my head in wonder at the stupidity of it all; I just go with it.
I know what you mean, but our propensity to grant stupid people with loud voices the right to make important decisions for everyone is why our grand experiment is doomed to failure.

Reminds me of Government Buildings during the Jimmy Carter "Sweater Days" in the '70s!!
That speech was the beginning of the end for Carter. Asking American boomers to bundle up is like trying to explain metric units, the Celsius scale, or A4 paper. They can't understand the benefits and asking them to sacrifice their own comfort for the greater good ruffles their feathers.
 
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Conductors and for that matter car attendants can control the floor heaters. And those things can be very overpowering. So much that when the pipes froze once on a train I was working I turned my floor heaters on and it thawed my frozen pipes. There is a switch in the electric locker of each car to toggle the floor heaters.

Crescent Zephyr which tourist railroad did you work at? I’m wondering if we’ve bumped into each other before somewhere.
 
Conductors and for that matter car attendants can control the floor heaters. And those things can be very overpowering. So much that when the pipes froze once on a train I was working I turned my floor heaters on and it thawed my frozen pipes. There is a switch in the electric locker of each car to toggle the floor heaters.

Crescent Zephyr which tourist railroad did you work at? I’m wondering if we’ve bumped into each other before somewhere.
The switch in the electrical lockers is for overhead blowers/heat. The only control for floor heat is circuit breaker underneath the car.
 
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